French Letter: Bretons look to the future with a healthy scepticism

It’s funny how things go. A couple of months back, Callac and its surrounds were convulsed by the Great Replacement debate. A billionaire-funded foundation in Paris had been persuaded by the mayor and his council to pay for the renovation of a disused school building to house and train immigrant workers. The idea was that the trainees and their families would then settle in the area, bringing new skills and dynamism to a tired rural economy. 

But that’s not what happened. After a series of demonstrations by supporters of the scheme, mainly from out-of-town, and protest rallies by opponents, mostly local, the mayor quietly backed off. What had been billed as a transformative initiative, closely followed in the national, and even international, press, simply dropped out of the headlines, allowing Callac to revert to its previous existence as an agreeable provincial backwater. 

There were no waves, no celebrations, no angry acknowledgement of what had occurred.  In the local press, the story was quickly relegated to the French equivalent of Private Eye’s Page 94. 

Today, what passes for news in the commune concerns the coming sécheresse, or drought, that we are assured will be as bad as last year’s, when summer temperatures exceeded 40 degrees celsius (105 degrees fahrenheit) on at least half a dozen occasions and it barely rained – in Brittany! – for four long months. 

According to recent research, France’s aquifers are drying up. Ground water has almost disappeared in some places. Recent rain has done little to redress the situation. What the country really needs is rain, rain and more rain for the next three months, and of that there is apparently little sign. 

In Brittany which, like all Celtic outcrops (including Galicia in Spain) is practically defined by how wet it is, things look normal at the moment. The fields are green, the grass is shooting up and the sky much of the time is a hazy gray. It has rained intermittently  for the last two weeks – not heavily, but sufficient to keep rivers in what looks like full flow. I suspect we will get through whatever lies ahead with the least disruption and inconvenience. 

The source, or well, at the top of our garden, which dried up completely last summer, is just about restored, and the spill from tractors and ploughs along the roads is dark and sodden, making washing the car a fanciful occupation. But, if we are to listen to the experts, what lies beneath is well short of what is required. When the rain stops, as it apparently will next month, there may be very little more all the way through until the autumn, meaning that harvests will once more be reduced, cattle will have to be watered from tankers and the trees will start shedding their leaves in August. 

The good news is that Brittany, once sufficiently heated, will by 2070 or thereabouts be perfect for viticulture, unlike the Languedoc and Provence, where new varieties will have to be introduced if the grapes are not, literally, to wither on the vine. The Midi, it seems, is fated to become more like Andalusia, which in its turn will come to resemble North Africa. House prices in Callac will soar and the ravishing Breton coastline – already popular with tourists, especially Parisians – will end up as the new Riviera. 

It is safe to say that I will not be around to witness the later phases of this transformation. But I may well get a glimpse of the future in July and August, including, perhaps, the arrival of “Tiger” mosquitos as they make their way steadily north from what was the Sunbelt. In anticipation of the worst, I plan to lay in fresh supplies of sunblock and insect repellent. 

So are the locals talking about this? Are they concerned – alarmed, even? Not from what I overhear in the bars and cafés. They are hoping for a good summer, with lots of sunshine and blue skies, so that they can tend their gardens more and relax at outside tables in the bars and cafés. Bretons are used to the rain and cold. That doesn’t mean they like it. If things warm up a little in the years ahead, they will be pleased. That said, they don’t really believe what they read – especially if it is written by “experts” in Paris. 

Viewed from central Brittany, everything that isn’t local is far away and of only passing interest. And that includes the strikes and street protests that have threatened to bring France to a standstill. The great retirement debate has had little traction in Callac, where the average age of the citizenry is nudging 70 and even those who are younger remain to be convinced that laws passed in Paris will have much impact on them. Those in their fifties still expect to retire at 59. Those who are younger will look to the parties of Left and Right to make sure that any changes coming down the pike are stripped back so that the consequences are minimal in their effect. 

In some ways, Brittany is like the Old South in America. The only difference is the climate, and that, too, is about to change. 

Or so they say. 

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