OFERTA TURÍSTICA

This presentation of how Gallo enters into negotiations of the sociolinguistic landscape of Brittany will highlight the following facets of cultural production: how Brittany over the past hundred years or so has been marked by socioeconomic

transformation, from an impoverished, conservative society to one that, while still based on agriculture, uses intensive farming techniques and has a left-leaning political

orientation (3.2.1); how a rhetoric of linguistic and cultural rights has developed, originally and more strongly for Breton, but for Gallo as well (3.2.2); how that rights rhetoric is juxtaposed with perduring views of Gallo as a language of the rural past (3.2.3); and contemporary sites of Gallo activity today.

3.2.1 Social history and demographics of Brittany

From the tenth to the sixteenth century, Brittany was a duchy with feudal rights and privileges, if still paying homage to the French monarchs (McDonald 1989). After Anne, Duchess of Brittany, successively married two French monarchs, Brittany officially became a province of France in 1532, with somewhat greater fiscal independence than other provinces. In fact, people I met during fieldwork credited Brittany’s lack of toll roads to “Anne de Bretagne,” who, they claimed, won such rights for her people as a condition of marriage; this seems to be part of a general pattern that McDonald (1989) has explored, in which people engaged in Breton cultural vindication re-imagine Brittany’s history as one of more dramatic opposition to the French state than the historical record perhaps warrants.

After the 1789 Revolution, all of France’s provinces were abolished, replaced with new administrative divisions called départements, as mentioned above in Section 3.1.1. The former province of Brittany was now the separate départements of Finistère, Côtes-du-Nord (later Côtes-d’Armor), Morbihan, Ille-et-Vilaine, and Loire-Inférieure (later Loire-Atlantique). For more than a century, the term “Brittany” ceased to have official status as a political entity. In 1972, Brittany officially became one of 22 “regions” of France, with those regions gaining increased fiscal autonomy ten years later, under the process of décentralisation undertaken by the Mitterrand government (McDonald 1989). Brittany thereby gained a Regional Council, with budgetary control; it also acquired a Cultural Council in 1978, “with a special budget (coming mostly from the State) to help save and promote Breton language and culture” (McDonald 1989:15). As previously mentioned, however, it “lost” the département of Loire-Atlantique, which had been part

of the pre-Revolutionary province but was now accorded to the region of Pays-de-la- Loire.

Brittany has historically been one of the poorer regions of France, characterized by widely acknowledged and often mythologized trajectories of migration to Paris. At the start of the twentieth century, while the rest of France was rapidly urbanizing, Brittany “remained overwhelmingly rural, conserving a traditional civilization strongly influenced by religion and still dominated by the aristocracy, marked also by the hardy persistence of the Breton language” (Geslin 2010:17).38 _{Inland France looked to peripheral Brittany} as a reservoir of labor, a center of agricultural production, and the core of France’s marine defense. After the upheavals of the Great War, which saw young Breton men leave for the front in great numbers, and during which 4.6 percent of Brittany’s

population ultimately was killed (Gourlay 2010), many Bretons felt more strongly a sense of attachment to the rest of France. As Gourlay (2010) concludes:

What was begun by the Third Republic, seeking to create a nation by schooling, was accomplished by these four years of battle: after decades spent inculcating the use of French and national history and geography, it seems that it was the First World War that truly integrated Bretons into the French model. (125)39 The Breton movement, which began to grow in prominence between the two wars, indicates that this assimilation was neither uniform nor inevitable. However, enthusiasts of both Gallo and Breton point to the First World War as an important turning point in favor of more widespread use of French within the region (see also Jaffe 1990:84-5).

38 _{“…reste à forte dominante rurale, conservant une civilisation traditionnelle largement influencée par la} religion et toujours dominé par l’aristocratie, marquée aussi par la persistance durable de la langue bretonne” (Geslin 2010:17). Geslin does not mention Gallo, but it also persisted as the main language of daily communication of Upper Bretons, at least outside of the major cities.

