Saint-Raphaël (France) (AFP)

Installed in the South of France for three weeks, Emmanuel Macron participates Thursday at the ceremony of the 75th anniversary of the landing of Provence, Saint-Raphaël (Var), before a busy start on the diplomatic front next week.

The ceremony, which will take place in the presence of Guinean presidents Alpha Conde and Ivorian Alassane Ouattara and former President Nicolas Sarkozy, is scheduled to take place in the late morning at the national necropolis of Boulouris, where 464 fighters of the 1st French army .

For Emmanuel Macron, who has been very discreet since his arrival on June 25 at Fort Brégançon in the town of Bormes-les-Mimosas (Var), it will be the first official release since the beginning of his holidays, except for a short trip to Tunis to attend the national funeral of Tunisian President Béji Caïd Essebsi.

Holidays "studious", according to his entourage, which only leaked photos of some escapades made with his wife in the region, such as a visit on July 28 to the abbey of Thoronet or a dinner with his friends in a pizzeria Le Lavandou , among the other customers.

On Saturday, Macron is also scheduled to attend a more informal ceremony, celebrating the liberation of Bormes-les-Mimosas. This appointment, which he promised to visit each year, should allow him to spend a moment "friendly" with the inhabitants, according to the Elysee.

The President's holidays will end next week, with a diplomatic return, receiving Monday at Fort Brégançon Russian President Vladimir Putin. He will continue with his national re-entry on August 21st, the day of the Council of Ministers of return, before flying to Biarritz where he will welcome the leaders of the G7.

In recent hours, the head of state has focused on the speech he must make in the late morning at the national necropolis of Boulouris, which is home to 464 fighters of the 1st French army.

The ceremony also includes a speech by Alpha Condé, reading a text by David Diop, Goncourt prize of high school students 2018, and a veteran testimony by a high school student.

- Series of ceremonies -

If Mr. Macron invited all his predecessors to participate in the ceremony in this necropolis that was inaugurated 55 years ago, by Charles de Gaulle, only Nicolas Sarkozy must make the trip.

The two men had already posted side by side at the end of March, during a tribute to the Resistance Glières plateau in Haute-Savoie, three months after a lunch shared at the Elysee, in the middle of the crisis of "vests yellow. "

The commemoration of Thursday is part of the series of ceremonies related to the end of the two world conflicts that Emmanuel Macron has multiplied since the fall - the centenary of the end of the First World War in November, then the 75th anniversary of the Normandy landings in June.

In Saint-Raphaël, Mr. Macron will pay tribute to the 450,000 soldiers who participated in the Allied landing of August 15, 1944. The operation was conducted by US and French forces, parts of North Africa, Corsica and Italy. South.

Traditionally, this anniversary is an opportunity to salute the contribution of soldiers from the former French colonies to the Liberation. The troops included 260,000 fighters of the 1st French Army led by General de Lattre de Tassigny, composed mainly of soldiers from North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa.

At the 50th anniversary, 18 African countries were represented and for the 60th, fifteen heads of state of black Africa and the Maghreb were present, paying tribute in particular to the Senegalese and Algerian skirmishers, goumiers and tabors Moroccan, Blackfoot or porpoises from the Pacific and the West Indies who participated in Operation "Dragoon".

The military objective of this landing was to take the Germans by surprise and relieve the Normandy front where the landing had taken place ten weeks earlier. The operation was carried out in several times: at midnight, the first French soldiers of the African commandos had climbed the cliff of Cape Negro, near Bormes-les-Mimosas. Then at 08:00, three American infantry divisions landed at Saint-Raphael, as at Cavalaire, Ramatuelle and Sainte-Maxime.

© 2019 AFP