Elected President of the Republic on May 16, 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy spoke about his private life in the second part of his Memoirs, entitled The time of battlesreleased by Fayard editions on Tuesday August 22, 2023 and whose Gala released a few snippets the same day. The former head of state retraced the day of the birth of his fourth child in 2011 and the choice of the first name of little Giulia, the second piece of cabbage from his mother Carla Bruni. “I met Giulia… From that day, my life, our life, that of the whole family was changed”, he explained in his autobiographical work. This momentum of happiness was however tarnished by Marine Le Pen, the daughter of Jean Marie Le Pen. “Never late for an attack, the leader of the National Font [aujourd’hui Rassemblement national] publicly regretted that our daughter did not have a ‘French first name rather than an Italian one…'”, regretted Nicolas Sarkozy. According to him, even the birth of his only daughter “was therefore to become a subject of controversy”.
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For Nicolas Sarkozy, former mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine, “reducing patriotism to a matter of first name was caricaturally reductive”. “It wasn’t kind or nice, but it was mostly pretty stupid”he wrote again in his Memoirs. The day of the birth of little Giulia, Nicolas Sarkozy was to fly to Germany, but he wanted his wife Carla Bruni, ex-model and singer of Italian origin, to be surrounded when she was going to give birth. “Carla had to be patient. I even asked the head of my medical team to stay put”he confided in his autobiographical book. A real surprise to welcome a little girl, because the couple never wanted to know the sex of the newborn before the day of delivery. “The only thing was that he was healthy”revealed Nicolas Sarkozy in The time of battles. After hearing the news, he immediately joined his little blended family in Paris. Even if the former head of state was already the father of Louis (26 years old), Jean (36 years old) and Pierre (37 years old), he experienced this birth as if it were the first he was attending: “After three boys, a girl! I couldn’t imagine greater happiness”he assured his readers.