NarrativeThe order fell from above. At the finish of 2020, Emmanuel Macron introduced the closure of round fifteen crossing factors between France and Spain. Overnight, the day by day life of the inhabitants of the Pyrenees is turned the other way up by a call that reveals the rising hole between the capital and sure territories.
It’s a tiny story. A closed street move on the borders of the French Pyrenees for months with out anybody understanding a factor. Neither the French nor the Spaniards of the surrounding villages, not even the elected officers and the police accountable for imposing this closure. The story of this “bad decision” which difficult the lives of 1000’s of folks for 13 months, begins in the fall of 2020.
The newspapers keep in mind Emmanuel Macron’s go to to Perthus, the border put up of the Pyrénées-Orientales, a division that has for some years turn out to be the most well-liked route for migrants from Morocco, Algeria and sub-Saharan Africa. Under a vibrant solar, uncommon on November 5, the President of the Republic, a black masks on his face, then introduced a brief closure of the French borders on a scale by no means seen since the creation of the Schengen space in 1985: about fifteen crossing factors, positioned all alongside the 650 km border between France and Spain, would now be blocked.
The official goal, based on the authorities, being “to very strongly intensify border controls” for “fight against the terrorist threat, the fight against trafficking and smuggling (drugs, cigarettes, alcohol, etc.) but also against illegal immigration”. It is as much as the prefects involved to prepare themselves. They had two months.
A “grotesque” measure
January 6, 2021. Far from Le Perthus, some 300 kilometers away, it’s 8 p.m. when the first automobiles are turned again to the Col du Portillon, one of the crossing factors affected by this measure. That day, nonetheless, there was no extra snow than standard. The border is closed till additional discover, announce the gendarmes. Fight in opposition to terrorism. The repressed are skeptical. And nervous. The final time we snubbed them like that was the day after the assault on Charlie Hebdo, when, as in all places, border controls had been tightened. Would it begin once more? On the radio and on tv, nonetheless, we solely converse of the assault on the Capitol, in Washington, by a whole bunch of excited Trumpists, not of an assault in France.
“It would not appear to be a lot, however twice fifty minutes as a substitute of twice fifteen minutes, it adjustments your day. » Michel, retired
As there should not thirty-six methods to materialize a border, Etienne Guyot, the prefect of the Occitanie and Haute-Garonne area, had massive bolstered concrete blocks put in and as many border cops (PAF) throughout this street which connects Bagnères-de-Luchon to the Spanish city of Bossòst, positioned in the Val d’Aran. After just a few days, as a result of the plots had been too far aside, the brokers added heaps of gravel and earth to stop the passage of bikes and bicycles. But the two-wheelers favored to climb the small pebbles. Large rocks have due to this fact come to finish the set up.
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