Is Corsica the Next Catalonia? Nationalists Are Poised for Election Win<br />ITALY Corte Corsica SPAIN Balearic Islands Sardinia Mediterranean Sea DEC. 1, 2017<br />"We’ve forgotten nothing about taking our country out of the night into which France has plunged us!" the nationalist leader Jean-Guy Talamoni threatened on Wednesday to the fervent<br />and youthful crowd in this university town, high up in the vertiginous Corsican mountains.<br />ITALY Corte Corsica SPAIN Barcelona Balearic Islands Sardinia 300 Miles Sicily Mediterranean Sea 300 Miles Paris GERMANY FRANCE SWITZ.<br />Mr. Talamoni, president of the Corsican assembly, believes independence is the restive Mediterranean island’s destiny<br />and speaks proudly of going to Barcelona "a few times a year." France appears not to be listening.<br />Mr. Talamoni said that but they won’t vote for independe<br />Yet Sunday’s first round of elections to the territorial assembly in Corsica is<br />predicted to be a crowning moment for over 40 years of Corsican nationalism.<br />In that time, the nationalist movement has passed through all the classic stages: anti-government violence, the political consolidation of "autonomists"<br />and "independantists," and now likely electoral victory for the combined "Pé a Corsica" (For Corsica) list of nationalists in a newly created, more powerful assembly.<br />Even Marine Le Pen’s National Front — she took Corsica in the first round of presidential voting last spring — struggles to attract sympathizers.
