In Paris, most non-essential businesses and café terrasses reopened in mid-May and you can now eat, drink or shop wherever you like. People are no longer required to wear masks in outdoor spaces and the 11pm curfew enforced across France has ended. Tourism is yet to return, but as you stroll through the city, weaving between overcrowded cafés and restaurants on the rue l’Échiquier in the north of the city, a sense of ease has returned. And yet, one of the biggest media stories in France over recent months has been the prospect of a civil war.
In April, the right-wing magazine Valeurs Actuelles published an open letter from military generals addressed to French president Emmanuel Macron. In the “lettre des généraux”, 20 retired generals and more than 1,000 French soldiers condemned what they saw as an attack on French values, emanating everywhere from Islamism to “the hordes from the banlieues [suburbs]”.
Content from our partners
