At first, the story resembled those of so many villages across France, as caricatured in Gabriel Chevallier’s 1934 satirical novel Clochemerle, about the intrigues, petty disputes and rivalries of a small French commune. But the events in Montjoi, a tiny village in south-west France with a population of around 170, have taken on a political and sinister dimension.
At their origins is a dispute over the use of a public right of way and which opposes, on the one hand, the local mayor and the British owner of a renovated farmhouse, and on the other, a pig farmer. The conflict has been festering for almost six years, during which time official complaints have been filed and cases brought before an administrative tribunal, with solutions sought but never found, and entrenched positions deepening further.
But it developed into one of far wider proportions with the arrival in the story of a far-right YouTuber, “Papacito” (whose real name is Ugo Gil Jimenez), used to stirring controversy with hateful and threatening videos, such as one targeting journalists who report on the far-right and another staging a mock execution of a caricatured voter for the radical-left LFI party.
The first of his videos about the dispute in Montjoi, in which he takes sides with the pig farmer against the mayor and the Briton, appeared in November last year, and was removed a few days later. But it triggered a hate campaign against the mayor of the village, 75-year-old Christian Eurgal. Another posted in May contained shocking intimidation of Eurgal, with depictions under cover of supposedly humouristic images, of his rape and murder.
Last Friday, YouTube France closed down Papacito’s channel. Eurgal, meanwhile, has been given police protection.
Graffiti has been daubed on roads around the village calling Eurgal a “weasel” (fouine in French), repeating the term used by the YouTuber and pointing towards the home of the mayor who has received death threats by email, on the voicemail of his office, and on social media.
The intimidation of mayors and councillors has become a major issue in French political life. According to interior ministry figures, in 2022, the number of official complaints over verbal or physical abuse filed by elected representatives of all sorts, from mayors to members of parliament, totalled 2,265, a rise of 32% compared to 2021.
There were two particularly alarming recent cases of far-right intimidation, both in the north-west region of Brittany, at the opposite end of the country to Montjoi. One was the forced abandonment of a project to build a hostel for refugees in the village of Callac following a far-right campaign joined with death and rape threats made against members of the local council behind the project. The other, in the Breton village of Saint-Brevin-les-Pins, involved a far-right campaign against a project to move a hostel for asylum seekers close to a school. The physical threats against the mayor, Yannick Morez, culminated in his house and cars being firebombed, and last month Morez announced his resignation amid fears for the safety of his family.
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When Mediapart visited Montjoi last week, Eurgal had that day received a call from the prefect (the local representative of the state administration) to discuss the mayor’s personal security following a post on Instagram by Papacito. This was a photo of himself with another man, joined by a short line in French announcing “The condor is back”. The cryptic declaration was a message directly aimed at the mayor of Montjoi.
In his first YouTube post about the village conflict, posted in November, Papacito presented pig farmer Pierre-Guillaume Mercadal. In the video, Mercadal, 37, accused the mayor of being in cahoots with the owner of a property who took it upon himself to take over a public path that passes across his land. The owner is British, variously decsribed as "the Englishman" or a "lord", and apparently well-off, which was all that Papacito needed to see in the dispute a continuation of the Hundred Years’ War, exalting the values of chivalry and the propensity in the Middle Ages to settle disputes otherwise than before a court. There followed several allegations questioning the probity of the mayor, implying that he must have been corrupted by the Briton to the detriment of the pig farmer, made into a symbol of the paysan du terroir. Although the video was taken down from the YouTube channel after a few days, it remained visible elsewhere on the internet.
The dispute is in fact a complex one, and its roots date back many years. In his mayoral office, the mairie, Christian Eurgal showed Mediapart the cadastral documents illustrating how, 18 years ago and well before Eurgal had even moved to the village, the local council agreed that the public right of way that passed across the property of the British house owner, Roderick Sinclair, would be given over for his use alone, after another track for public use was opened lower down and ensured equal access to the land and a wood which the original path served.
In an interview with The Guardian, Sinclair, 78, said that when he bought his farmhouse in 1995, the right of way posed no problem because few people used it, but that changed when it attracted quad bikes. He said that, with the local council’s agreement, he bought a plot of land nearby in order to open an alternative track and to close off the former one that crossed his garden. “The idea was that we would do a swap,” he told The Guardian. “I would give the new path to the village and they would give me the old path.”
But the deal was never legally enacted, as would be revealed in 2017 when Mercadal, a security guard who had decided to become a pig farmer, bought 32 hectares of the woodland served by both paths. “We welcomed him with open arms, we’re always happy to see young people arrive,” Eurgal told Mediapart, before pointing to a stack of document folders on his desk: “But there, that is the litigation with Mr Mercadal.” When the latter, who most certainly has a similar volume of documents on his side, discovered that the old right of way had never been handed to Sinclair in a legally binding manner, he demanded that he be given access to it.
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In an interview last November with VA+, the YouTube channel run by the far-right publication Valeurs actuelles, Mercadal said the other public path was largely impassable, and gave the example that the supplies needed to build his pig farm installations could not be delivered because trucks could not negotiate it.
What is certain is that since 2017 the dispute between the pig farmer and the mayor has become epic and sinister. Two men appeared in court last year after Mercadal filed an official complaint that they had turned up, armed, at his home to intimidate him. Mercadal himself was also in court last year when he was fined after being found guilty of holding the mayor hostage in his office while demanding his signature on a document. Eurgal was eventually freed by the gendarmerie.
Meanwhile, the public inquiry into the usage of the right of way is due to be completed by the end of June, and Eurgal believes that is why Papacito’s second video was posted on May 11th. Entitled “Infestation of weasels in Montjoi”, and made with the help of a team from VA+, it features several people including the so-called “condor” presented in the Instagram post on June 6th.
The video accuses the mayor of shady dealing, of having received payment, and he is represented by someone dressed up in the costume of a weasel and who ends up being raped by the “condor” and left for dead in a quarry.
“On the Saturday following the video, I was told that there was graffiti on all the roads around the village saying ‘Eurgal the weasel of Montjoi’ with arrows pointing towards my home,” Eurgal told Mediapart. “With that I called the gendarmes. The prefect called me also, and came round in the afternoon. He told me that protection needed to be organised.”
During the night of the following Monday, the French tricolour flags flying above the mayor’s office were stolen by two young men who were later arrested. Roderick Sinclair’s house was subsequently targeted. “They poured red paint over all the walls of the property of Mr Sinclair, who was present,” said the mayor.
The hate campaign sparked by the Papacito videos included an online incursion that transformed the result of a Google map search for the Montjoi mayor’s office into a presentation of that of the weasel. The local gite, which was created by the Montjoi council, was renamed online as “the weasels’ gite”.
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Speaking to Mediapart last week, the mayor said he was “not reassured” by the prefect’s call to discuss his safety, which he said he had not mentioned to his wife. “Already, we prefer not to look after our granddaughter because of the threats,” he added. Eurgal, who was first elected mayor in 2014, and re-elected in 2020, said he nevertheless would see out the remainder of his six-year term, although he has no plans to seek a further term. A group of mayors from surrounding villages are due to visit Montjoi on June 24th in a show of support for their colleague.
The Montjoi council intends to install five CCTV cameras around the village. Mercadal told VA+ that he will also set up CCTV surveillance of his property, using funds from donations he received following the first Papacito video in November. As for Roderick Sinclair, he has already installed CCTV surveillance of the old track at the heart of the dispute.
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- The original French version of this report can be found here.
English version by Graham Tearse