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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.
=== Throwing a handful of earth ===
Once the coffin had been lowered into the grave and before burying the coffin, the custom is to take a handful of earth, kiss it and throw it on the coffin. That is very widespread both in space and time and there are not too many variations. José Iñigo Irigoyen explained in that regard that “some date this custom back to the times when the tombs were formed by covering the corpses with stones. Those stones were because of the superstitious belief that ''the dead do not want to go alone '' […]''each person at the burial placed a stone to which a sacrificial meaning was given and was considered to represent the spirit of the living, who was thus accompanying the deceased”<ref>José IÑIGO IRIGOYEN. ''Folklore alavés. ''. Vitoria: pp. 38-39.</ref>.
== The interment. Lurra ematea ==
The most common expression to described the interment is “to bury” the corpse and in Basque, they also used ''lur eman '' or ''lurperatu; ''; in Arberatze-Zilhekoa (BN) ''lurrez kukutu.''.
In some towns, there was and remains the role of the gravedigger whose role, as the very name indicates, has been to dig the graves and then bury the corpses. This task was carried out elsewhere by the neighbours of the deceased, sometimes exclusively by the first neighbours, of the youths of the town, the coffin bearers and occasionally by the relatives. This work is now usually done by the gravediggers and sometimes by the undertaker’s employees.
The corpse was laid in the burial sport so that the head was next to the cross. When it is placed in a niche, there is a new option: placing it with the feet at the bottom and the head next to the cover or vice versa. In the cemetery of Beasain (G), the corpse is nowadays placed with the feet first and the head next to the cover, but it is the opposite way round in Murchante (N).
{{DISPLAYTITLE: XVIII. ACT OF BURIAL}} {{#bookTitle:Funeral Rites in the Basque Country|Ritos_funerarios_en_vasconia/en}}
