Yellow vests: these “war scenes” that marked Puy-en-Velay

How can we imagine that, three years earlier, what several witnesses described as “scenes of war” took place on this same square? “Fort Alamo”, according to one, “a scene worthy of the Middle Ages”, according to another. How? ‘Or’ What…

How can we imagine that, three years earlier, what several witnesses described as “scenes of war” took place on this same square? “Fort Alamo”, according to one, “a scene worthy of the Middle Ages”, according to another. How to reconstruct the image of this peaceful prefecture on fire? The ramming attacks against the grid? Throwing Molotov cocktails and cobblestones weighing up to ten kilos? And all this noise, these cries, these howls of fairly drunk attackers transformed into “wild beasts”, these fire alarms ringing from all sides? How to see the frightened faces of the besieged police, the incomprehension of the firefighters who are prevented from passing, the bewildered amazement of the staff members to whom familiar faces but disfigured by hatred launch: “you are going to roast like chickens”?

Because here, and this is what adds to the drama, everyone knows each other. A gendarme recognized this man who shouted: “we are going to make you all die”; he is the father of a friend of his son. “We are a big village, everyone meets when they leave school or at the supermarket”, says this journalist who admits “never, in thirty years of work, having been whipped as much as that afternoon. “. It must be said that a nurse, an FO delegate, had spotted him filming and called on the crowd to lynch him…

Here, everyone knows each other. A gendarme recognized this man who shouts: “We are going to make you all die! He is the father of a friend of his son

Yes, how to believe that the French Republic, this 1^er December 2018, shook, soiled here by the desecration of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris (2.2 million inhabitants) and there by the burning of a prefecture in Puy-en-Velay (19,000 inhabitants) ?

From the top of the old town which dominates the square, the huge metal statue of a Virgin and Child seems to watch over the town. From the cathedral starts one of the main routes to Compostela; quite the opposite of a revolutionary home. Here, everyone would prefer to forget the violence of December 2018. Either to overcome the trauma – at the prefecture, work stoppages are still numerous, three years later – or to bury a heavy feeling of guilt.

Mayor’s Annoyance

Here is precisely the mayor of Le Puy, Michel Chapuis, who leaves the prefecture. This close friend of Laurent Wauquiez, whom he succeeded in 2014, had ostensibly invited yellow vests to have a coffee on November 17, the first Saturday of demonstrations, not on the town hall square, but in full view opposite the prefecture, as a mark of defiance to the state. He doesn’t like being reminded. “How long ago was that?” “, he quips before recognizing “a painful memory, which we only aspire to get out of”. “We are not going to define the city by this event, he gets annoyed. That’s not Le Puy, it’s quite the opposite. And everyone proclaimed it in unison, from the taxi driver to the shopkeepers (who suffered a lot): “That’s not Le Puy! »

However, if a few agitators were seen at the start of this fateful afternoon, there were not many of them and they quickly left. The demonstrators, violent or not, were almost all yellow vests from the city or the department, farmers, craftsmen, employees as there were so many on the roundabouts. So how did we get here?

We must put ourselves in the context of a slightly speckled foil duel between the prefect of the time, Yves Rousset and Laurent Wauquiez

In this moderate land where the centrist Jacques Barrot reigned for a long time, it is necessary to understand the context of a slightly speckled foil duel between the prefect of the time, Yves Rousset and the essential political figure of Puy, Haute-Loire and the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region over which he presides, Laurent Wauquiez. And a remote fight between the same Wauquiez, then president of LR, and Emmanuel Macron. On both sides, the trial continues today.

“The one who stoked the fire was the former prefect”, accuses the president of the agglomeration Michel Joubert, another close friend of Wauquiez, who recognizes: “when the movement started, the local elected officials approved. “In question: the proliferation of radars, against a backdrop of a speed limit of 80 km/h. “Here, there is a great dependence on the car”, explains Christophe Darne, the young editor-in-chief of “L’Éveil de la Haute-Loire”. “The prefect implemented a very repressive policy, the fines fell in large numbers, he was zealous and it did not pass. »

The shadow of speed cameras and 80 km/h

Now retired, Yves Rousset assumes: “It’s true that I went there hard and that I had asked the Ministry of the Interior to install more radars. But at the end of 2018, he defends himself, there were twice as many deaths on the roads as the previous year, including a large number of young people. »

Very quickly, political ulterior motives take over. “We had a prefect who was a fayot. He was there to piss off Wauquiez”, accuses Michel Joubert bluntly. Yves Rousset for his part evokes this yellow vest donned by the former mayor, on November 24, facing the prefecture. “For weeks, Wauquiez kept attacking the state and its representative,” he recalls. The prefect did not digest this lack of reaction when his prefecture was burning: “he was 300 meters away, in his permanence. And the next day on TF1, he didn’t have a word about what happened in Le Puy, not a word about the injured police and gendarmes. »