A family of four who have lived through years of sometimes violent protests at the site of a controversial airport in western France say they have no plans to move, despite a court ruling that could see them evicted within a month.
Bailiffs arrived at the home of Virginie Olmos and Sebastien Martin on Wednesday morning with a check for 18,000 euros (US$20,000) in compensation for their moving expenses.
However, the couple did not accept the money.
“We refused to take it. They must be joking,” Virginie Olmos said. “Everything’s happened so quickly. They say we have 30 days to leave, but we’re staying.”
If they refuse, the airport developers, who own the house they rent, would have the right to begin formal expulsion proceedings.
The house stands on a 1,650-hectare site of protected swampland called Notre-Dame Des Landes, just outside the western city of Nantes, where developers want to build an airport they say will provide a major boost to tourism in western France.
Approved in 2008, the 580 million euros (US$747 million) project was due to start last year, but construction has been repeatedly delayed due to fierce opposition by environmental protesters.
The airport developers call the area the “zone d’amenagement differe” — a technical term meaning the site has been earmarked for construction.
However, a resolute group of anti-airport protesters who have occupied the area have dubbed it the “zone a defendre” (ZAD), or “zone to defend.”
Today, everyone in the area simply refers to the site as the ZAD.
Olmos and her family moved into the house in 2000 after her father, the local postman, came across the property while on his rounds. When the couple signed their tenancy agreement, they say plans to build the airport were on stand-by and they did not expect the situation to change.
Their second son, now 12, was born in what Olmos refers to as her “magic house.”
The house, which covers 150m2, looks like something out of a fairy tale. With a small turret on one corner, it stands in the middle of a hectare of land filled with birds and animals, including emus, parrots, a baboon, goats, ducks and geese.
For more than a decade, life in their woodland hideaway was calm. However, that came to an abrupt end in November 2012 when a series of violent clashes between French riot police and environmentalists protesting against the airport exploded right outside her door.
From that point, the family was “stuck behind the barricades” set up by the protesters.
There were no more school buses and rubbish collection services were halted. They were forced to do everything on foot, walking through the woods and fields to reach the nearest shops, which are almost a kilometer away. It took some time, but eventually they learned to live alongside the protesters and today have a good relationship with the so-called “ZADists.”
A community of environmentalists who promote alternative models of economic development, the protesters have built a network of tree houses, cabins, and collective farms across the site where the future airport is slated to be build.
“They taught us to be more self-sufficient and to have a better relationship with nature, but everything will stop if the airport is built,” Olmos said.
Pointing to the surrounding trees and fields, she says the area is earmarked for a huge car park.
Martin says he still cannot believe that the developers resumed the eviction procedures that had been suspended for three years on the orders of French President Francois Hollande, while the appeals were being held.
The respite came to an end after a court in July rejected all the protesters’ objections to the airport.
“Unless we find another house, we’re not leaving,” Martin said.
And so far they’ve seen nothing, they said.
“We’ve visited five or six houses, but we’ve never found anything equivalent to here, with land for the animals,” he said.
Olmos works as a hairdresser and Martin as a self-employed builder, and the couple say they do not earn enough to be able to buy a new house, even though the developers have not charged them rent on their current home for the past three years.
So, for the time being, they are going nowhere.
“When the police come back to try and move us out, I’m sure there’ll be a lot of people here to help us,” Olmos said.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
The death toll from a shooting in western Afghanistan rose to 11 on Saturday, after gunmen targeted civilians at a picnic spot in Herat, the provincial authority said. Bullet marks were visible on a wall of the Sayed Mohammad Agha Shia shrine, while bloodstains marked a blanket abandoned at the scene. “Eleven people have been recorded dead and eight others wounded from Friday’s incident, with the condition of two of the wounded reported as critical,” Herat’s information office said in a statement. The update raises a toll of seven killed provided on Friday by the Afghan Ministry of Interior Affairs
RSS