Boycott threats got the better of Les Déferlantes festival’s desire to move. Friday January 6, La Frontera Production, the company which manages the event scheduled for July 6 to 9, 2023, had aroused a lot of reactions by announcing that the next edition would not take place in Céret (Pyrénées-Orientales) but in Perpignan, the city led by Louis Aliot (National Rally, RN).
First to react, the Indochine group estimated, on Saturday January 7, to have “been presented with a fait accompli”. “Last night the RN mayor of Perpignan tweeted that he was happy to host the festival. We expressly ask the management of Les Déferlantes to move this festival to another location, otherwise we will cancel our visit.” asserted the artists. The president of the RN, Jordan Bardella, reacted to these remarks by denouncing “a discriminatory and shameful attitude”.
Tuesday, January 10, it was Louise Attaque who announced on social networks her intention not to participate in the event, which brought together 100,000 festival-goers in 2022. “It’s a festival that we love, but moved without our having been consulted (…). In the current state of things and in this specific context, we do not wish to participate in this event., a explained the group led by Gaëtan Roussel.
The festival team had initially “take note of the position of the Indochine group to condition, for political questions, their coming to Les Déferlantes” and indicated to organize “a non-politicized festival, whose sole purpose is to celebrate and share around an eclectic, intergenerational and quality musical program”. But, Tuesday in the middle of the afternoon, an about-face. In a press release, she announced “take into account all of these reactions”. “We are therefore forced to give up this location and we are now looking for a place so that the festival can be held in the Pyrénées-Orientales on the dates planned”, organizers said.
The announcement of the move to Perpignan surprised everyone on Friday. Starting with the Occitanie region, partner of the festival, and its socialist vice-president, Agnès Langevine. “It is a hostage taking of the funders and the groupsestimated the chosen one. No one was aware, we even attended a meeting of partners last week without any allusion to this move being made. » The region led by Carole Delga, who has made her fight against the ideas of the RN her hobbyhorse and whose relations with Mr. Aliot are execrable, had then announced, Monday, January 9, to revise its subsidies downwards. With a height of 250,000 euros, these however represented only a drop of water of the overall budget of the festival, of 10 million euros.
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