Supporters of Le Pen in Perpignan are furious about ‘political’ judgment

Frédéric Gourier likes to look ahead. And that means that the lower mayor of the southern French city of Perpignan does not want to talk about the historic blow that the right-wing-radical party Rassemblement National (RN) had to endure this week. On Monday, party leader Marine Le Pen was convicted with 24 party members for embezzlement of EU money. Among them is also Louis Aliot, vice -chairman of the party and mayor of Perpignan. He received 18 months conditional, of which six with ankle strap. Plus a three -year election ban, but may remain the mayor. Just like Le Pen, he appeals.

Frédéric Gourier

« Monsieur Aliot is my employer, but also my friend, » says Gourier, who has been working for Aliot for sixteen years and has hanging his portrait above his desk. The lower mayor receives in the party office in the Moulin-à-Vent district, where many RN voters live. The office is located in a non-descript and well-guarded building on a wide boulevard. RN voters have been coming together here all week to share their bewilderment about the ruling and discuss their next steps. « We only look ahead, » assures a volunteer.

« An atomic bomb has been used against us, » Echoot Gourier was the words with which Le Pen deeply indigned about her conviction to four years in prison (two of which are conditional and two with ankle band) and a direct election of election of five years. « And what do you do to prevent an atomic threat? You are going to make yourself stronger. And that is exactly what we are going to do. We are going to mobilize ourselves to show that this conviction is unjustified and politically motivated. » This Sunday, RN announced a large meeting, where Le Pen, Aliot and RN leaders such as Jordan Bardella will speak. In other cities, volunteers take to the streets to fly and ask people a petition Sign « to protect democracy ». « It’s better if one hundred thousand people come together in Paris than a few hundred in every city, » Gourier explains the party strategy.

With nearly 120,000 inhabitants, Perpignan, the capital of the Pyrénées-Orientales, is the largest city that is controlled by RN and one of the places where the party was able to gain administrative experience in recent years. The news of the conviction has therefore arrived hard in the city, says Gourier, who received dozens of phone calls with statements of support. « Some even called after midnight, my wife liked that less. » He talks about the close band of Le Pen with Perpignan, which originated in the ten years that she and the now 55-year-old Aliot had a relationship. « Marine liked to come here. Here she could just grab the car. Then she went to the market to talk to people and buy flowers. Cacti and peonies are her favorite. »

Polemic

Dominique Cols is one of the indignant RN voters in the Moulin-à-Vent district, where Gourier is in charge. She just bought a few newspapers for her elderly mother on the square near her house. On the front pages the portrait of Marine Le Pen with bold heads that reflect the polemic that caused its conviction in France. Cols, a sixties, has been voting for years on RN and has been displayed over the statement.

« Of course, Marine should not have used that money to make her party forward, » says Cols. « But the law was adopted after the facts committed and then it doesn’t count. Marine couldn’t know that what she did not allowed? At least, that’s what they say on Cnews. » Cols likes to look at that French, radical-right TV channel. RN members have been speaking there all week who say that the condemnation is a list of « ultra-nine » opponents to prevent Le Pen from winning the presidential elections in 2027. The fact that Le Pen was in favor of strict legislation for politicians who darken money – and even wanted to exclude them for the lives of political office – says he has not heard Cols. France has been in prison for many years on darkening public money.

As a volunteer, she helps with an animal shelter and thinks that Aliot does a good job. She is good with her Syrian and Moroccan neighbors, but nevertheless says she is afraid of North African migrants, about those who do all kinds of stories. That is why she is happy that Aliot has provided more police on the street. Radical or racist, facho As opponents say, she doesn’t think her party is. « We want a just country where French citizens can live worthy and where migrants who misunderstand the country can be turned off. But at the moment there is something wrong with the judiciary in France. » As the daughter of a soldier, she lived on the Caribbean island of Martinique, a French department. “We adapted. But if she Here come, they expect that We Adjust us to them! It is the inverted world! ”

Colonial

The French colonial past is proudly worn by RN in Perpignan. The city has a large group of so -called pieds-noirs: Born in Algeria, French settlers, who moved to France in 1962 after the bloody Algerian war. Many found shelter in the Moulin-à-Vent district and voted for the radical-right Front National, the predecessor of RN, who died by Le Pens last year. That he fought as a soldier in the Battle of Algiers (1956-1957) felt familiar. About the accusations that Le Pen Senior there guilty Torture of Algerian citizens prefer to be kept silent.

