This is how Perpignan is changing after 5 years of far-right rule.

PerpignanThe arrival of the National Regrouping (RN) party to power in the Perpignan city council in 2020 sparked excitement as to how the far-right party would govern a city with more than 100,000 inhabitants and, furthermore, the capital of a department, two characteristics that make Perpignan unique in France. A city test, as some French media defined it, although there was already the example of Besiers –with around 80,000 inhabitants–, where RN came to power in 2014 and continues to do so after also winning the 2020 municipal elections.

In the final stretch of 2026 after a "subtle" transformation of the city, according to experts consulted by ARA. In these five years, RN mayor Louis Aliot has become one of RN's greatest representatives abroad: as vice president of the far-right party, he attended the funeral of American far-right activist Charlie Kirk and is also a regular interlocutor with Israel.

In 2020, Aliot defeated the previous mayor, Jean-Marc Pujol of the Republicans, in the runoff election with just over 53% of the vote. From the outset, RN's victory in the Perpignan City Council raised concerns among a portion of the population, even leading to protests outside City Hall. However, at the beginning of the new era, no significant changes were seen compared to the previous government team. "Until now, RN has had a minimally moderate mandate because it should serve as a showcase for the upcoming municipal elections. Furthermore, it had been playing on the far right with the Republican right for decades, so when Aliot arrives, there are no major differences," says Gautier Sabrià, a sociologist specializing in the far right.

Racism

"In the first stage of the mandate, in the media, in front of the gallery, there has not been any extremely controversial position. They have passed the stage of de-demonization, to become normalized in institutions, and little by little they are showing more of what they are like, but in a very subtle and sibylline way," says Pablo Bonat, a secondary school teacher and member of the Casal de Perpignan. Bonat recalls that last July the City Council vetoed SOS Méditerranée, a humanitarian maritime organization that rescues people like racism, from stopping at the Ida y Vuelta festival, organized by the Casa Musicale, a totem of Perpignan's cultural fabric.

On August 28, at the press conference for the presentation of the Visa pour l'Image festival – in which the genocide in Gaza was very present – Aliot announced that the exhibition would be at the City Hall Israel: The Massacres of October 7, 2023 with the subtitle Antisemitism is not an opinion, it is a crime.Organized by the City Council and the Col·lectiu 7 de Octubre, it was interpreted as counterprogramming to the photojournalism festival. The author of the photos, Israeli photojournalist Maël Benoliel, regretted that he was told it would be a group exhibition and in the end there were only his photos. Benoliel told the newspaper The Independent He felt "cheated" by political manipulation and because there were errors in some photo captions, which identified Palestinian victims of the Israeli army's intervention as victims of Hamas. But the disagreement between the photojournalism festival and the city council dates back to last year, when Aliot refused to award the Golden Visa to Palestinian photographer Loay Ayyou, the first time in more than 30 editions that the mayor of Perpignan had not presented this award.

Revisionism

In January of last year, Olivier Gandou published the book Perpignan RN salaries: bilan 2020-2023 ("Perpignan under the RN mandate: 2020-2023 balance") in which the author compiles the actions of the government team during the first half of the mandate. In his opinion, "there are two discourses that are normalizing far-right ideology: the sphere of religion, which is combined with irrationality; and another aspect is the nostalgia for French Algeria, which involves supporting OAS (Secret Army Organization) terrorists." In this sense, Pere Manzanares, of the Arrels association, says that "Aliot has the same point of view as his predecessor in office on the Algerian war. They have a totally false and retrograde, even totally revisionist, vision of that war." Jean-Marc Pujol, the previous mayor, was born in French Algeria and has always been a defender of the pied noirs, but the mayor who was there before, Jean-Paul Alduy, was the one who opened a memorial to French Algeria in the former prison of Perpignan, where the current Cercle Algérianiste de Perpignan is located today.

"Perpignan is one of two or three municipalities in France that every March 19th [the date of Algeria's independence] fly their flags at half-mast and draped in black crepe as a sign of mourning for the loss of French Algeria. This has been done in Perpignan for years; it's not something that the FLN (Algerian National Liberation Front) has been doing now," says Bonat.

Catholicism and Catalan identity

The other element Gandou highlights is a return to more Catholic traditions: processions have even been held in honor of Saint Galderic, the patron saint of farmers, to invoke rain, with the participation of elected officials from the city council during recent years of drought. "We have a deputy mayor responsible for water to organize a public ceremony to invoke rain," says Gandou. "The incredible thing is that the next day, after this mass, it rained in Perpignan. The second year they held it, it was no longer successful and it didn't rain," notes Sabrià. "We live in a secular state, and in theory, religion has no place in institutions, but what Aliot does is a very skillful game: linking religion and Catalan identity," adds Sabrià. "He was brought to trial because at Christmas he puts up a Nativity scene at the entrance to the city hall. That, by law, is prohibited in France, because you can't display a symbol as a religious element, but as an element of Catalan tradition." creche –which is how it is said in French– but of manger, in Catalan." Now, to avoid legal problems, the nativity scene was placed outside the Town Hall last year.

"They've overstepped the laws of the French state regarding the separation of religions from institutions. They play with the limits of the law; they put the Nativity scene outside City Hall, but to see it you have to go inside. In this, they've gone further than the previous city government, also right-wing, but more careful with these matters," Bonat adds.

Less associative tissue

Last Saturday, like every Saturday after October 7, 2023, there was a rally in Perpignan against the genocide in Gaza. Various associations and organizations participated, including the Union Juive Française pour la Paix (French Jewish Union for Peace). Sonia Marzo, the daughter of a French Jewish mother and a Republican father from Badalona who had to leave after the 1936 war, is a regular. She was born four years after the proclamation of the State of Israel. "At home, we have always been anti-Zionist and against Israel, starting with my mother," she explains, along with her brother Christophe. "I have seen them in action in schools and high schools, and it is very impressive because they work with three pillars: anti-racism, migrants, and Palestine. Of course, for many young people, a Jew is equal in Israel, and what they do is bring out the religious coordinates of the political conflict, which, in the end, is a colonial issue."

Another aspect that has been criticized in recent months at City Hall is the impositions on associations, the cuts, and even the withdrawal of subsidies, in some cases. "As part of the association world, I know that associations that don't collaborate or refuse to be associated with City Hall have their subsidies cut off the following year. And this hasn't happened once, twice, or three times. What happens is that there are associations that depend on subsidies and, for fear of losing what they still receive, don't declare war," Bonat said. In this regard, several entities and associations in Northern Catalonia have declined to participate in this report to give their opinion. Olivier Gandou declined to provide this newspaper with any professional description or his image for fear of personal and professional reprisals. "These are difficult times to summarize and generalize in Perpignan," concludes a Northern Catalan journalist.