Chamber III of the Supreme Court has dismissed the appeal filed by the Stop Crematori Association against the decision of the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia that considered the resolutions of January 2018 of the Sant Adrià del Besós City Council (Barcelonès Nord) regarding the Granting of the environmental and urban licenses, respectively, to the entity Tanatori del Litoral for the construction of a funeral home with an incineration service with a crematorium in said town.
The appellants maintained that, “in the absence of a generic municipal or sectoral regulation”, the minimum distance of being 500 meters from populated areas should be applied to crematoriums, whether or not they were in the grounds of a cemetery, which Newly created cemeteries are required in Article 50 of the Mortuary Sanitary Police Regulations (Decree 2263/1974).
Against the position of the appellant association and in defense of the mortuary-crematorium, both the Sant Adrià City Council and the Barcelona Metropolitan Area and the El Litoral mortuary itself stood up. Both the Catalan TSJ and previously the Contentious-Administrative Court number 10 of Barcelona rejected the association’s appeals.
The Supreme Court also dismisses his appeal and establishes as jurisprudential doctrine that “the minimum distance of 500 meters from populated areas for the location of newly built cemeteries, provided for in article 50 of the Decree approving the Mortuary Sanitary Police Regulations , is not applicable to the cases of construction of crematorium ovens”.
