As Patrice Burel scooped coffee at his roastery in Perpignan, he lamented the steady closure of other shops on this narrow city centre street. “They gradually disappeared like sugar dissolving in a cup of tea,” he said, blaming crime, traffic jams and competition from out-of-town shopping centres. “I long argued for the pedestrianisation of this street.”
Then in 2020 came political change. Perpignan, with a population of 121,000 and close to the Spanish border, became the biggest city to be run by Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) in 20 years., reports The Guardian.
The historic city at the foot of the Pyrenees, which for decades has had some of the starkest inequality in France, is now a municipal laboratory for the far right. The new mayor, Louis Aliot, a lawyer who was formerly Le Pen’s romantic partner and is a party vice-president, picked up the pedestrianisation plan for Burel’s street, which began in 2022.
“I’m not interested in politics. It’s not about the party, it’s the man himself. He’s knows what’s happening in his town and he has listened to me,” said Burel, 72, who has run his coffee business for 30 years. “Once they are elected, you have to row in the same direction as the boat.”
As the RN attempts to gain a majority in the French parliament election runoff vote on Sunday, with Aliot keen to serve in government one day, Perpignan is being scrutinised for lessons that can be learned about the party when in power. Not everyone is reassured by what they see.
“They have tried to smooth over their image to win Perpignan but this party remains dangerous for France,” said Jean-Bernard Mathon, who ran against Aliot on a leftwing citizens’ list. “On the issue of nationality, and non-nationals, their political line is to push them out of France.”
In the run-up to the parliamentary election, the RN – formed by Jean-Marie Le Pen as the Front National and renamed in 2018 by his daughter – has stuck by manifesto pledges to limit immigration and scrap nationality rights for children born in France to foreign parents. It has pledged to bar dual nationals from certain state jobs, and vowed to clamp down on what it calls “Islamist ideologies”.
Aliot’s election in Perpignan, however, is a study in the far right’s drive to normalise itself in local politics.