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The cortege, in principle, was formed at the home of deceased, from which it left for the church, or it went first to the cemetery and after the burial to the church. As has been described in the removal of the corpse, a small cortege made of the closest neighbours and relatives walked to an agreed point of the location that could be different depending on the neighbourhood from which deceased came. Other members of the cortege and the ecclesiastical chapter would be waiting there. This stop was used by the people to change clothes and shoes. From then onwards, the cortege with all solemnity started or would set off again to the parish. There would be people who joined the cortege along the route, particularly at the stops made at the crossroads or, finally, in the urban centre and the door of the church.
In the past, the organisation of the cortege and the order that each element must have there were rigid, but today the cortege is more diverse and is even chaotic at times. The neighbours had a key place in the cortege in many locations. They sometimes headed it with precedence over the relatives, at other times they shared the lead of the cortege and, circumstantially, the neighbours would replace them in places where the blood relatives did not attend<ref>Bonifacio de ECHEGARAY. “The neighbourhood“La vecindad. Relations that it produces in the Basque Country” Relaciones que engendra en el País Vasco” in RIEV, XXIII (1932) p. 26.</ref>. Such was their importance in the cortege that in the village of Aduna in Gipuzkoa they said: ''Leenbizi auzua, gero, progun tokatzen zaiona'' (first, the neighbour; then whichever mourner who followed)<ref>AEF, III (1923) p. 74.</ref>.
Throughout the Basque Country<ref>José Miguel de BARANDIARAN. ''Estelas Funerarias del País Vasco''. San Sebastián, 1970, p. 35.</ref>, a distinction was widely made between two groups in the funeral cortege. Those who went as an “obligation”, who were from the household of the deceased or had special ties with it, and those who went out of “charity”, who did not belong to the household, but who had ties with its dwellers at another social level, where the common factor was Christian charity.