French President Emmanuel Macron has on Monday moved to Colombey-les-deux-Eglises (Haute-Marne) to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the death of General de Gaulle, the tutelary figure of French politics.
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The endpoint of the year of Gaulle, a cycle of commemoration whose two previous stages had made historians tick, this final episode will be celebrated soberly with only 30 participants in the small village of 700 inhabitants due to coronavirus crisis.
President Macron will meditate on the white tomb of Charles de Gaulle alongside his wife Yvonne and his daughter Anne, in the cemetery which adjoins the church. Accompanied by the three grandsons of Gaulle, the French leader will be welcomed at La Boisserie, the home where the general lived for the last 18 months of his life after leaving the Élysée.
Before participating in a military ceremony in front of the Cross of Lorraine, an immense 43.50 m pink granite monument, which dominates the surrounding woods and vineyards. There will be no speech and the usual mass that holds every year was cancelled due to the coronavirus.
President Macron said in a tweet before his arrival, “Resilience and will. This spirit was embodied by Charles de Gaulle, committed to France in times of pain as in those of glories. This spirit is a heritage, that of France,”.
In the video integrated into the tweet, Emmanuel Macron underlines in voiceover that de Gaulle had an “unshakeable confidence in the destiny of France. Tells us that France is strong when it stands united and embodied this force to act, this French spirit”.
Résilience et volonté.
Cet esprit fut incarné par Charles de Gaulle, engagé pour la France dans les moments de douleurs comme dans ceux de gloires. Cet esprit est un héritage, celui de la France. pic.twitter.com/qA8lspiT22— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) November 9, 2020
Former leaders like Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy, always visit Colombey every November 9, but President Macron has only been there once since the start of his five-year term, on October 4, 2018, to mark the 60th anniversary of the creation of the Fifth Republic by De Gaulle.
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But he has celebrated twice in recent months the memory of his illustrious predecessor on the occasion of the year of de Gaulle marking the anniversaries of his birth 130 years ago, of the Appel du 18-Juin 80 years ago. years and his death.
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