The number of boulangeries in France has shrunk by 18% in the last six years
, but the cornflower-blue shutters at what was once a cheery café are closed and rusting. Near the church, the grocer’s is boarded up too, its paintwork peeling in the cold damp air. Even the, which once sold the morning baguette to this village of some 1,100 people, has gone. Nestling amid forest and cereal fields in northern France, Saintines encapsulates many of the difficulties of rural decline—but also a distinctly French effort to fight it.
The village fits a countrywide trend. Between 2003 and 2014 France lost 7,000 cafés, a drop of 17%. Over the past six years alone, the number ofin France has shrunk by 18%, to 30,000. The upshot is a loss of daily social contact, lives spent in the car and a new form of solitude. This is the potent mix that helped to mobilise the protesters, who set up camps on the country’s road junctions and roundabouts a year ago, initially to protest about a green tax on motor fuel.
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