As Patrice Burel scooped coffee at his roastery in Perpignan, he lamented the steady closure of other shops on this narrow city centre street. “They gradually disappeared like sugar dissolving in a cup of tea,” he said, blaming crime, traffic jams and competition from out-of-town shopping centres. “I long argued for the pedestrianisation of this street.”
Then in 2020 came political change. Perpignan, with a population of 121,000 and close to the Spanish border, became the biggest city to be run by Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) in 20 years. The historic city at the foot of the Pyrenees, which for decades has had some of the starkest inequality in France, is now a municipal laboratory for the far right. The new mayor, Louis Aliot, a lawyer who was formerly Le Pen’s romantic partner and is a party vice-president, picked up the pedestrianisation plan for Burel’s street, which began in 2022.
“I’m not interested in politics. It’s not about the party, it’s the man himself. He’s knows what’s happening in his town and he has listened to me,” said Burel, 72, who has run his coffee business for 30 years. “Once they are elected, you have to row in the same direction as the boat.”
As the RN attempts to gain a majority in the French parliament election runoff vote on Sunday, with Aliot keen to serve in government one day, Perpignan is being scrutinised for lessons that can be learned about the party when in power. Not everyone is reassured by what they see.
“They have tried to smooth over their image to win Perpignan but this party remains dangerous for France,” said Jean-Bernard Mathon, who ran against Aliot on a leftwing citizens’ list. “On the issue of nationality, and non-nationals, their political line is to push them out of France.”
In the run-up to the parliamentary election, the RN – formed by Jean-Marie Le Pen as the Front National and renamed in 2018 by his daughter – has stuck by manifesto pledges to limit immigration and scrap nationality rights for children born in France to foreign parents. It has pledged to bar dual nationals from certain state jobs, and vowed to clamp down on what it calls “Islamist ideologies”.
Aliot’s election in Perpignan, however, is a study in the far right’s drive to normalise itself in local politics. One-third of Perpignan residents live under the poverty line. The city is home to one of western Europe’s largest sedentary Gypsy communities, and it has above-average unemployment and pockets of poverty that contrast with chic, bourgeois neighbourhoods.
Aliot, who calls his mayoral role “an advanced observation post” from which to build national politics, is one of the chief architects of Marine Le Pen’s drive to detoxify the party’s image with one overarching goal: to get Le Pen elected as president in 2027.
Crucially in Perpignan, the left, right and centre used tactical voting to stop Aliot winning the town hall for many years. They are doing the same to try to counter the RN in national elections this weekend. But on Aliot’s third bid the tactical voting failed. “It shows there’s no more glass ceiling for the RN,” he told journalists. “The wall fell in Perpignan and it will fall elsewhere.” Just like the RN’s current campaign against an unpopular president in Emmanuel Macron, Aliot was running against an incumbent who was disliked, and voters said they wanted change.
In an echo of the far right across Europe, Aliot’s stated priorities in Perpignan are policing and “order”. Every move on these issues has been amplified with a massive communications drive by the mayor. Perpignan already had the second highest number of municipal police per resident of any city in France. Aliot hired more – there are now 192 – and opened municipal police stations with large, imposing signs. He has also promised cleaner streets in the city centre.
Michèle, a French teacher who has worked in local middle schools for 32 years, said: “There are more police, and when I go into the town centre it’s clean. But I don’t think much is really different about the town. People say there’s less fear of crime, but I always slept with my window open anyway.”
Félix Païno, 61, who runs a fruit import/export business at Perpignan’s big wholesale market and described himself as a centrist, said: “You do see more police, that is typically RN, but there’s no actual structural project for the town – it’s all about taking care of the visuals: what you can see.” He said the problem was that the wider department of Pyrénées-Orientales, the second poorest in France, was becoming less equal and more socially segregated.
David Giband, a geographer and professor in urban and land planning at the University of Perpignan, described Aliot’s approach as “cleanliness, security and TV” – a reference to his constant media presence. For the first year or so there was a deliberately low-key continuation of previous town hall policy, he said. “Then we saw things start to change; the first tensions appeared … Perpignan has a large sedentary Gypsy community and the first tensions emerged with that population.”
The historic St-Jacques area of medieval streets stretching up a hill from the city centre is home to France’s largest urban Gypsy neighbourhood, with between3,000 and 5,000 residents. It is one of the poorest neighbourhoods in France.
For years before Aliot was elected, a residents collective was raising concerns about plans to bulldoze and renovate dilapidated buildings, fearing that Gypsy families who had lived there for generations could be forced out. Since Aliot became mayor, partly after courting votes in the community, the demolition projects have continued and concerns have grown.
“All my life is here. Where would I go?” said Celia, 66, who grew up in a Gypsy family in St-Jacques and is now facing a compulsory house purchase by state authorities. “I would rather do work on my house than see it demolished.”
Kamel Belkebir, of the St-Jacques residents collective, grew up in the neighbourhood after his father, a crane operator, arrived from Algeria in the 1960s to work on building sites. He still lives here. “My concern is that locals will be pushed out for gentrification,” he said. He felt racism was being expressed more openly in French society, including in Perpignan. “People saying outright: ‘There are too many Arabs’. It’s unacceptable.”
Local associations have also felt a difference. Last year Fil à Métisser, an organisation that provided psychological support and health outreach to Gypsy families, particularly women and children, including during the Covid pandemic, closed after gradual cuts in funding from the RN-run town hall and wider state sources.
One Gypsy resident in her 40s said: “It’s a great loss and sadness. They helped a lot of people get up in the morning when they didn’t have anything to get up for. They helped people with depression and anxiety, children with phobia of school. They helped me when I had difficulties at my place of work.”
Marion Hullo, a psychologist who worked for the organisation, said: “It was as if we were feared as whistleblowers, making heard the voices of a vulnerable community and showing the systemic discrimination they faced.”
Sheeren Dufour, another psychologist on the team, said: “We can’t just pretend that people in poverty don’t exist and don’t need help.”
Salomon Cargol, who worked in municipal street cleaning, said he had voted for Aliot because he had believed his promises on better housing. “But I’m still waiting, I can’t see change,” he said.
Alain Gimenez, a community leader known as Nounours, expressed disappointment that more had not been done to support residents in St-Jacques. “We’re seen as French when there’s an election and our vote counts, but once it’s over we’re back to being seen as the Gypsy community.”
On cultural policy, the town hall has made changes, increasing festive displays on Bastille Day and Christmas. It has hosted events about the colonial presence in Algeria, which led critics to complain of nostalgia for French Algeria.
Aliot also decided to change the city’s municipal slogan from “Perpignan the Catalan” – Catalan heritage is strong here – to “Perpignan the Radiant”. A saint was added to the logo; the colours red, white and blue brought back a nationalist French dimension. About 300 people, led by Catalan associations, demonstrated in the streets.
“The word radiant has a kind of religious connotation,” said Ariadna, 20, a sociology student. “There are a lot of posters everywhere about town hall projects – populism is about reaching the greatest number of people, after all.”
