The days pass and the anger of the agricultural world gains ground.
Farmers in Occitanie are stepping up actions to alert public authorities to the malaise in their profession.
Beyond the road blockages, workers discovered windows blown out by an explosion on Friday in a building under construction by the Regional Directorate for the Environment, Planning and Housing (Dreal), in Carcassonne (Aude).
An investigation was opened for “damage by dangerous means to property belonging to another by an organized gang”.
On site, two “CAV” tags, initials of the “Viticultural Action Committee”, were also found on the scene.
Who is behind this organization, little known to the general public?
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The Regional Wine Action Committee (CRAV), supported by local branches (CAV), is a group of radical wine producers who have claimed responsibility for a series of violent actions in recent decades in Aude, Hérault and the Eastern Pyrenees.
Operations which have sometimes benefited from wide media coverage, with certain foreign newspapers, such as the Times or the Telegraph even going so far as to describe them as “wine terrorists” at the end of the 2000s. But the origins of the movement go back to the beginning of the 20th century, with the birth of winegrowers' unions in Languedoc and Roussillon.
Radical actions in the 1960s
At the time, the profession, in the grip of a major wine crisis, wanted to mark its specificity and defend its interests, refusing the idea that a general agricultural union could carry its demands.
Little by little, the movement took shape and spread to several departments in the south of France.
Then, it was not until 1961 that a Regional Wine Action Committee was officially formed.
The concerns of winegrowers of the time echo certain concerns of today, observes to L'Express Jean-Philippe Martin, doctor in history and author of “History of the New Peasant Left”.
“We can cite a drop in wine consumption, particularly
big red
or table wine, and an overproduction aggravated by competition, first from Algerian wine, then Italian and Spanish, in the following decades, with the expansion of the single European market,” he explains.
Since its birth, the Action Committee has aimed to carry out operations on the ground to support its demands.
Actions were organized before quickly becoming more radical at the end of the Algerian War in 1962. The Committee's activists were "joined by former conscripts, trained in Algeria in guerrilla techniques", underlines Antoine Roger, researcher and professor at the IEP of Bordeaux, in an article dedicated to wine unionists.
“People who are nostalgic for the balance of power”
The more violent actions included road blockages, damage to public buildings and arson.
One of the most serious occurred on March 4, 1976. That day, a shooting broke out during a demonstration by winegrowers denouncing the problems linked to the importation of Algerian and Italian wines, in a small village in Aude, Montredon.
A CRS and a wine grower are killed.
After this tragedy, the organization, which became the radical arm of Languedoc viticulture, remained discreet until the end of the 1990s. Then it carried out less spectacular actions irregularly, thanks to the crises that the wine world was experiencing. .
Activists continue to denounce the importation of foreign wine, weakening their sector.
They attack transport infrastructure, factories, or even certain traders whom they accuse of favoring the foreign market.
In June 2017, around ten wine growers broke into one of them in Teyran (Hérault), dumping 200,000 liters of wine, before leaving “CAV” tags.
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Just last year, the Aude Committee tried to set fire to a bottling company in the town of Sallèles.
An inscription “Import no!”
» bears the signature of the CAV.
And now ?
Despite the explosion which caused serious damage during the night from Thursday to Friday in Carcassonne, the organization no longer benefits from the popular support of the 1970s. Only a few activists organized in "small groups" are still active, estimates on franceinfo Yann Vétiis, coordinator of the Aude Peasant Confederation.
“These are people who are nostalgic for the balance of power that they managed to create with the State at that time.”
Proof of its (relative) isolation, the CAV does not have a spokesperson or figurehead.
Many wine professionals have also preferred to distance themselves from their methods.
Like Frédéric Rouanet, president of the winegrowers' union, who indicates that he "cannot support" this type of action.
“We are a union with 4,000 members and our mode of action is to hold mass demonstrations, as we did in Narbonne on November 25, or to go to the negotiation field “, he defended.
All that remains is the anger of a sector in crisis.