Santa Coloma de Gramenet, near Barcelona, has found a unique location for a solar power farm: mausoleums.

Flat land is at a premium in Santa Coloma. Its 124,000 people are shoehorned into just 1.5 square miles. There just wasn’t enough space to build a large enough solar farm to be effective. There was some resistance at first; citizens were concerned about such an installation showing a lack of respect for the 57,000 dead buried at the town’s cemetery. Eventually, the town council won public approval through a careful public-awareness campaign, and installed some 460 solar panels on the mausoleums throughout the cemetery.

Now, “There has not been any problem whatsoever because people who go to the cemetery see that nothing has changed. This installation is compatible with respect for the deceased and for the families of the deceased,” said Antoni Fogue, a city council member who was a driving force behind the plan.

Could something like this catch on here in the States? Possibly. It wouldn’t be a bad thing.