Avignon (AFP)
Vikings, knights, pirates or serfs: some 400 people, enthusiasts or professionals of historical reenactments, marched on Saturday in the streets of Avignon to alert on the difficulties encountered by the sector because of health constraints due to Covid-19.
"Let's go kick the English variant out of France", "Sire! We have a lot!", "Witches, I'm supposed to die at the stake, not starve", "Living history is us, don't do not let us die of hunger "," Culture is not limited to the opera ": on their placards, the demonstrators displayed their dismay and their concerns in the streets of downtown Avignon, noted journalists from AFP.
"Many associations are breaking down, people who lived thanks to these events are dying, we cannot accept that. In the historical reenactment, we never do a demonstration like that but there we launch a cry of distress, "Patrick Duval, municipal councilor of Morières-lès-Avignon and organizer of the medieval Rose d'Or festival, told AFP.
"They are all in agony, they are dying. The troops are in the process of dissolving completely because they can no longer offer their members outings or parties, the small artisans who follow us on all our medieval festivals, in all the markets are literally in agony, they are closing one after the other and things are going very badly because they no longer have the right to anything, the intermittents of the show have been promised a white year but there are a lot that do not fit in the boxes, "he lamented.
"Today it's been over a year since we can no longer practice our profession, we can no longer live (...) it is important that we are all here today, and that we make ourselves heard, that our governments, that our government finally understands that there it is killing us slowly, ”said Isabelle Corci, director of a company of falconers in Alès.
Arrived in front of the Palais des Papes after parading through the historic city center, the demonstrators all stretched out on the ground to fake their deaths, AFP journalists noted.
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