39 _{“ Ce qui avait été engagé par la Troisième République, afin de fabriquer une nation par l’école, fut} achevé par ces quatre ans de conflit: après des décennies passées à franciser et à inculquer l’histoire et la géographie nationales, il semble bien que c’est la Première Guerre mondiale qui intégra véritablement les

Monnier (2010a) remarks that although there had never been more Breton and Gallo users than in the period immediately after the Great War, “the great majority of young people now thought that this cultural heritage had no value, that it even constituted a handicap in society, that one needed to prioritize a good knowledge of French by all means, including by sacrificing the local language” (140; see also McDonald 1989).40 Afraid of being branded ploucs (‘hicks’), young residents of Brittany often believed that

ceasing use of Breton or Gallo was necessary to advance in careers in the seminary, education or higher administration. At the same time, farm workers began organizing into trade unions, which would become a powerful form of civic organization in Brittany. By 1936, there was a growing socialist movement, increasingly diverging from the region’s traditional conservative and religious image (Monnier 2010a).

Despite increasing shame regarding the use of regional languages, some civic groups and festivals began organizing around Breton culture during the between-war period, including the cercles celtiques (Monnier 2010a). During the 1930s, the nascent Breton movement split into two organizations, the left-leaning, republican and pacifist

Ligue fédéraliste de Bretagne and the right-leaning, (Breton) nationalist, and militant

Parti national breton (Monnier 2010a). Neither movement gained more than several hundreds of followers, but the fringe courant of fascism in the Parti national breton

would loom large in French nationalist critiques of the Breton movement writ large. In 1940, France capitulated to Germany, and the Breton peninsula was occupied by the German army in four days (Monnier 2010b). During the Occupation, a small group of

40 _{“… l’immense majorité des jeunes pensent désormais que ce patrimoine n’a aucune valeur, qu’il} constitue même un handicap dans la société, qu’il faut mettre l’accent, par tous les moyens, sur une bonne connaissance du français, y compris en sacrifiant la langue locale” (Monnier 2010a:140).

Breton militants looked favorably upon the Nazis and the Vichy regime, as a means of casting off the French oppressors; history and cultural memory still often affiliate the Breton movement with collaboration. However, most of the collaborators in Brittany were not affiliated with the Breton movement (Monnier 2010b); many Bretons joined the Résistance, and most citizens lived the Occupation with shock and dismay. A few of my participants had memories of the Occupation and subsequent liberation, during which they were young children; even among those who had not lived it themselves, it was a time that marked Breton history.

Since the postwar reconstruction period, agribusiness and tourism brought increased wealth and population growth to the region. Monnier (2010c) divides the second half of the twentieth century in Brittany into a period of rattrapage, or ‘catching

up,’ and a period of épanouissement or ‘flourishing’ that started around 1972. It was not

until 1955, says Monnier, that Brittany “seem[ed] to change centuries, to enter into modernity, into the 20th century proper” (209).41 Economic migration inland originally remained strong, but Bretons began to resent the economic conditions that drove so many young people to leave, and they sought to modernize their local socioeconomic fabric. Those who did leave were both envied and critiqued. In his book on Gallo expressions in Brittany, author Daniel Giraudon, who was born shortly after World War II, recounts an anecdote I heard or read several times during my fieldwork year:

People would tell the story of the guy who, after having spent some time in Paris, claimed to have forgotten gallo when coming home. He had renounced himself,

people would say in Plélo like in Rennes or Plerguer, he didn’t know anymore

where he came from. (2012:9, bold font and italics in the original, bold font emphasizing Gallo forms)42

The joke involves the Gallo-denying home-comeraccidentally tripping over a rake while walking around his family farm, and angrily exploding in Gallo, “Ah! l’maodi râté!” [‘Agh! Damn rake!’].Despite his pretensions, the man’s country origins—and

instinctual, farm-related Gallo vocabulary—have caught up with him in the end. The punchline or moral was often given, as it is in Giraudon (2012), as “Chassez le naturel, il revient au gallo.”43

During the decades of growth after 1950, Breton agricultural technologies underwent a revolutionary process: small traditional fields were bulldozed and consolidated into large agricultural lots (a process called remembrement, mourned in several Gallo poems, memoirs and plays); electricity arrived in country residences (I met several people, aged only in their early sixties, who remembered the arrival of electricity in their family homes); and companies such as Citroën and Michelin established factories in Brittany. Accompanying these changes were protests by syndicate groups, energized by the growing population of university students, advocating the interests of ouvriers et paysans (factory workers and farm workers) and decrying the need for economy-driven emigration. McDonald’s (1989) analysis points to the university student protests of May 1968 as a powerful moment when counter-culture became trendy, helping the Breton movement define itself yet more strongly against national French institutions. Starting in

42 _{“On racontait l’histoire du gars qui, après avoir passé quelque temps à Paris, prétendait avoir oublié le}

gallo en revenant au pays. Il se décnaissait, comme on dit aussi bien du côté de Plélo que de Rennes ou de Plerguer, y n’savait pu d’oyous qui v’nait,il ne savait plus d’où il venait.” (Giraudon 2012:9 ; bold font and italics in the original).

