Undertakers barred from hospital for fighting over customers

Sales reps from four undertakers have set up banners outside a Madrid-area hospital to protest being ejected because of loud arguments while competing for customers.

Last week the protesters set up bouquets of flowers beside the banners to publicise their case, but the director of Principe de Asturias Hospital in the town of Alcala de Henares ordered them withdrawn, the newspaper El Pais said yesterday.

The spat goes back to May, when the hospital said it had had enough of the shouting matches it said the funeral parlour representatives staged in corridors as they vied for business.

It barred them from entering the hospital unless a family asked specifically to see them, the paper said.

“We could no longer tolerate these disgraceful scenes at such a sensitive time for the families,” hospital director Angel Sanz was quoted as saying.

Two long-established undertakers blamed the confrontations on what they called a newcomer with aggressive marketing techniques, the paper added.