Is Corsica the Next Catalonia? Nationalists Are Poised for Election Win
ITALY Corte Corsica SPAIN Balearic Islands Sardinia Mediterranean Sea DEC. 1, 2017
"We’ve forgotten nothing about taking our country out of the night into which France has plunged us!" the nationalist leader Jean-Guy Talamoni threatened on Wednesday to the fervent
and youthful crowd in this university town, high up in the vertiginous Corsican mountains.
ITALY Corte Corsica SPAIN Barcelona Balearic Islands Sardinia 300 Miles Sicily Mediterranean Sea 300 Miles Paris GERMANY FRANCE SWITZ.
Mr. Talamoni, president of the Corsican assembly, believes independence is the restive Mediterranean island’s destiny
and speaks proudly of going to Barcelona "a few times a year." France appears not to be listening.
Mr. Talamoni said that but they won’t vote for independe
Yet Sunday’s first round of elections to the territorial assembly in Corsica is
predicted to be a crowning moment for over 40 years of Corsican nationalism.
In that time, the nationalist movement has passed through all the classic stages: anti-government violence, the political consolidation of "autonomists"
and "independantists," and now likely electoral victory for the combined "Pé a Corsica" (For Corsica) list of nationalists in a newly created, more powerful assembly.
Even Marine Le Pen’s National Front — she took Corsica in the first round of presidential voting last spring — struggles to attract sympathizers.
