The gilets jaunes erupted exactly a year ago. To understand them, we need to see the movement in the context of 2015’s tumultuous events
The year 2015 was without doubt one of the worst in living memory in France. It began on 7 January with the massacre at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Two days later, four people were killed in an Islamist attack on a Jewish supermarket in Montrouge, just south of Paris. The year ended with mass slaughter on 13 November when Islamist gunmen and suicide bombers attacked the Bataclan concert hall, killing 130 people and injuring many more. By the end of 2015, France appeared to have slipped into a deep trauma that is not yet over.
Four years on, quiet commemorations of the 13 November attacks were held once again across Paris, led by the city’s mayor, Anne Hidalgo, and the interior minister, Christophe Castaner. But official ceremonies can never tell the real story of how people feel. Certainly, the atmosphere last week in my neighbourhood of Pernety, a mile or so from Montrouge, was muted.
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