At present, Maro lacks a place of burial, so bodies of the deceased have to be interred at the Nerja cemetery. However, it wasn’t always so. Moorish Maro had a burial place, a ‘maqbara’, that was discovered in 2004 when the new motorway was being excavated, which was in use from the end of the 10th century for about 500 years, (photo right). However, after the Reconquest and the forced Christianization of the area from the year 1500, most of the local inhabitants fled to Africa. Thus, it wasn’t until Maro’s mill was built at the end of the 16th century, followed by a church to service the growing populace, that Christian funerary patterns were followed. From that point on, burials were carried out in the church’s vault or crypt.

However, from the first decades of the 19th century, more and more Maro citizens were being buried in the Nerja cemetery when they died, rather than in Maro’s church. In fact, by 1875, Maro had experienced such a population growth that the mayor of Nerja complained that Maro needed to provide itself with a cemetery. The design for Maro’s cemetery was to be almost identical to Nerja’s one, San Miguel, which wasn’t surprising given that they were both drafted by the master builder Francisco Cantarero Martín, who had also constructed El Puente del Águila. Maro’s lord of the Manor agreed to contribute the construction materials, but because Nerja’s coffers were rather empty at the time, the citizens of Maro would be required to construct the cemetery – though without receiving any money for doing so.

However, for one reason and another, work was delayed for nearly a decade until in 1884 the terrible news came of a epidemic spreading across the Málaga and Granada provinces, causing people to die at an alarming rate. Nerja’s council said its cemetery would not be able to cope. Unfortunately, just as work on Maro’s cemetery was about to start, a great earthquake hit Andalucia on Christmas day that year, with tremors continuing during the following two months, so all energies had to focus on rebuilding the villages. Ten years later, in 1894, the priest of Maro’s newly created parish of Nuestra Virgen de las Maravillas, Francisco José Ramos, asked the mayor of Nerja to finally build the cemetery. He agreed, but again it was decided to make use of the Municipal Law powers which required residents to provide their personal assistance to create public works. So the good people of Maro would finally be ‘digging their own graveyard’ for free after all. Nevertheless, construction didn’t start until 1901, and the cemetery was not completed until 1903. Finally, after nearly 30 years, the installation and blessing of the Catholic cemetery of Maro took place on January 2nd, 1904. [Photo above, showing how the cemetery appeared in the middle of the last century. Courtesy of the Nerja Caves Foundation].

For some cause not yet known, Maro’s cemetery was in use for perhaps only 6 years, and in the 1950’s all the remains were moved to the cemetery of Nerja. Then in 1959, after the Caves of Nerja was discovered, the cave’s first curator, Pablo Solo de Zaldívar, repaired the cemetery, which was by then completely abandoned and smothered by undergrowth. Finally, in 1985, the official ‘Patronato de la Cueva’ and Nerja Council decided to turn the cemetery into the hermitage of San Isidro, which until then had been worshipped at another hermitage, (located on el Cerro de Los Cancharrales hill near Nerja). They then landscaped its interior and built the chapel out of the two dilapidated rooms. Thus finally the building itself was at rest, to be appreciated by the thousands that pass it on their way to the caves or gather around it at the San Isidro festival each year.

[Much of this history was condensed from Francisco Capilla Luque’s brilliantly informative blog (in Spanish)].