REPORTAGE
Must we name a street, a boulevard, a place of Paris, after the name of Jacques Chirac? The subject should be raised this Tuesday during the Paris Council which will be dedicated to the former president, who was also mayor of the capital. The day after the homage paid to the former president, who died on Thursday, September 26, the Parisians are wondering about the place to be granted in the city.
"Is there still a place or a street in Paris to offer a personality as flamboyant as Jacques Chirac?" Asks a Parisian at the microphone of Europe 1. The answer is almost unanimous. The favorite place? City Hall. "Chirac is very much linked to the city hall, it is here that he has made his weapons, he has made himself known to Parisians, French and the world," says another inhabitant of the capital. pyramid of the Louvre was very tied to Mitterrand, Beaubourg to Pompidou, then the town hall could be associated with Jacques Chirac ".
An accelerated instruction
But that could be complex. Difficult, indeed, to change the name of the square currently known as "Esplanade of Liberation". This is where Charles De Gaulle pronounced in August 1944 his famous speech "Paris martyred, Paris released". This name is too heavily symbolically to be changed, says the town hall, which rather evokes Avenue Victoria in the same neighborhood, or Quai Branly. One certainty: the city wants to go fast. "Traditionally, we wait five years, but there, given the imminent character and personality of Jacques Chirac, it is likely that the process will be accelerated, says the first Deputy Emmanuel Grégoire at the microphone of Europe 1. It is already happened in the history that the instruction is accelerated, for Simone Veil, for example ".
The place of Europe has thus become Europe-Simone Veil's place, eleven months after his death. For the former president, a place could be unveiled in a few weeks.