43 _{There is a well-known French expression, coined by the playwright Destouches in the 18}th _century:

Chassez le naturel, il revient au galop [No matter how hard you try to hide your true nature, it will always come right back to the surface (‘at a galloping pace’)]. The pun relies on the homophony between gallo and

the 1970s, there was indeed a resurgence of interest in Breton culture, including music, dance, and also the languages of Gallo and Breton. This resurgence was accompanied by demands for linguistic and cultural rights. Those will be detailed, however, in Section 3.2.2. During the years following 1968, the dominant political currant in Brittany shifted from centrism to socialism. An independentist political party, the Union démocratique bretonne was founded in 1964, becoming the most well-known autonomist party (other than the terrorist group Front de Libération de la Bretagne, outlawed in 1974; McDonald 1989).

Until the recent recession, Brittany’s economic growth kept pace with the rest of France and even outpaced it to some extent. From 1990 to 1999, the economic sector grew by 7.6 percent in Brittany, whereas it grew by only 4.5 percent in the rest of France, Ile-de-France excepted (Le Coadic 2010). However, while it was largely spared by the beginning of the economic downturn, Brittany lost nearly 11,000 jobs between 2012 and 2013 (INSEE 2013). Le Coadic (2010) names four “pillars” of Brittany’s economy: agriculture and the agri-food business, the electronic and telecommunications industries, the automobile industry, and naval construction. This makes it the second-least-

diversified region of France in terms of industries, with the agri-food business alone creating 35 percent of industrial jobs in the region in 2002 (Le Coadic 2010). Whereas Brittany has one of the lowest rates of poverty in the nation, it also has one of the lowest gross domestic products per job (64,220 € in 2012, INSEE); that is to say, the range of earnings is more restricted than most areas of France.

As of 2000, Brittany was the foremost agricultural region of metropolitan France, producing 15 percent of France’s nation-wide yield (Le Coadic 2010). However, from

1988 to 2000, the number of farms in Brittany fell from 95,000 to 55,000, and Le Coadic reports that agriculture had been “extrêmement fragilisée” [extremely weakened].

Responsible factors include increasingly untenable intensive farming practices and increased competition from other European Union member countries, coupled with higher environmental standards and environmental degradation, for which farmers are often blamed. In 2003, 67 percent of over 1300 farmers surveyed claimed they were worried about their financial futures; suicide rates were 1.69 times higher than the French national mean (Le Coadic 2010). During my fieldwork, I heard numerous stories of Gallo enthusiasts who committed suicide, from a well-known activist in the 1980s to a student in a Gallo leisure class a couple of years before. Some have pointed to Brittany’s tourist industry as a possible means of economic optimism; indeed, nine million tourists visited Brittany in 2014, contributing 8.1 percent of the region’s gross domestic product (Comité régional Tourisme Bretagne 2015). However, Le Coadic (2010) claims that tourist income is problematic, given that the tourist industry is highly concentrated on the coast, so that 70 percent of Breton municipalities have no tourist industry to speak of. Also, tourist activity is essentially limited to the summer months, with three-fifths of stays in July and August alone.

During my fieldwork year in 2013-2014, these background factors—the economic recession, Brittany’s strong reliance on only a few industries, and a general skepticism of French national authorities (Le Coadic 2015)—catalyzed a much-publicized political and economic protest in Brittany. The Bonnets Rouges or “Red Caps” movement began in

rural Lower Brittany in October 2013 and protested a planned écotaxe, a measure that would have charged a toll on any commercial truck over 3.5 tons using the French road

network. This would have placed a particular burden on already suffering Breton agri- businesses; as Le Coadic (2015) argues, the principal “polluter pays” would have become, in effect, “the periphery pays.” Protestors attacked and/or destroyed many

