All Saints Day in Alcoy

The Cemetery of Alcoy becomes a place of pilgrimage of many families who remember their missing relatives on November 1st and show it by placing bouquets of flowers on their tombstones.

All Saints Day is a traditional Catholic feast dedicated to the memory of the ancestors that is celebrated on November 1st and that is intimately related to the celebration of The Day of the Dead, on November 2nd. This festival is one of the oldest in the Christian world. In Spain, France and Portugal it is a national holiday where families traditionally visit the graves of their dead relatives.

All Saints Day is the Christianization of a Celtic party called Samain, a feast which celebrated the end of the summer an apparent period of death as the days grow shorter and the weather turns colder where the fields are immersed in a latent state until, next spring when everything comes back to life again.

If you have never visited Alcoy cemetery you will be taken aback by the number of people visiting the cemetery on All Saints Day.  So many in fact that it appears as if the entire city has turned out to pay their respects.

Alcoy cemetery is considered to be one of the most interesting in the Valencian Community, due to its unusual architecture and examples of Valencian Art Nouveau period funerary sculpture.

To learn more about Alcoy cemetery and why it is on the European Tour of cemeteries click on the line in this sentence.