What do the grievance books contain in the Landes? “Sud Ouest” had access to it for the first time

In his general policy declaration, the Prime Minister announced that he wanted to resume “the study of the lists of grievances”. We therefore took François Bayrou at his word and sought to find out what is contained in these citizen registers, opened in the town halls of Landes on the occasion of the Yellow Vest movement, during the winter of 2018-2019.

“This is the first time that they have been taken out for a consultation session in the reading room,” points out Alice Motte, the director of the Departmental Archives of Landes. Until the morning of this Wednesday, January 15, 2025, rare requests for information about them, made in writing, were never followed by a visit to this building in Mont-de-Marsan where “200 notebooks” are kept. transmitted by municipalities” for almost six years.

Open access

“The official handover took place in a very solemn manner, at the prefecture, in the spring of 2019,” recalls the director of the Departmental Archives of Landes. The ceremony followed a return trip to Paris and a digitization of the notebooks by the National Archives services, without their distribution or processing having been possible until then. Referenced by dimensions, the 200 documents from the Landes town halls were finally enclosed in gray envelopes, themselves grouped in black boxes now stored in “2.07 meters of shelves”.

A methodical directory, available on the website of the Departmental Archives, gives under the reference 1,524 W the list of the 200 “Citizens’ notebooks of the Great National Debate” referenced. From Aire-sur-l'Adour to Ygos-Saint-Saturnin, around two thirds of the notebooks of these communes can be consulted, with free access, by anyone with (in a few minutes) a reader card from the Departmental Archives Landes.

For the notebooks of the remaining third, “the legal period applied” is fifty years, like those coming from the towns of Mont-de-Marsan and Dax, or the villages of Bas-Mauco and Saubion. “Everyone expected it to be put online and reproduced at the national level. But the announcements were made without looking at the legislation,” underlines Alice Motte.

“When contributions contain personal data, the principle of privacy protection applies in archival law. » A consultation remains possible before 2070, upon exemption and after the request has been examined by the Archives services and the Landes prefecture.

RIC et justice fiscale

Without going that far, reading a few of the accessible notebooks is enough to remember all the anger of those not-so-old times. In the one where the Yellow Vest Collective of the canton of Mugron submitted a printed sheet and a petition, seven grievances are formulated “for fiscal justice and more equitable social justice”.

Words, such as the RIC (Citizen Initiative Referendum), give an outdated tone to the ink then used by the Landais. But the grievances mentioned remain the color of embers ready to rekindle: the cost of living, the decline in purchasing power, the inequalities between the metropolises and the countryside.

“Retired in my native village for twenty years, I saw the pharmacy, the doctor's office, the gas station, businesses, etc. close. Everything that allows an inhabitant of a small village to live in very acceptable conditions has disappeared! », deplores a resident of Luxey.

Elsewhere, the careful handwriting does not prevent exasperation. Like this testimony from a 75-year-old widow noted in the “golden book” of the commune of Saint-Martin-de-Seignanx: “After forty years of factory work including twenty years on the assembly line […]I should have enough to enjoy the years I have left to live. Instead I find myself, at my age, struggling to preserve my purchasing power, which does not allow for any extras, much less paying for a retirement home. »

Solutions

For other citizens, hope remains. Guy Debord is quoted there, to denounce “La Société du spectacle”. A multitude of solutions are proposed, without artificial intelligence being able to grasp all the poetry of some. The creation of a BNRI, such as a “National box for complaints and ideas with a free toll-free number”, is thus subject to government approval from the Castets notebook.

“By not forgetting in the end that it is the people who are sovereign”, recalls another contribution, certain messages directly echo the unsaid things of François Bayrou. On the first page of the notebook opened by the municipality of Soorts-Hossegor, mourning black cover and colored dividers to share the themes of the Great Debate proposed by Emmanuel Macron, an alert citizen: “Making ecology the priority. Absolute emergency. »