Around one-and-three-quarter million people
visit
Corsica each year, drawn by a climate
that's mild even in winter and by some of
the most astonishingly diverse landscapes in
Europe. Nowhere in the Mediterranean are
there beaches finer than Corsica's perfect
half-moon bays of white sand and transparent
water, or seascapes more inspiring than the
granite cliffs of the west coast. Even
though the annual influx of tourists now
exceeds the island's population sevenfold,
tourism has not spoilt the place: there are
a few resorts, but overdevelopment is rare
and high-rise blocks are confined to the
main towns.
Set on the western Mediterranean trade
routes, the island has always been of
strategic and commercial appeal. Greeks,
Carthaginians and Romans came in successive
waves, driving native Corsicans into the
interior. The Romans were ousted by Vandals,
and for the following thirteen centuries the
island was attacked, abandoned, settled and
sold as a nation-state, with generations of
islanders fighting against foreign
government. Two hundred years of French rule
have had a limited effect on Corsica, and
the island's Baroque churches, Genoese
fortresses, fervent Catholic rituals and a
Tuscan-influenced indigenous language and
cuisine show a more profound affinity with
neighbouring Italy.
Corsica's uneasy relationship with its
motherland has worsened in recent decades.
Economic neglect and the French government's
reluctance to encourage Corsican language
and culture spawned a nationalist movement
in the early 1970s, whose clandestine armed
wings are still engaged in a bloody conflict
with the central government. The violence
seldom affects tourists but signs of the
"troubles" are everywhere, from
the black "Corsica Nazione"
graffiti sprayed over roadsigns, to the
bullet holes plastering public buildings.
The late 1990s also saw a marked upsurge
in political assassinations, most of them
episodes in long-standing vendetta-style
feuds between rival separatist factions and
their Mafia partners. Attempts by Alain Juppé's
Gaullist government to diffuse the crisis
became embroiled in controversy when the
prime minister himself was accused of
conducting secret negotiations with the
nationalist paramilitaries, while outwardly
insisting he "never talked to
terrorists". Lionel Jospin's socialist
government has fared little better. It kept
alive an eight-month ceasefire, but this
ended violently in February 1998 when the
island's popular prefect (the de facto
governor of Corsica) was shot dead on the
streets of Ajaccio. Although none of the
mutually loathing terrorist groups admitted
responsibility, the killing provoked
widespread public outrage and a definite
erosion of support for the armed struggle.
The French government, however, was
unable maintain this public sympathy after
the replacement prefect, Bernard Bonnet, was
implicated in a scandal known as " l'affaire
de la paillote " ("the shack
affair"). Acting under his direct
orders, a team of police commandos was
caught red-handed burning down a restaurant
illegally erected on a beach near Ajaccio.
Bonnet was imprisoned for his role in the
debacle, discrediting the state and
provoking a swing of support back towards
the nationalists, who polled 24 percent in
the ensuing elections.
Relations with Paris may have reached an
all-time low, but only the most hard-line
radicals on the island these days advocate
total independence. Aside from four
international airports, eight maritime ports
and hugely subsidized transport links with
the mainland, Corsica is bankrolled by
nearly a billion francs of government money
each year. It also receives roughly 7
billion francs annually (27,000F/?4116 per
head of population) in EU subsidies, making
it the most heavily subsidized region in
France. Moreover, Corsicans are exempt from
social security contributions and the island
as a whole enjoys preferential tax status,
while one third of the permanent population
is an employee of the state. Increasingly,
the armed struggle is seen by islanders as
biting the hand that feeds.
