  The belief still persists, at least for an important part of the community,
that in general relativity the cosmological constant $\Lambda$ must remain
immaculate. However, Bianchi identities show that $\Lambda$ could acquire local
properties in the presence of matter, i.e.,
$\Lambda\rightarrow\,\Lambda(x^\mu)$. In this paper we go even further, and we
show that a non-uniform vacuum energy does not even require coexistence with
any additional form of matter-energy, nor of any theory beyond general
relativity, at least for extreme environments, such as the proximity of a black
hole.
