When the Corsican nationalist Yvan Colonna, convicted of murder, was killed in a French prison in 2022, riots broke out in Corsica. Colonna’s fate became a turning point for the island: suddenly the French government was willing to talk about autonomy. And now there is an agreement.
Andréa, a regular at the village café in Cargèse on the south coast of Corsica, resolutely slams the newspaper shut. He can no longer bear to look at the large head staring at him from the page – dark gaze, shaved head, pointed beard. ‘That damn head’ belongs to Franck Elong Abé, a convicted jihadist who strangled fellow prisoner Yvan Colonna in the gym of the prison in Arles two years ago.
Colonna was a friend of Andréa, who incidentally does not want his real name in the newspaper. Colonna’s name and image are emblazoned all over the island on walls, viaducts and crash barriers, always with the same phrase: ‘Gloria à tè Yvan’, Corsican for ‘Glory to you Yvan’. Sometimes a lit bomb is drawn next to it.
The goat herder from Cargèse was once the most wanted man in France. Since 2003, Colonna had been serving a life sentence for the murder of prefect Claude Érignac, the highest representative of the French state in Corsica. Until he himself was murdered in March 2022. His death led to weeks of riots on the island. How was it possible that this man, who was held under a high-security regime with permanent video surveillance, was strangled and suffocated for minutes by a fellow prisoner with a plastic bag over his head, until he fell into a coma and eventually died?
Exactly two years after his death, a shocking suggestion graces the front page of the daily newspaper Corse Matin. Colonna’s murder was ordered by agents of the French internal security service. At least, that is what the suspect claims in a new statement seen by the newspaper. The news hardly seems to surprise Andréa. “Nobody could believe that Colonna’s death was a coincidence,” he says on a terrace in Cargèse. “The French state wanted to settle accounts with him.”
Colonna’s fate marked a turning point in Corsica’s recent history. After the prison attack and his subsequent death, Corsica was gripped by violent confrontations for seven weeks. In Bastia, the island’s second city, the security forces were bombarded with 650 Molotov cocktails and homemade bombs in one day alone. The lack of protection from the prison guards had opened an old wound: the eternal feeling of injustice and contempt by the French state.
Only ten years ago, the violent independence struggle that had gripped Corsica since the 1970s came to an end. In the summer of 2014, the militant movement FLNC (Front de Libération Nationale de la Corse) decided to lay down its arms and continue the struggle politically. When nationalist violence flared up again around Colonna’s death, the island held its breath. Was Corsica returning to that dark period of bombings and political settling of scores?
In the turmoil, President Emmanuel Macron decided to break an old taboo on the mainland: he opened the way to negotiations on autonomy for Corsica. It was a demand that moderate nationalists had been fighting for in vain for half a century. Months of negotiations between the French government and Corsican representatives followed. The result: last week, the Corsican parliament voted in favor of the text that should give the island autonomous status within the republic, as laid down in the constitution.
Despite the agreement that should enshrine Corsica’s autonomous status in the French constitution, the violence has not yet subsided. The FLNC independence fighters do not consider the stakes high enough and the movement has repeatedly threatened to resume armed struggle. In recent months, dozens of bomb attacks have been carried out on holiday homes owned by French people who do not live on the island, many of which were claimed by the FLNC. The second home of Justice Minister Éric Dupont-Moretti was also attacked by nationalist demonstrators. Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin has repeatedly suspended his visits to Corsica for fear of security.
These targets were not chosen at random. Almost a third of the homes on Corsica belong to non-islanders, often French people from the mainland with a second home. Moreover, the population has grown by more than 20,000 people in five years, mainly due to the arrival of French people from the mainland who have settled in Corsica – colonisation, in the eyes of the FLNC. As a result, it has become difficult for many islanders, including those from the middle class, to find affordable housing. According to the French statistics office Insee, almost 20 percent of the Corsican population also lives below the poverty line.
“A flare-up of violence?” On the terrace in Cargèse, Andréa shrugs his shoulders about the recent bomb attacks. “Mind you: it is only material damage, there are no fatalities.” A warning to the people who only buy a house here to earn money on Airbnb, while they are taking the soul out of a village and driving up prices. “They do nothing for the community, and community is important here.”
This nonchalant attitude about the violenceechoes throughout the island. There is understanding for the actions, as long as Corsica is not given the opportunity to look after the interests of the population itself. Moreover, today’s bombs are a world away from the armed struggle of the past. The real violence that is feared here is that of the French state, with Yvan Colonna as its main symbol.
