Bastille Day in France has long been synonymous with grand fireworks displays over towns and villages, as dancing crowds celebrate their nation’s revolutionary birth, reports The New York Times.
But firework shows have been canceled in parts of the country this year, for fear of a resurgence of the unrest that has just swept France and for the risk of fire in the face of the extreme heat that is a new fixture of French summers.
“It’s an unusual convergence of social and environmental issues,” Hervé Florczak, the mayor of Jouy-le-Moutier, a small town west of Paris, said, noting that France had yet to solve either problem. “It’s sad that it should fall on Bastille Day.”
Mr. Florczak explained that he had first looked for a site away from a wooded area to organize a fireworks display while avoiding drought-related fire hazards. Then, his city was struck by the riots after a police officer killed a teenager in a Paris suburb in late June.
“We canceled the show, pure and simple,” he said.
The concerns did not prevent President Emmanuel Macron from celebrating the national holiday, which marks the storming of the Bastille prison in 1789 that ignited the French Revolution. Along with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India as his special guest, Mr. Macron attended the traditional Paris military parade on the Place de la Concorde Friday morning and watched jets that left a trail of blue, white and red smoke streaming overhead.
Mr. Modi’s presence was a sign of France’s desire to deepen diplomatic ties with India, a country that Mr. Macron described on Thursday as “a giant in the history of the world, which will have a determining role in our future.”
The two leaders were expected to discuss a range of topics, from climate change to security in the strategic Indo-Pacific region, as well as Russia’s war in Ukraine. Mr. Macron, who has contemplated playing the role of peacemaker in the war, has been actively trying to rally the support of nonaligned countries, including India, for Ukraine.
Still, Mr. Macron could hardly escape domestic realities at Friday’s parade. The area of the festivities had been cordoned off by police, and many metro stations had been shut down, a sign of heightened security threats as the country deals with the fallout from the violent protests.