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Texto reemplazado: «<sup>th</sup> century» por «th century»
The people attending the funeral usually go to the cemetery to be present at the act of burial or, as is usually said, to “pay their last respects” to the deceased. But that has not always been the case. In many places in the past, few people were present at the burial and they also did not having to be direct relatives of the deceased. This lack of people at the burial in the cemetery may have reflected the greater importance that was generally given to the burial in the church.
It should be noted that for centuries and until the 19<sup>th</sup> 19th century, the burials were inside the churches and from then onwards, for hygiene reasons, the had to be at the cemeteries on the outskirts of the towns. When that happened, the symbolic burial site that represented the old family one in the church continued to prevail, and the burial in the cemetery was considered secondary in importance; in fact, the cemetery was only visited at a large number of locations in early November and that was not even the custom until relatively recently.
Elsewhere only the men and not the women would typically go to the cemetery. That could be due to the fact that the women play a key role in the activation of the symbolic burial site in the church and therefore had to remain there. However, the custom was also reported that the women closest to the deceased would not even go to the church.
