Whitewashing the dead in Olvera

A cemetery in southern Spain in the town of Olvera as seen from the castle next door.  We were the first visitors of the day and the helpful young curator manning the ticket office and souvenir shop unlocked the front door for us and explained how to get out again once we'd had a good look round. It was a hot morning in early October, the sky was a brilliant blue, and we had great fun clambering around the medieval castle taking photographs of this and that.  It was the kind of castle that gives castles a good name with proper crenallations, thick walls, guard towers, arrow slots to peer through, timbered floors, and a stunning view from the rooftop of the keep. There was even the narrowest of spiral staircases with slippery stone steps to corkscrew up and then down again.  But this scene intrigued me.  A team of four women, and all of the civic cleansing and maintenance semed to be done by women in Andalucia, were whitewashing the walls of the tombs in the local town cemetary.