Park-a-Pilgrim? Non! Rolling Stones? Non!

When French voters finished balloting last week in nationwide municipal elections, they left a haphazardly divided political pie. The Gaullists marginally increased their overall strength, taking 52% of the municipal seats. The Communists won 45 out of France's 193 largest towns--six more than they previously controlled--the most victories for any single party. The divided centrist groups, which Radical Party Politician-Publisher Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber had hoped to weld into an alternative to the Gaullists and Communists, lost ground to both.

Basically, however, the elections were fought not over national concerns but over what might be called parish-pump issues. Nowhere was that more evident than in two medieval villages hidden among the protective cliffs of southern France.

>In Lourdes, home of the famed Catholic shrine, the basic issue was a controversial million-dollar 300-car garage that Incumbent Mayor Justin Lacaze planned to build a stone's throw from the site of Bernadette's vision. If he were removed from office, Lacaze threatened, ecclesiastical authorities might build a parking lot in a meadow on the other side of the grotto, enabling pilgrims to park, pray and go away without even passing through Lourdes (pop. 18,000). But townsfolk failed to fall for that and for the first time in history voted in an anticlerical Radical Socialist Francois Abadie, who opposed building a garage anywhere.

>In Mougins, a hilltop town five miles and 50 years away from Cannes, Mayor Rene Pellegrin became the first official anywhere to win re-election on an anti-Rolling Stones ticket. The Stones, pained by the gigantic British tax bite, decided to settle down in France, and sent emissaries to shop around for suitable villas. What shocked staid Mougins (pop. 7,000) was the five-member rock group's request for Roman orgy-size baths that would accommodate six or eight at a time. The progressive, Rene Avelli met his Waterloo when he declared that Mick Jagger & Co. were welcome. After all, Mougins is already home to Pablo Picasso, and even though the artist lives rather quietly in a remote outskirt, how much notoriety can one town endure? The Stones were last reported seeking out the warmer climate of St.-Tropez.

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