How little it takes to make yourself popular, especially for French presidents. With a word of power, over all heads and discussions. Emmanuel Macron has surprisingly decided that the Parisian “Bouquinists”, these culture peddlers with their dark green wooden boxes on the quays of the Seine, will be allowed to stay on the riverbanks exactly where they always were during the Olympic Games next summer. Against all the concerns of the police. Because they are a “living heritage” of the city, as Macron believes. Well, that had already been known beforehand, long before the big excitement, all the hoopla.
It started last summer when the Paris prefecture decided that some of the booksellers, namely 428 out of a total of 932, had to “temporarily” dismantle their “boîtes”, their iconic boxes, for safety reasons. There was particular concern about the opening ceremony on July 26th.
It’s supposed to take place on the Seine, with country delegations on boats, with a wonderful spectacle for hundreds of thousands of spectators who will gather on the banks of the river – paying on the lower quays, by the water, and free up above, parallel to the streets, where the Bouquinists are. “You can hide weapons in these boxes,” said Laurent Nuñez, the police chief, at the time. “Or worse: explosives.” The fear of a terrorist attack is great, and after October 7th it has become even greater.
The people were on the side of the Bouquinists, how can one be against them?
The Bouquinists were outraged and also desperate. Their fragile boxes, they said, would not survive such an operation; some are 150 years old. And the summer games with millions of visitors from abroad were a promise after many dry years in business because of the yellow vest demonstrations, the pandemic and online trading anyway. You don’t make a particularly good living from selling old books, magazines, posters, stamps, records. By the way, “Bouquin,” which comes from “Bouquinists,” is the colloquial French word for book. So browse.
The people were on the side of the Bouquinists, massively, how can you be against them? There were petitions with tens of thousands of signatures and open letters appeared in the newspapers. One of these protest letters from intellectuals said that the disappearance of the boxes was probably only “theoretically temporary.” And so over time the unfounded idea took hold that this dismantling for Olympia and the later reassembly was essentially the end: the death of the “soul of the Seine”, as the Bouquinists are also called.
Now everything is different again, very much alive, thanks to Monsieur le Président. One hears from the Élysée that Macron made this decision because the various parties were irreconcilable on this issue. There was even a threat of legal action in court. Now the security plan for the opening ceremony is simply being adjusted: no spectators are allowed to stand where green boxes hang on the sea walls. This significantly reduces the number of spectators overall, which is exactly what the police want. And his soul is saved.