French Mayor prohibited people in his village to die

From February the thirteenth it has been forbidden to die in Sarpourenx. The mayor of this little village between the Pyrenees Mountains and the Atlantic Ocean has passed a law against it. Mayor Gerard Lalanne is upset that his request to enlarge his village graveyard has been turned down. It's full, he says. So for those who haven't already booked their plot, death is no longer an option. With a twinkle in his eye and a beret screwed down firmly on his head, Mayor Lalanne says all his 260 villagers have obeyed the by-law so far. But strict sanctions await those who break it.

"If some die, they're going to have to look after themselves," he warns. And he's threatening to send the first one who fails to abide by the law to the local planning authorities for them to deal with. Two years ago, the mayor asked to be allowed to extend the church cemetery. But the plan would have brought the feet of some recently deceased people up to the edge of private gardens. Residents complained and, this Summer, the request was turned down. And this isn't the only village having difficulties finding space to bury the dead. This despite the fact that it is now difficult to find a plot in a Christian graveyard in France where you're allowed to rest in peace for perpetuity. Unless you're someone very special – Monet, for example, or Jean-Paul Sartre – you are more than likely to have someone buried on top of you once it can be safely assumed that you and your contribution to humanity have been totally forgotten.

"What with local residents, roads and parking space, not to mention geological considerations, it is very hard to find room", says an official in Cugnaux, another village in the south-west, that was the first to impose a local death ban at the end of last year. Here, it was the Defense Ministry that blocked the graveyard extension - a decision that was finally reversed in January. While waiting and hoping for a similar outcome for his village, Mayor Lalanne, though 72, says he's never felt fitter and is not about to contravene his own by-law any time soon.

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