Official mourning protocol: the case of Spain for the COVID-19 victims

Abstract

Official mourning is the outer sign of grief and mourning that States provide to honor their deceased regardless of the cause.

On 11 March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, better known as COVID-19. This epidemic disease has caused more than seven hundred thousand deaths worldwide.

A health catastrophe that has affected Spain and that its Government decided to honor its victims for coronavirus with the declaration of national mourning.

This research, after analyzing the existing protocol around official mourning, both nationally and regionally, results in rules of action to be applied throughout the Spanish territory. In this way, it is intended to provide the official mourning with its own and unitary staging for the nation, the seventeen autonomous communities and the two Regional Spanish cities.

Consequently, the official mourning declaration becomes the ideal tool of protocol, and therefore of communication, to express the mourning of all the Spanish people by the victims of the coronavirus.