The family of Joaquina Oliveira wants consequences. At the funeral of the 84-year-old woman, the coffin had to be pushed into the grave – it was almost vertical – in the cemetery of Riajos, in the municipality of Torres Novas, because the grave was poorly opened. “They put it on the side of the kovato and came to the conclusion that it would not go in,” he recalls. CM Francisco Pimpao, Joaquina’s widower. “They dig from here, they dig from there, and when they make a second attempt, they come to the conclusion that it doesn’t fit. They tilted it, but perhaps only half of it went inside the coffin. It was almost vertical. She must have walked not lying down, but sitting down,” laments the man who was married to Joaquin for 65 years. Her daughter left the ceremony halfway through, shocked by the way her mother’s body was treated. “What has happened is that the grave has become shorter,” he said CM António Jorge, president of the Riajos parish council, “but that was no reason to make a spectacle out of the deceased. There was only one thing left to do, which I told the agency employee. [funerária]: call the gravedigger to take away the excess [de terra]”, he decreed.