Also in the museum that was opened in 2012, which is dedicated to this algérianistshis references to the French colonial crimes. « Colonizing is population and giving value, » says one of the signs. In 2021, Mayor Aliot opened a monument in the garden of the museum with the names of the French citizens who were missing during the Algerian War. The hundreds of thousands of victims among the local population who died as a result of French rule, is not mentioned in the museum with a word.

Vice-Mayor Gourier also comes from a family of Pieds-Noirs. He is proud of his origins and sounds annoyed when he is asked about the Wandaden of the French settlers. He stops fiercely that Algeria was « an empty plain » when the French arrived in 1830. « There were swamps and diseases, nothing else. » According to him, hospitals, roads and schools are exclusively due to the French settlers. In 2023, President Emmanuel Macron said no apologies For the colonization, which the Algerian President Abdelmajid Tebboune said on behalf of his people.

Instead of discussing crimes, racism or decolonization, Gourier prefers to point to the good works that mayor Aliot has done according to him. He mentions the reinforcement of the police and the renovation of the many slum homes in the historic center, where the gitansthe French catalan gypsy community, life. He then lets himself go over them in uncut racist terms. « If you walk around there you get a pack of yogurt or a dirty diaper on your head. You don’t have to wake those people to vote. Of course we do everything we can to improve their situation. There is 130 million euros for urban development. But it is difficult if you are dealing with people who want nothing. »

Under the gitans In the Saint-Jacques district in the center of Perpignan there are very different sounds. Here no white blocks such as in Moulin-à-Vent, but narrow streets with tight houses in particularly cramped condition. Open doors, some without windows or locks, offer a view of dark rooms. Graffiti adorns the facades of the cracked walls, where lines of colored laundry hang with beams. Waste is on the street, but there are nowhere to be found for waste containers.

A woman plenles a bucket of soap from the second floor out of the window. The water just does not land on Madame Gimenez, but she is not shocked. The woman is dressed in a pale dress wide leg on a chair on the narrow, sloping sidewalk. She often sits outside here, says the forties, because despite the fact that everyone knows each other in Saint-Jacques, life in the neighborhood is not easy. « Our houses are rotating, there is junk everywhere and many children do not go to school. But the municipality is not doing anything to help us. They promise our temporary accommodation so that they can repair our homes. But those who leave should not come back. »

She does not follow the news and the Rassemblement National party knows them vaguely. But if Mrs. Gimenez hears that the mayor of her city has been convicted for embezzlement of a few million euros, her eyes grow up. « If you steal, you have to go to prison. That’s that simple. » Her old father, sitting next to her with a sick, closed eye, nods in agreement. “Stealing all politicians. That’s how it was with Sarkozy and Fillon And so it is still. Let them feel the consequences. « 

Dinner

Lino ‘Nounours’ Gimenez (no family) has already been in prison. The extensive sixties wears a Ray-Ban pilot glasses above a black beard. On slippers and in black jogging suit, he is standing on a square with a group of local residents. On the other side there is a information point for drug prevention, a few neighborhood chickens along the cars. Hekwerk shields a large construction site, where construction workers with cranes are replacing an old block of houses for new construction.

Lino ‘Nournours’ Gimenez

Gimenez is a well-known name in Saint-Jacques and is considered the unofficial spokesperson for the gitans van de Wijk. For years he has been committed to better living conditions of the inhabitants. It was for the municipal elections of 2020 that he suddenly received a phone call from Louis Aliot, he says in an Algerian café on the Place de Cassanyes. The market has just ended, on the terraces a mishmash of North African languages, French and Catalan. Boyed boys play a gambling game, older men in jeans and djellabas drink tea. “Aliot asked me if I wanted to dine with him. He had a proposal to make me a proposal. He asked me if we, the guitans, His candidacy for mayoring wanted to support.  »

In exchange for their voice, Aliot would redecorate the houses in the neighborhood, place waste containers and residents could open shops. Gimenez was completely finished with then mayor Jean-Marc Pujol of the conservative UMP, from the former president Nicolas Sarkozy, convicted in 2024. « I wanted to get rid of Pujol, so I agreed. What are we too lazy to vote? Thanks to us, Aliot has won! »

The first three months went well. But soon Gimenez realized that the mayor had made empty promises to win their voices. « Now we are years farther and we are still crammed in dilapidated houses, which we cannot buy because they are too poorly maintained. They try to get us out of the neighborhood and sell our houses to sell bobos from Paris, » he says angry. Gimenez went to get and demonstrate a story, but it didn’t work out. The demolition and sale of houses continues as usual and the living conditions deteriorate. Gimenez is not surprised that Aliot has been convicted. « He used us. Whether they are left or right, politicians cannot be trusted. They steal and they lie like they breathe. »

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