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| The Arab market - Chalon |
Every Thursday morning Chalon-sur-Saône hosts a very cosy and busy market, known by the locals as the Arab market. The market is located in a quarter where the population is originally from North-African or Arabic descent. That is also the reason why the market is more colourful and aromatic (due to the many different sorts of ground spices) than the average "normal" markets with predominantly French buyers and sellers.
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| The Arab market - Chalon |
When some years back French politicians started to compete each other by imitating Marine Le Pen in an attempt to cajole part of her voters out of her supporters, Mayor Gilles Platret was one of the politicians of Les Républicains (the right wing party of a.o. Sarkozy) who announced taking "measures". One of his spearheads was stopping providing halal meals for school lunches.
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| The Arab market - Chalon |
That is still challenged by the supporters of halal food, and every so often Platret is summoned again for another appeal case concerning this item (end October a court of appeal in Lyon decided that Platret's decision had te be withdrawn). More recently he ordered the police to do street checks around the Arab market, no doubt in search of potential terrorists. These actions however were not very successful. If they had caught only one person Platret would have made a big show out of it.
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| The Arab market - Chalon |
However, after the police checks in the area we thought that that might have had a negative effect on the market, but that turned out not to have been the case.
Recently we went there again, not necessarily to buy something (although we did), but just to taste the atmosphere. The market is still what it used to be: a cosy day market, where lots of colourful clothing is sold, where people are friendly, where the vegetable stalls sell more exotic stuff than the supermarkets, and where there is a constant smell of freshly ground spices and herbs, which we recognise from markets in the Middle-East and Asia.
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| The Arab market - Chalon |
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