The distributed null controllability for coupled parabolic systems with non-diagonalizable diffusion matrices with a reduced number of controls has been studied in the case of constant matrices. On the other hand, boundary controllability issues and distributed controllability with non-constant coefficients for this kind of systems is not completely understood. In this paper, we analyze the boundary controllability properties of a class of coupled parabolic systems with nondiagonalizable diffusion matrices in the constant case and the distributed controllability of a 2 × 2 non-diagonalizable parabolic system with space-dependent coefficients. For the boundary controllability problem, our strategy relies on the moment method. For the distributed controllability problem, our findings provide positive and negative control results by using the Fattorini-Hautus test and a fictitious control strategy.