Since few years at the Legnaro National Laboratories we have recently started a program to study exotic decays at the proton drip‐line with particular attention to proton radioactivity in the rare earth region. In fact pemitting nuclei with 54 < Z < 64 are expected to be quite deformed in their ground state and their study is an important input for the theoretical models that describe this kind of decay. Our studies have brought, as first result, the discovery of the decay by pemission of117La where to p‐decaying levels have been found. Our experimental program continued with the study of the decay of126Pm. For this nucleus we can only conclude that our low statistics data show no evidence of p emission. © 2003 American Institute of Physics