Europe 1 with AFP // Photo credit: Idriss Bigou-Gilles / Hans Lucas / Hans Lucas via AFP 3:45 p.m., March 16, 2024

Several thousand demonstrators marched this Saturday around Lake Villeneuve-de-la-Raho, in the Pyrénées-Orientales, shouting “No to golf!”

or “Stop the urbanization of agricultural land”.

A rally to show their opposition to a golf project, the earthworks of which have begun nearby. 

Several thousand people - 4,500 according to the organizers, 1,500 according to the gendarmerie - marched on Saturday around the Villeneuve-de-la-Raho lake, in the Pyrénées-Orientales, to oppose a golf project for which earthworks have begun nearby, AFP noted.

“The Minister of Ecological Transition will signal the end of the project”

Environmental activists or left-wing parties (PC, PS, NPA), departmental or regional elected officials were part of the procession which joined, in a festive and uneventful atmosphere, the town hall of the town, in favor of this contested golf project of 18 holes and 600 housing units, for around thirty hectares of buildings while the department has been facing chronic drought for many months.

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“With today’s strong mobilization, the Minister of Ecological Transition will signal the end of the project,” said, amid banners “No to golf!”

or “Stop the urbanization of agricultural land”, Me Mathieu Pons-Serradeil, a lawyer who filed two appeals for two associations “Pays catalan ecologie” and “Agissons66”.

“Two months before the European elections, it would be a strong gesture taking into account the concerns of the department in the face of this interminable drought, he said, adding: “it would mark its concern with something concrete: ‘I am saving you the equivalent of the consumption of a town of 10,000 inhabitants to water a green.

In addition to the town hall, the project is supported by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Medef 66, as well as departmental representatives of the Building and Real Estate federations.

The Pyrénées-Orientales, which for two years have had the "rainfall of Jordan", according to the president of the local chamber of agriculture, are subject to a prefectural decree, extended from month to month, which strongly restricts the uses of the water.