in Dijon, the backyard of a last tour – Liberation
Residents of the Republic
Article reserved for subscribers
In Les Grésilles, a district undergoing renovation and the scene of a mediatized and politicized confrontation in 2020, the last large bar is scheduled for demolition. The last inhabitants oscillate between nostalgia, the desire to move forward and regrets.
Christophe returned to Boutaric by ambulance. He had lived in this huge building for the first time in the mid-1990s. He specifies the registration number, as if anyone could doubt him: “Third floor, door 39.” After ten years elsewhere, “among the bourgeois”, the mechanic with a hoarse voice and a dry build ended up going back. Severely burned at work and hospitalized in Lyon, he lost his apartment in 2018. The social worker warned him that it would be easier to find something in HLM. In Dijon, for example, in the Grésilles district, which he knows so well? And why not Boutaric, whom no one asks for, despite low rents? Christophe has his bearings there and “his fingerprints on all the walls”. The ambulance made a Lyon-Boutaric so that the almost fifty-something can take a look, for form. When he arrived, he was surprised. ” What did they do ? » There were no more children’s games.
At the end of December 2020, a letter arrived in the renovated mailboxes. Boutaric, in global disrepair, will be demolished in mid-2022 and relocations have started. The Covid would have dried up the coffers, the arrangements selected and promised are buried. Christophe says that, three months before, he had a face-to-face with the sector guard. “He arrived very early and as I do not sleep, I see him arriving with his car.” He blocked it “the second Tuesday of September” with his tow truck. Ultimate: …