écotaxe tollbooths and about 50 speed cameras; protests were assembled that drew as many as 40,000 people, mostly in Lower Brittany. The national media, captivated by the happenings, largely relied on stereotypes of Bretons as violent, far-right, backwards people duped into revolt by their bosses; stereotypes that Le Coadic (2015) argues were inaccurate. In the end, the écotaxe was cancelled before it went into effect. By the end of 2014, the movement had dwindled, having accomplished its goal of thwarting the écotaxe

but with Brittany’s agricultural and industrial future still uncertain. The movement was strongest in areas of Lower Brittany that were “the heart of Breton language and culture” (Le Coadic 2015:8); while the protests were often mentioned in the settings I frequented during fieldwork, they seemed more a curiosity or event of interest than something in which those I met felt invested.

Brittany has historically had low rates of immigration; in 2010, Le Coadic reported that Brittany’s percentage of immigrants (2.5 percent) remained much lower than the national average (7.3 percent). This percentage, however, has been growing; the number of immigrants in Brittany quadrupled from 1962 to 1999, whereas in the rest of France, immigration had remained stable after 1975 (Le Coadic 2010). From 1988 to 2005, 35,000 Breton residences were purchased by foreigners. However, 83 percent of those foreigners were British (Le Coadic 2010); English was spoken in daily life by 4.3 percent of the population as of the 1999 census, but less than 0.5 percent of respondents reported regularly speaking other non-autochthonous languages, including Spanish,

German, and Arabic (reported in Blanchet & Le Coq 2008). This means that the sociolinguistic situation of Brittany, particularly outside the cities (half of Brittany’s immigrants live in or around Rennes and Nantes, Le Coadic 2010), remains largely concentrated on French, Breton, Gallo, and to some extent English. Monnier (2010d) explains that, through the 1990s, those native to Brittany remained strongly enracinés

[rooted] in their petit pays, or local place of origin. People often preferred to stay within the region—and, where possible, within their petit pays—even if it meant accepting work that was less highly remunerated or less in line with their qualifications than outside-the- region alternatives. Brittany’s population has also grown steadily older; Brittany has one of the lowest populations of 25- to 29-year-olds in France (Le Coadic 2010). This adds further uncertainty about Brittany’s economic future.

Although Brittany’s population is rural, aging, and largely of European origin, polling and votes in Brittany in the past twenty-five years have generally revealed comparatively favorable attitudes toward Europe (in contrast to French nationalism), as well as other progressive stances. In December 2015, Brittany was one of only three regions (of metropolitan France’s newly reduced 13 regions) where left-leaning parties came out on top in the first round of regional elections; the other regions were dominated by center-right or the extreme-right Front national. In Brittany, the left also won the second and final round of the 2015 elections, in which left-leaning parties did somewhat better (and the extreme-right far worse). A 2014 survey conducted among 1000 residents of Brittany (Bretagne Culture Diversité / TMO Régions) found that most Bretons did not find there to be “too many foreigners” in Brittany (21 percent, against another, national survey’s findings of 66 percent in 2014). Sixty percent of Bretons thought that “one could

be [both] Breton and Muslim,” whereas a national survey found that only 37 percent of French people overall found Islam to be “compatible with the values of French society,” and sixty-three percent of Bretons thought that one could become Breton through feelings of attachment, even if one were not born in Brittany. Of course, one might qualify these encouraging findings with the reminder that Brittany has had, to date, much lower rates of non-European immigration than elsewhere in France.

3.2.2 Gallo’s status in relation to Breton

It is difficult to evoke Gallo’s official status in Brittany (and impossible to get a full sense of its symbolic status) without considering the important role played by the Breton language and associated movement in formulating a cultural identity for Brittany. Breton activism started earlier than Gallo activism; when certain rights were won for Breton, it became easier for Gallo advocates to insist Gallo should have those rights, according to the ideal of parity. Furthermore, Breton has dominated past and present attempts to articulate Brittany’s cultural distinctiveness; Gallo advocates have carved out a symbolic space for Gallo, but it remains circumscribed by Breton, as well as the

national language of French. A brief history of language activism in Brittany is thus in order; for more information, see McDonald (1989) or Le Coadic (1998). I will present a historical overview of the Breton, and later Gallo, movements first, and then discuss their comparative visibility and role in cultural imagining, both by local residents and in acts