Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, October 27, 2026 — Municipal cemeteries have an estimated six to eight months of burial space remaining, the cemetery chief said in an October 24 report.
The new El Zancudo cemetery still has no formal opening date, leaving families to ask: how will the city provide new burial plots until it opens?
In an interview, municipal cemetery chief Santos Aristóteles Mercado Orozco put demand at 30 to 35 requests a month for new graves or plots. He identified approximately 250 available spaces in El Progreso and another 60 in Ramblases.
“We can manage for six to eight months with the available spaces,” he said, translated from Spanish.
His proposed response is to find additional room inside existing cemeteries. Engineers have been helping identify where new burial rows could fit, including areas along the perimeter and some internal roads and walkways.
Mercado estimated that those modifications could extend capacity to between a year and 18 months. That longer window depends on creating additional usable space; it is not the capacity he described as available today.
The warning concerns requests for new graves and plots. Mercado said burials were still being arranged day by day.
El Zancudo, on Highway 544 toward Las Palmas, has been presented as the longer-term answer for years. Vallarta Daily reported in July 2024 that, when officials estimated El Progreso had only six months of useful life remaining, opening the new cemetery had become urgent.
The project’s difficulties have included land preparation. In reporting published November 1, 2025, Public Works Director Edén Arturo Castillón Villaseñor said the site needed fill and further studies before he could give an opening timetable.
That report also described Mayor Luis Ernesto Munguía González’s concerns about the water table and the expense of preparing the property. Those explanations date to 2025; the latest account from the cemetery chief does not say which construction tasks remain unfinished.
The shortage is receiving renewed attention as families prepare to return for Día de Muertos. In its holiday preparations announcement, the municipality estimated more than 30,000 visits across its five cemeteries on November 1 and 2.
Crews have been cleaning, pruning trees, and removing debris since August at 5 de Diciembre, El Progreso, Ramblases, Ixtapa, and Las Palmas. Preparations also include lighting checks and improvements to nearby streets and internal paths. Civil Protection, firefighters, and municipal police will assist with emergencies and visitor movement.
Under the cemetery chief’s proposed workaround, some of the roads and walkways families use to reach existing graves could eventually become the next rows of burial plots.
