Difficult to see a simple coincidence of timing.
One month away from the regional and upstream of the President's “Tour de France” to “take the pulse of the country”, Emmanuel Macron returns to his report to the country in a river interview with the quarterly Zadig.
“I had asked the president in October, says the director of the review, Eric Fottorino.
The interview was finally carried out a month ago.
In Zadig, personalities talk about their France.
I wanted the Head of State, to whom his detractors often reproach for not having a carnal dimension with the country or not having manifested it, to tell his intimate France.
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In this story there are of course known stages. Like Amiens, the birthplace of Emmanuel Macron. His grandfather who worked for the SNCF had put his suitcases there, thanks to a transfer. The future president grows up in a "rather happy bubble". He spends "countless hours in a library." He also discovers the factories that are closing and the “bite of deindustrialisation”.
The holidays take place in Bagnères-de-Bigorre (Hautes-Pyrénées), a "green paradise where I continue to go, the place of origin of my grandparents".
“I grew up remembering my grandmother,” he adds.
So I have a vision of France that is not at all that of my generation, I must admit.
I am like out of sync.
»This place comes back to him regularly when he sees« the chain of the Pyrenees from a very particular angle (…) before the riders of the Tour de France attack the Tourmalet ».
A not trivial reference: its interviewer Éric Fottorino is a cycling enthusiast, regularly invited to comment on the Great Loop live on television.
A refined national narrative
So much for the predictable stops. But the president does not stop at these crushes there. He recounts his years of study in the Latin Quarter in Paris, where, as a student, he lived in a maid's room. And confides his passion for Marseille, which he says he loves "infinitely" and where this fan of OM spent his first summer holidays as head of state. "It is a city where, as in all these large ports, we arrived, we settled, we were Armenian, Algerian, we became Marseillais before being French," he underlines.
Then, Emmanuel Macron evokes the places discovered thanks to official trips: the Lot, in particular “Figeac”, “Cahors”, “Saint-Cirq-Lapopie”.
Or the East of France, surveyed during the memorial roaming on the First World War.
Less expected, it evokes Seine-Saint-Denis with tremolos in the voice.
It is "the youngest department in France, with two international airports, the most important sports stadium and the greatest number of start-up creations per inhabitant," he insists.
The only thing missing is the sea to make California… It is also the only place where we have assumed to be a country of immigration, which integrates, which raises children born here as elsewhere ”.
Read alsoHow Emmanuel Macron is preparing his new Tour de France within a year of the presidential election
He confides that he had on the spot the intuitions which guided him in the management of the crisis: the need to reopen the schools, the individual responsibility of the French in matters of barrier gestures, etc. Evil tongues will say that the president does not forget any region. On the eve of the presidential election, he weaves laurels in Brittany, Saône-et-Loire, L'Eure or Puy-de-Dôme, “land of industry, breeding”. Do not throw any more!
After geography, history. In this interview, Emmanuel Macron returns to the episode of the yellow vests. It is, analyzes the Head of State, “a return of violence in society. We find one of the fundamentals of our old country, made up of jacqueries. This idea that, when anger and fear are knotted, anything becomes possible ”. Then, he compares the contemporary turbulence to the “end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Renaissance. It is the time of great fears, of phenomena which forge a people, I would even say of the reinvention of a civilization ”. Before getting to the heart of the presidential election, Emmanuel Macron refines his national story.
