For Nawufal Mohamed, Juan Branco is only a memory. A mirage. The two men, born the same year, in 1989, led the 2017 legislative campaign together in Clichy-sous-Bois for La France insoumise. The first, a city boy, then piloted the second in the districts of Seine-Saint-Denis. As a landed candidate, straight from the very chic Latin Quarter, Juan is the son of a famous Portuguese producer and a Spanish psychoanalyst. Three years later, Nawufal, a former member of AC Le Feu, a movement born out of the 2005 riots, is still there. Juan, now Branco, has never set foot in Clichy-sous-Bois again. On the Sunday of his defeat, he already had his mind elsewhere. "My girlfriend had just left me," he recalls.
“We had a very good campaign and a good score, says Nawufal, Juan was not afraid of anything. It was Ramadan, he came with us in the evening, where others would never have dared to venture. His ideas against macronie, his engagement with the whistleblower Julian Assange… It was crazy that a guy like him was interested in us. But the time for disillusionment came with defeat. “He abandoned us overnight. I still have esteem for the activist he is, but I have a feeling of betrayal. He wanted a seat as a deputy and dropped us for the Yellow Vests. It's more fashionable, more buoyant… ”
From Dominique de Villepin to Jean-Luc Mélenchon
He's like that, Juan Branco. A militant zapper who goes from one cause to another in search of light, always with the same passion and an apparent sincerity. Still a student, he actively supports a hypothetical candidacy of the ex-right Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin - a friend of his mother - in the presidential election of 2012. He then engages with the Greens of Ile-de- France, to finally participate in François Hollande's campaign ... and finish on the lists of Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the legislative elections of 2017. Graduated from the bar the same year, he also became the legal advisor to Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, and its representative in France until January 30.
Today, Maxime Nicolle, alias Fly Rider, figure of the Yellow Vests, recognizes him as one of their own, a child of the people. In less than a year of companionship with the movement, Branco is experiencing increasing celebrity. Witness the success of "Crépuscule" (Ed. Au diable vauvert), the anti-system book he published in March 2019. In addition to 100,000 free downloads, he would have sold more than 200,000 copies. A bestseller.
And, since February 14, the date on which Benjamin Griveaux resigned his candidacy for mayor of Paris after the dissemination of an intimate video on social networks, the spotlight is on this elegant young man, barely 30 years old , with a somber look and a rebellious streak.
A visceral detestation for macronists
From Ruquier to Hanouna, the dandy of the ultra-left Parisian is invited on all the TV sets and competes in the headlines with the coronavirus. Despite his three masters, his doctorate and his studies at the École normale supérieure and Sciences-po, it was a vulgar politico-sexual trap that brought him glory. Some imagine it in the brain of an operation to destabilize the macronie. What he fiercely denies.
"I am not the third man," he said to the Parisian on February 24. For the moment, only the recipient of the video and his boyfriend, Piotr Pavlenski, a Russian activist who has taken refuge in France, are under investigation for "invasion of privacy" and "distribution without the consent of the person of sexual images ”. Juan Branco, he announced Thursday March 5 during a press briefing that he had decided to once again defend Pavlenski.
But, for many, the visceral detestation that Juan Branco nurtures for macronists in general, and for Benjamin Griveaux in particular, would constitute a credible motive. As of January 5, 2019, he was demonstrating on rue de Grenelle, just a few meters from the machine which was trying to break down the door of the offices of the government's spokesman, forcing the latter to flee by an emergency exit. "With the Minister of the Interior Christophe Castaner, Benjamin Griveaux crystallizes everything that the yellow vests excrete. He is one of their targets. It represents for them the arrogance of this power ”, explains Didier Maïsto, president of Sud Radio, assumed support of the Yellow Vests and friend of Juan Branco. The magazine Paris Match has also unearthed a seventeen-minute video in which Branco calls for "crushing him by sending back his arrogance, his contempt, his incompetence and his inanity." By forcing him into a confrontation which […] would force him to see him naked, in his ugliness ”.
"He feels a fate"
On social networks, Juan Branco is enjoying growing success. Nearly 80,000 internet users regularly follow his "live", during which he asserts his truths and develops his political project. The denunciation of a ruling class which it knows from the inside and which it would therefore be best able to fight. "He feels destiny, analyzes one of his friends, and he has the art of understanding his time. So, necessarily, it is where it happens. "
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His young life was in fact written "where everything happens" or, more exactly, where it all starts when you are well born and have ambition, at the Alsatian School, in the 6th borough. In this prestigious establishment links are woven between the children of the Parisian intelligentsia. It is his original sin. "He lives as a child of immigrants, naturalized French as an adult, but always evolves in the same ecosystem, around the rue de Rennes and the maternal apartment where he installed his law office", says one of his friends. "It is because I grew up in a privileged environment, even if my parents were not wealthy, that I feel the duty to give back", he justifies.
In high school, he especially builds enmities. The most famous opposes him to Gabriel Attal, who will become one of the young secretaries of state of Emmanuel Macron. Premonitory! Former comrades evoke a love rivalry. Already very adept on social networks, Juan Branco had then created a blog in which Attal was the main target. Many years later, he revealed the relationship between Gabriel Attal and his companion, also a macronist. “For Gabriel, says a friend of the Secretary of State, it was not very serious because he had never made a secret of his sexual orientation. On the other hand, for the other person, it was very embarrassing: his family knew nothing about his married life. Even today, many of them fear a Branco attack on the Web.
A Godard fan close to the world of cinema
It was at Sciences-po, between 2007 and 2012, that his character grew. He brilliantly animates the school's film club. "He's a real film buff," says one of the former students, "he is unbeatable. " Like father, like son. His father produced 300 films - he says so. From an early age, Juan Branco climbed the steps of the Cannes Film Festival every year and, when asked about the personalities who impress him, he replied without hesitation: Godard!
"When you find yourself with someone like him, you have to be intellectually armed before you dare to speak," he says. The family table gave him multiple opportunities to learn his skills. She received Catherine Deneuve, Manoel de Oliveira as well as Jean-Luc Godard himself. He stayed close to this environment.
Quickly spotted by Richard Descoings, then head of Sciences-po, the student joined his bodyguard. During the mass given for the funeral of this charismatic director in 2012 in Paris, it was to him that his widow asked to deliver the funeral eulogy on behalf of the student community. The young man is 22 years old. He spoke under the gaze of all cultural and political Paris, from Nicolas Sarkozy, still president of the Republic, to François Hollande, who was to become one. A discourse on humility.
