In the heart of the historic district of Old Lyon, several hundred residents, most of them elderly, elected officials of all stripes, personalities, representatives of the economic and sporting worlds said goodbye on Wednesday 29 November to the former mayor of the capital of the Gauls, who later became Minister of the Interior in the first Macron government, Gérard Collomb.

The coffin, draped in the French flag, was solemnly carried around 11 a.m. into the primatial, where two-thirds of the 1,400 seats had been reserved for the people of Lyon. A request made by Gérard Collomb himself before his death on Saturday at the age of 76.

"Mayor builder, you have transformed Lyon from the status of a sleeping beauty to a sublime awakened," said President Emmanuel Macron in the company of his wife Brigitte Macron, before praising the brief stint of this early supporter, his analytical spirit and his "frankness".

"You have also changed the lives of the French" and "you, dear Gérard, have changed my life," he added, stressing that he had been among the first "to believe in the emergence of a central bloc" and to rally the En Marche movement for a "fantastic epic".

At the foot of the forecourt, a small crowd followed the ceremony live on a giant screen. "He talked a lot with people, he wasn't someone who ran away," recalls Gisèle Fond, 63, a retired national education worker, moved to tears, referring to this mayor who was "humane for working-class neighborhoods."

'Outspoken'

Born on 20 June 1947 in Chalon-sur-Saône (Saône-et-Loire) to a metalworker father and a cleaning lady mother, this socialist activist was mayor of Lyon from 2001 to 2017, then from 2018 to 2020, after a brief stint at Place Beauvau in the government of Édouard Philippe.

The coffin of former Lyon mayor and former interior minister Gérard Collomb is carried as it arrives in the courtyard of Lyon's City Hall, on November 27, 2023 © OLIVIER CHASSIGNOLE / AFP

"I admired, even if I sometimes paid the price, for his ability to methodically and relentlessly re-examine everything that seemed to him to deserve further examination," the former prime minister said at the ceremony, praising his "genuine sincerity" and "outspokenness".

On the cathedral's benches, politicians of all stripes: former Socialist President François Hollande, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne and several ministers, including Bruno Le Maire and Gérald Darmanin, the president of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region Laurent Wauquiez (LR) or the ecologist mayor of Lyon Grégory Doucet. Former Olympique Lyonnais boss Jean-Michel Aulas, comedian Laurent Gerra and basketball player Tony Parker also attended the celebration presided over by the Archbishop of Lyon, Olivier de Germay.

In a very literary tribute to this former professor of classics, the academician Marc Lambron described Gérard Collomb as "the soul of this city because he had become a city man in his own image".

"He could be conversational or sharp, friendly or consular, practicing politics as an imperious, sentimental and sometimes betrayed tactician," he said. He was also a "man of pact and flavour", a "builder" who had "the intrepidity of a modern and the wisdom of an aedile of old".

Gérard Collomb will be buried in the Loyasse cemetery, close to his predecessor at the town hall, Edouard Herriot, for whom he had a deep admiration.

"Hubris"

On Monday and Tuesday, the people of Lyon had marched in front of his coffin on display at the town hall, where the flags had been flown at half-mast.

Elected, after two unsuccessful attempts, at the head of Lyon in 2001 with the support of Raymond Barre, he left his office at the town hall in 2017 to join the Place Beauvau, where he notably passed a controversial law on security and one on immigration.

Celebrities and anonymous people attend the funeral of Gérard Collomb, at the Saint-Jean cathedral in Lyon, on November 29, 2023 © Olivier CHASSIGNOLE / AFP

Then he left the government with a bang in October 2018, after pointing out the executive's lack of humility. "Hubris is the curse of the gods. When, at some point, you become too sure of yourself," he said.

Deprived of the nomination of the Republic on the Move, he failed to reconquer the metropolis in 2020, beaten by the Greens despite rallying to the Republican camp. He had disappeared from the local political scene since he himself announced his cancer on social media on September 16, 2022.

With AFP

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