In front of the gate of the Château de la Buzine, reputed to be that of My Mother’s Castle of the writings of Marcel Pagnol, the grandson of the Provençal writer sounds the charge. On the eve of the municipal council which must ratify the transfer of the cultural site to municipal management, Nicolas Pagnol, surrounded by two lawyers, announced “cutting off access to the works of Marcel Pagnol at the town hall”. His advisors, Master Sandra Blanchard and David Koubbi, will launch administrative and criminal justice actions to understand the shady conditions of this situation.
The Buzine association, chaired by Nicolas Pagnol, has managed the cultural activity site under public service delegation (DSP) since 2014. Last June at the end of the call for applications to renew this, the town hall indicated that another association, the CCO (Worker Culture Center), had won the competition.
Fifteen days later, and while the controversy over “the eviction of Pagnol from his Château” was growing, the town hall changed its tune by announcing that it was taking over the place under direct management, motivating its decision with “ an error” in the procedure according to Joël Canicave, deputy mayor of Marseille responsible for finance. In this case, the publication of the call for competition in a specialist journal with European distribution would have been missed.
“Pagnol cannot attack Marseille”
This Thursday, lawyer Sandra Blancard said she was requesting “access to all the documents at the town hall”, including audit reports and deliberations on this DSP, in order to “look at the regularity of the procedure” . On the criminal aspect, David Koubbi explained, in addition to potential “related offenses” linked to the procedure, dealing with complaints for defamation, threats and insult filed by Nicolas Pagnol against four municipal deputies.
“We said to ourselves, Pagnol cannot attack Marseille. But we are not attacking Marseille. We are in the process of attacking Benoît Payan and four of his deputies,” argues the criminal lawyer.
Nicolas Pagnol, to whom the town hall offered a place in this new organizational chart, also responded that “Marcel Pagnol’s ancestors have decided to cut off all collaboration with the town hall”. He vehemently attacked Benoît Payan, “unelected mayor”, he liked to repeat.
Next year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the famous Provençal writer and filmmaker, which occurred on April 18, 1974 in Paris. A celebration which promises to be complicated without access to the works and without the collaboration of Marcel Pagnol’s family.