On Tuesday night, while many cities in France were holding pots and pans and protests calling for his resignation, French President Emmanuel Macron improvised a cappella songs with a group of young choristers in the middle of the street. It was just after his televised speech, in which he defended his controversial pension reform, enacted over the weekend after three months of protests, and which has opened an unprecedented social crisis in France.
As confirmed to the France Info chain by the president’s entourage, Macron was walking with his wife, Brigitte, on a free Monday night through the sixth district of the capital when they were approached by a group of young people who were leaving a rehearsal. They got to talking and asked him to sing ‘Le refuge’ (the refuge), a song by a songwriter from the Pyrenees, where Macron’s grandmother is from. It is a subject that the president has already intoned in public, last July, for this reason.
In the video, the president is seen surrounded by men and singing, looking at the lyrics with his mobile in hand, under the watchful eye of his bodyguard. Many French media thought it was a fake, until these sources close to Macron confirmed that the scene had indeed taken place.
The video has spread rapidly on social networks, as has the Canto association, an application created by a far-right group and which is being investigated for the content of some of the songs. The application has used the video of the president as a claim to attract public.
The Liberation newspaper recently published information revealing that this application, which had received a grant of 400,000 euros, included songs from the Third Reich.
“Emmanuel Macron could not know at that time the background of each of these people” who approached him, these sources told France Info.
One of the young people who sang with Macron in the video told France Inter about the meeting: “We were leaving the rehearsal when we realized that Macron and his wife were walking with their bodyguards. We followed their lead and suggested they sing ‘Ninon’, a hunting song. As he didn’t pay much attention to it, we suggested ‘Le refuge’, a song he knows”, he recounted.
“It has been completely spontaneous. It only happens once, being able to share that moment with the President of the Republic, in the middle of the street, on a Monday, with a choir,” said the young man.
The opposition has criticized his intervention. The Socialists have reproached him for singing “with anyone” in the middle of the street, after his expected speech on Tuesday in which the president acknowledged “the anger of the French” after approving the pension reform, which the country opposes and that it delays the retirement age to 64 years.
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