There are rising fears that France will suffer an onsalught of violence on the streets, as nationalists in Corsica become increasingly fed up with the French establishment.
French President Emmanuel Macron will visit Corsica on Tuesday, amid growing fears that the trip will be overshadowed by mass disruptive protests.
25,000 people took to the streets yesterday in the capital Ajaccio in a show of strength aimed at forcing the French president to grant the Mediterranean island greater autonomy.
In a major threat to the integrity of France, nationalists from other parts of the country appeared to join forces to march in solidarity with Corsica.
Protesters in the south-east of the country marched with Basque flags while others called for “the emancipation of Savoy” – the region that passed from Italian to French rule.
The Corsican separatists, who previously waged a violent campaign against the French state, laid down their weapons in 2014 and took to political campaigning.
They havea since won an absolute majority in the Corsican Assembly, which has raised expectations that Paris would declare Corsican an official language alongside French, devolve control of local budgets to the nationalist-led regional government, return jailed militants to Corsica and introduce regulations to prevent outsiders from buying holiday homes on the island.
However, Gilles Simeoni, a leader of the nationalist-separatist alliance Pè a Corsica (For Corsica), warned of a return to violence if Paris persists in ignoring nationalist aspirations.
He said: “Some people are now telling me: ‘If winning elections does not even get us to hold talks on what we gave you a mandate for, it means democracy is a dead end.
“To go from there to saying ‘bombs are more effective than votes’ is something I don’t agree with, but which at some point could be validated by a number of people.”
Protesters added that a return to violence could not be excluded if their voices are not heeded.
The crowd chanted “long live the independence struggle” and “killer French state”.
However, Mr Macron risks causing outrage in mainland France if he grants concessions to the nationalists on a trip to intended to mark 20 years since the assassination of France’s top official on the island, Claude Érignac, at the hands of separtist militants.