Montargis each day, city of “middle France”, neither wealthy nor poor, neither rural nor city | EUROtoday

“Hello, my name is Quentin, I am from Montargis. » This cult line from the film Shut up ! (2003), by Francis Veber − far from being his best −, is the only mention we know of Montargis (Loiret) in popular culture. Gérard Depardieu, who plays Quentin in the film, a simple-minded man exasperating with kindness and stupidity, repeats it over and over again in a stupid tone. We were careful not to mention it during our reporting. Rather, it was Montargois, endowed with a great sense of self-deprecation, who reminded us of it. “In Montargis, there is always something happening. When it’s not Quentin, it’s the “yellow vests” or the riots of 2023. And when nothing occurs, there are the floods of the Loing. That’s why The World selected to research right here? »surmised a resident perplexed by our curiosity in his metropolis.

After a brief second of incomprehension linked to current information – the demise of Quentin Deranque, in Lyon, on February 14 – we wished to reassure him. The sequence of articles that The World is about to publish on Montargis (don’t pronounce the “s”) owes nothing to Quentin de Shut up ! nor to the floods of the Loing. It could be a lie, however, to say that the “yellow vests” and the riots of 2023 don’t have anything to do with it.

As a reminder, a number of hundred “yellow vests” occupied the strategic “peanut” roundabout (due to its elongated form) within the south of the town in 2018-2019 and even in 2020. At the peak of the mobilization, the fluorescent chasubles of Montargis – at the very least a few of them – blocked native notion. This led to some authorized convictions, notably from the person who offered himself as their native spokesperson and who’s now a candidate for mayor of Montargis underneath the RN label, Côme Dunis (however we are going to come again to that in a future episode). Covid-19 and the cruel police repression of Parisian gatherings put an finish to this motion which left behind a variety of bitterness and swallowed hopes.

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