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The other afternoon I saw the olive trees die," said a famous playwright on the front page of Le Figaro on July 17, 1973. Jean Anouilh, the author of Antigone or Eurydice, sounded the charge that day against the construction of the motorway, then called the B52, between Aubagne and Toulon. Unlike the A69 between Castres and Toulouse, whose usefulness is questioned, the need to open up the city of Toulon and serve La Seyne and La Ciotat is accepted by all. What angers the opponents is the route chosen, to the south, while another, a few kilometres further north, in a sparsely inhabited area, has not been retained, although it is significantly cheaper.
Plastic bulldozers
The protests are fierce. A bulldozer has already been plasticized. More machines were added the following year. In a report kept by the INA, a construction supervisor can be heard confiding that he had been threatened with a rifle. It's true, he admits, that the scenery is magnificent. Olive groves, vineyards, valleys and villages. And the Sainte-Trinide district in Sanary where Jean Anouilh has been coming to spend the summer for the past ten years.
Jean Anouilh's column, on the front page of Le Figaro on July 17, 1973. Le Figaro
An article in Le Monde on 13 March 1973 has already counted the 'for' and 'against'. Among the proponents of the southern route, we find La Ciotat, which hopes for economic benefits. Coastal towns are siding with the people of Marseille who own second homes, happy to save half an hour on their journey. Other interests are at stake: "Lafarge cement is opposed to the northern route, which would expropriate one of their quarries," says the evening newspaper, while "Mr. Jacques Defferre, director of the Toulon daily La République, wants the motorway to pass a few hundred meters from his newspaper's new premises in Ollioules." In addition, the Estérel-Côte d'Azur motorway company, concessionaire of the B-52 motorway, which will be tolled, "would lose at least 5000,<> vehicles per day if the northern route were retained.
»Anouilh, designated spokesperson
Opponents of the northern route can be found in villages crossed by the motorway, such as Ceyreste or Sanary. But also among the winegrowers and small farmers who will lose plots of land, to the Communist Party as well as to the parish priests when a small restored chapel risks ending up in the heart of a motorway junction.
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"Peasants came to me," says Jean Anouilh, "thinking that a writer can still write. Of course, we'll go and sit in front of the bulldozers, as they have done before, and I'd be like Sartre on his canister for the picturesque. But what will it get us to? The notion of profitability has taken precedence over that of public utility."
And indeed, on 30 July, Prime Minister Pierre Messmer signed the decree authorising the construction of the motorway, after ten years of conflict, protests, marches and leaflets. The failures of the consultation process are pointed out, while people are outraged that a private company has already initiated expropriation procedures. Sometimes with ridiculous sums, from two to three francs per square metre, to compensate small farmers.
Car nuisances denounced
In reality, the public authorities are facing a real change in society and the end of the "all-car" approach promoted by President Pompidou. The nuisances, noise and pollution, are now denounced. In Le Figaro of 7 August, Jean Anouilh is back with a new argument, this time ecological. According to opponents of the project, a scientific study has shown a higher risk of pollution, or even toxic "smog" such as London experienced in 1952, caused by the "temperature inversion" common in this area. With the floor cooling down while warm air stays above it, polluting particles are trapped and stagnate.
The Minister of Public Works, Olivier Guichard, was not moved by this and replied to the illustrious writer in the same edition. He is pragmatic: "We chose the most useful highway, that is to say the one that would be the most used. We don't build a highway for the sake of pouring concrete, but for it to be used," he said, while reminding us that the highway is much less dangerous than the road. "All that remains are the uprooted olive trees, a beautiful changed landscape. Should we compare the lives that the construction of the highway will save?" he argues at a time when road deaths are at their peak. In any case, the project is already far too advanced to be delayed. In December 1975, the Aubagne-Toulon motorway, now a 45 km section of the A50, was put into service.
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