Wink. Playing with a txapela, the French president added his voice to that of a Pyrenean choir to sing an old Occitan song during his visit to the Tour in the Pyrenees
It is not every day that you see a French president wearing a txapela. It happened last Thursday during the visit that Emmanuel Macron made to the last stage of the Tour in the Pyrenees. Macron met with local authorities from the small town of Argelès Gazost, in the Hautes-Pyrénées department, while a pastoral choir of veteran male voices that intended to entertain him rehearsed some pieces from his repertoire. One of the vocalists approached him, gave him his beret and invited him to join the choir. The president hesitated, but he ended up putting on his txapela and joining the formation. A video that has spread through social networks shows him barely singing the song – it is obvious that he ignored the lyrics – between the complicit smiles and the sly winks of the components of the pastoral.
The song to which Macron joined, ‘Aqueras Montanhas’, is a kind of anthem of the territory where Occitan was spoken, which is also usually sung on this side of the Pyrenees. José Antonio Labordeta himself came to include it in his repertoire in its version in Aragonese.
The president’s gesture was praised by authorities and residents of Argelès-Gazost. The image of Macron, who is traditionally attacked by his rivals for his identification with the political and economic elites, is good for folksy attitudes like the one on Thursday. The veteran former deputy Jean Lasalle, well versed in the ins and outs of French politics, declared yesterday to the newspaper ‘Sud Ouest’, that there was “a certain political calculation” in the president’s wink, although he admitted that it was also a way of forgetting for a while “tortures” of the National Assembly. “Let’s say that he was carried away by the spirit of the Tour and also did not do so badly,” Lasalle summed up with a certain sarcasm.
children’s holidays
The Pyrenees are far from being unknown territory for Emmanuel Macron. The now president spent many of his childhood summers at his grandparents’ house in Bagnères de Bigorre, near Lourdes. In statements to local media, he told a few years ago that in the Pyrenean territory he felt “like the king of a natural paradise, it was a place that for me was synonymous with absolute happiness and in which I still have solid friendships that I made as a child” .
His grandfather’s brother was deputy mayor of Bagnères and president of the festival committee, so he participated in all the competitions that were held in summer. “I even won the trout fishing one,” the now president recalled wistfully.
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