TO Saint-Gilles, a hamlet of 110 inhabitants located in the south of the Indre, the mayor is called Spike Groen. As he says himself, this very American first name was given to him by his parents, not in homage to the director Spike Lee, but in reference to the dog from the cartoon The Rugrats, called Spike in the original version (Hubert in French). It’s a curious start in life. The rest is quite original as well.
Elected in the first round of the 2020 municipal elections at the age of 19, this Franco-Dutchman with red mustaches in the shape of a bicycle handlebar then became the second youngest mayor of France. Without a label at the time, he has since joined the Republicans – this in order to appear on a right-wing list, which will fail in the regional elections. He has also just created a departmental support committee for Eric Zemmour. His idol. Between the announcement of the presidential candidacy of the far-right polemicist, Tuesday, November 30, and the meeting he will give in Villepinte, this Sunday, December 5, the young man is drinking whey at the moment.
The threat of guardianship
Originally from La Friesland, in the north of the Netherlands, Spike Groen was 8 years old when he arrived with his mother in Saint-Gilles, where his grandparents owned a country house. Ten years later, while he was preparing for a literary baccalaureate in Argenton-sur-Creuse, he put an end to his education to set up a business with a tourist vocation. Spike Groen is young, but he loves the old: he buys about sixty cars from the past, with the idea of renting them. The health crisis will derail his project.
His election as mayor of Saint-Gilles coincides with this period. The outgoing mayor, Daniel Laforêt, did not want to stand again. No candidate had declared himself and the threat of passing under the tutelage of the prefecture weighed on the town. “I had to do something”, brazenly explains the mayor, who continues to live with his mother, herself a city councilor. One of his first decisions? Attach a blue-white-red flag on the exterior gate of the town hall.
His rallying to Generation Z, the youth movement of Eric Zemmour, has somewhat surprised locally. Bas-Berry is not really known to be a land of insecurity. “There is no rodeo in Saint-Gilles”, confirms the chosen one. Immigrants, perhaps? “No, apart from us, the Dutch and the English, who bought houses. But it is different. We are not in a communitarian approach. “ Anguished by a hypothetical progression of political Islam, Spike Groen is not “Racist”, he insists again, and wants as proof the presence, in his family, of a black aunt resulting from the adoption, “Originating in the Dominican Republic”.
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