ZAD, area to defend. An acronym associated with Notre-Dame-des-Landes, a village of 2,000 inhabitants in the west of France, theater for ten years of an ecological and societal struggle unprecedented since the 1970s. At the heart of the battle: the project to build an airport in the Nantes region, known as the Grand Ouest, initially designed in 1963, then put to sleep before being relaunched in 2000.
The site first meets the opposition of inhabitants and farmers of the region, then of environmentalists, who want to preserve a wetland threatened by the project. Activists soon flocked to this ZAD from all sides, which also became a place of life and social experimentation. Farms are redeveloped, houses squatted, huts built. A libertarian and anti-capitalist mini-society is organized.
From 2010, when the first works are supposed to have started, clashes with the police increased. But the Zadists held the ground, their community emerged stronger, and Notre-Dame-des-Landes became a symbol of resistance. The showdown with the State will end with the abandonment of the project, on January 17, 2018.
Two years later, a good part of the Zadists is still present in Notre-Dame-des-Landes. Since the land was returned to the department, they have agreed - often reluctantly - to sign precarious occupancy agreements, then leases, the only way for them to preserve the space taken from the airport project in the long term. This somewhat forced legalization leaves a bitter taste among some former Zadists, who are trying to save the foundations of a microsociety based on libertarian, ecological and anti-capitalist principles. For them, Notre-Dame-des-Landes must remain a place of unconditional reception and absolute freedom.
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