As hundreds of boats float elegantly down the Seine at the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics this summer, one well-known and loved landmark will be absent. The bouquinistes, antique booksellers who have lined the banks for centuries, will have decamped for the duration of the games. For many Parisians who face the prospect of their city being swamped by almost a million incomers, this is the final nail in the coffin.
Though much of the French population support the Games or are indifferent, Parisians have been quick to complain about the Games’ arrival. Nearly 44 per cent of Parisians thought the Olympics were a ‘bad thing’, according to one survey, while 52 per cent are considering leaving Paris for the duration of the Games. Last summer, as bedbugs rampaged around the city and engineering works disrupted metro lines in the city, it seemed that Paris simply was not ready for a Games it didn’t want.
The Olympics’ organisers are determined that Paris look her best, even if the price is winding up Parisians
Even if the Oympics do go off without a hitch, lots of Parisians won’t be there to see it. Many of my friends, faced with the prospect of a huge police presence and blocked roads, plan on fleeing the city. The one upside for them is the prospect of making some extra cash by renting out their homes. Given that Paris is not a large city, measuring some six miles across, accommodation has always been a touchy subject. The Olympics have exacerbated this problem as landlords rush to let their flats. While athletes will be accommodated in and around the Olympic village, the government has announced that thousands of students will be turfed out of their accommodation for the duration of the Games. In return, they have been offered €100 (£88) and two tickets to the games, though it’s unclear where exactly they will be able to stay given the blistering prices of hotels while the Games are on.
There are fears, too, that the accommodation frenzy is creating a property bubble. Given the amount of money to be made renting a flat during the Olympics, when Deloitte expects the prices to increase by up to 85 per cent, some people are buying up flats to convert them into short-term rentals ad infinitem. This, Parisians fear, will just push Paris further towards becoming a living museum, as in Venice, where few locals can afford to live. It’s not clear if a charter proposed by Macron’s government to dampen down the sky-high prices will work.
The authorities are already making it clear that homeless people won’t be welcome in Paris during the Games. Some 3,000-4,000 Parisians with no fixed abode will be shunted out to ‘temporary regional accommodation facilities’. This is to allow the low-cost hotels often used to house the homeless to be rented to tourists during the Games.
Are there any upsides to the Olympics? Anyone who has been to Paris over the last year or so will know that the metro, which has suffered from chronic underinvestment, is in the process of getting a much-needed makeover. While Parisians, particularly those who live in the wider Ile-de-France region outside the péripherique, are quick to complain that this has left them without transport at the weekend, others see the improvements as one of the few positives.
The organisers of the Olympics are determined that Paris look her best, even if this comes at the price of winding up Parisians. The River Seine will be the star of the opening ceremony, with boats due to float down from the Austerlitz bridge to Iéna, just in front of the Eiffel Tower, a now iconic but once-hated monument. While many Parisians agree that, on the surface, this will look beautiful, in reality it will be a security nightmare for the authorities. To cope with the vast quantity of people flocking to the banks of the river, the interior minister Gérald Darmanin has promised to send 35,000 police officers to the ceremony to ensure that no one takes the chance to snatch a gold medal in the sport of protesting.
Parisians are well known to enjoy complaining, so it’s perhaps no surprise that the Olympics has generated such a fuss. But the people of Paris are also a proud lot, and many are afraid that their beautiful city will be found wanting while the eyes of the world are on it. We’ll have to wait until the Summer to find our whether or not the Games will be a success, but one thing most people in the city can agree on already is this: they’ll be relieved when it’s all over.
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