A mayor outlaws death

Since February 13, it is forbidden to die at Sarpourenx. Empêché justice by expanding its cemetery, the mayor of this small village in the Pyrenees-Atlantiques indeed came to make an order prohibiting any deaths in its territory. Violators are threatened with severe sanctions. "While some die, well, they will do," says Gerard Lalanne, elected since 1971. The first death that happens, I send to the state representative in the department. " Two years ago, the édile had obtained the legal right to extend the communal cemetery to a private area of 5000 square metres, adjacent to the church. But the expropriation procedure was cancelled in July 2007 by the Administrative Court of Pau, holding that "the attacks on private property were excessive." The mayor, who wanted to dig new graves, build a parking lot, install a columbarium and a hedge vegetative order to separate the cemetery houses, do not décolère. His town has no place, he says, to accept new corpses. "It takes a separate location so as not to disturb the residents, but with roads and parking, taking into account the geological… It is very difficult to find common ground to bury the dead," says one to Cugnaux (Haute-Garonne), a city that has taken a similar decree in late 2007. Here is a lack of authorization from the Ministry of Defence that blocked the proposed expansion of the cemetery. The prefect finally gave its approval in January. "Some people take it for fun, but not us!" Storm on its side Gérard Lalanne, which run Sunday his seventh term