Sian d’Aqui: What actions do you plan to take in favor of the return of the Court of Appeal?
Bruno Della Sudda: We support anything that can facilitate the life of the litigant.
And that includes a Court of Appeal in Nice.
However, even the conservatives have already done what they could in this regard (and probably not for the same reasons: politicians and business operators have not given up the idea of having a justice system at their beck and call to continue their “affairs”) without achieving anything. We don’t have a miracle solution… and the Dati plan for reducing justice costs buries any such project.
Sian d’Aqui: What structure will be established in the location of the current southern train station?
Bruno Della Sudda: A cultural-associative structure within a framework of active citizenship (see the committees that have already worked on this).
Sian d’Aqui: What is your position on the future large stadium and what is the planned timeline for its completion?
Bruno Della Sudda: Keep the stadium at Ray, with reasonable and controlled expansion (26,000 to 28,000 seats), by securing the access routes, and without commercial operations: refusal of privatization and placing it under municipal management, opening it to the neighborhood, setting up a proper steering committee involving neighborhood committees and associations, fan clubs, elected officials, within a framework of active citizenship.
We must push back against the commercialization of sports, fight violence, including verbal violence (starting with the homophobic and sexist slogans still uttered by some supporters), include spectators in the management of any sports project, and preserve its popular, festive, and friendly dimensions.
Sian d’Aqui: Don’t you find it legitimate for Nice to become the regional capital in a new redistricting?
Bruno Della Sudda: But in which redistricting?
A return to the borders of the old County? That’s not on the scale (not even the entirety of the Alpes-Maritimes) of the current regions in France or Europe.
An “Alpine” entity (like the State of Savoy)? That’s now outdated from a geopolitical standpoint (we are no longer at the hinge between the kingdom of France and the Empire) and from the standpoint of railway and road infrastructure (east-west and no longer north-south from Nice).
A section of PACA to the east? We don’t really see its territorial limits or economic sense.
However, it’s true that PACA is a very particular region, with a “capital”, Marseille, completely geographically decentralized to the extreme southwest, and a second city (Nice) much more important than almost all the regional capitals in France.
The situation of Nice, on the eastern edge of the region, equidistant from Marseille and Genoa, on the Mediterranean arc (commonly called Barcelona-Genoa, but destined to become Seville-Istanbul), at the confluence of three regions (PACA, Piedmont, Liguria) nonetheless gives it a special role that must be recognized. But we refuse any reactionary or chauvinistic logic of type “Nice against Paris” or “Nice against Marseille”. A public debate must be opened on the institutional and administrative way to recognize the role that Nice should play in the PACA region.
Sian d’Aqui: What actions do you envisage in favor of teaching the Niçois language in schools, colleges, high schools, and universities?
Bruno Della Sudda: Actions in favor of creating teaching positions, support for Calendreta, endowment of school libraries and Documentation Centers with a stock of works in Occitan (and particularly in Niçard and/or Gavot).
Setting up Niçard courses (language and culture, songs, cuisine, etc.) in neighborhoods, an opportunity for intergenerational meetings.
Sian d’Aqui: What future for the carnival?
Bruno Della Sudda: Both aspects, in order to keep their “traditional” sense, must remain primarily popular festivals, not fixed in a mythical past and pure nostalgia. Without forbidding carnival parades more oriented towards tourists (and thus economically impactful), the carnival should return to a more “protest” spirit… which is its origin. This is also the message and purpose of the Independent Carnivals of the Eastern districts (St Roch, the Port).
Sian d’Aqui: Do you think that the venues for expressing Niçois culture are sufficient or satisfactory?
Bruno Della Sudda: The venues for expression are completely insufficient and unsatisfactory, for “Niçois culture”, as for other forms of expression (cultural, political, associative).
Sian d’Aqui: What measures do you plan to implement to promote the creation and diffusion of Niçois culture?
Bruno Della Sudda: In addition to the means already developed in response to question 5 and the resources given to culture in general (associative-cultural halls in neighborhoods, free museum entry, cultural space at the southern train station, etc.), we plan to build pilo fields (first in neighborhoods where players have been training for years: St Roch, the port, Valrose, St Jean d’Angély, the Faculty of Letters, etc.) and to set up a festival of Occitan music.
Sian d’Aqui: Can we consider including a clause related to the Niçois identity in urban planning charters?
Bruno Della Sudda: We reject the term “Niçois identity”. It is an ambiguous term, which can be a pretext for the rejection of “the other”.
It’s also by this qualifier (“Identitaires”) that a neo-Nazi wing of the far-right has chosen to name itself.
That being said, the reference to urban planning in Nice is not trivial. The Sardinian state was a precursor in this field, establishing urban plans as early as 1832, designed to give stylistic unity to the city, and through the Consiglio d’ornato, an independent control of the execution of projects.
Since the Médicin era, with purely speculative construction pushing onto the hills without corresponding amenities, the heterogeneous cover of Paillon, the expressway that scars the city, then the dispersion in the Var plain of everything that was no longer known where to place, the Right has constantly and methodically renounced this past that had bequeathed us the Garibaldi, Masséna, and Isle of Beauty squares.
A concerted development of the Var plain will be an opportunity to reconnect with a global urbanistic reflection, involving the population.
Sian d’Aqui: What are your proposals to promote and enhance the Niçois identity?
Bruno Della Sudda: We will not revisist what we wrote in the previous question regarding this “identity”.
It’s not through the fixed reference to a supposed immutable identity that we see Nice. Thus, there is no identity to promote or enhance.
It is the quality of supportive social practices, the mode of democratic management through true democratic neighborhood councils, the participation of citizens in establishing a participatory budget, and the place given to both contemporary cultural creation and to the knowledge of history or the practice of language that will “enhance” a new perception of Nice, far from the schemes and clientelism system to which the image of Nice is currently attached.
