Anne Hidalgo emerged from the waters wrapped in neoprene, halfway between a naiad and an extra. They call him Bodhiwith her best smile. “Look at the happiness around you,” she declared in front of the cameras. “We have been dreaming of this for years.” The mayor of Paris had just taken a dip in the Seine, where swimming was banned a century ago. The metres of crawl she showed off in front of the cameras on Wednesday heralded a new era. Several aquatic events at the Olympic Games, which begin in nine days in the French capital, will be held in the Seine. From 2025, any Parisian will be able to swim at four points on the river as it passes through the city.
The photo was one of those that made history. The mayor wanted to contradict the rumours that, in recent weeks, suggested that the poor quality of the river water would make it difficult to hold the open swimming events. All this, amidst an endless number of press articles (2,400 in total, according to a count by the weekly The Point) which predicted a municipal fiasco, pointed to the presence of bacteria, an inevitable synonym for fecal contamination, and the risk of contagion of leptospirosis, a disease caused by rat urine. Hidalgo could not lose this bet: he had made the purification of the river a cornerstone of his program. “We are cleaning the Seine for the Games, but above all we are contributing to not damaging the oceans, which will receive cleaner water,” he said on Wednesday. His strategy has been to frame the sanitation plan not only in the context of the Olympic Games. It was not about obtaining a nice Olympic postcard, but about “returning the Seine to the citizens,” as he insisted.
Until the 20th century, Parisians maintained a very close, almost carnal, relationship with the Seine. Everything changed with the construction of stone banks and the arrival of the automobile on its quays.
There was another subtext: Hidalgo was making a dream come true, a Parisian and also French obsession. The Seine is, by all accounts, much more than a river. Built around itself, Paris cannot be understood without its channel, which fragments the city into two halves and governs its geography, dividing it between the left bankor left bank, south of the Seine; and the right bank or right bank, north of the river. It is no coincidence that until 1968, the department of Paris was simply called the Seine. “The river has been a fundamental element in the history of the city. Above all, in terms of logistics, because it was the great artery through which most transport and goods arrived, the main navigation route and the entry of wealth. There is also a spiritual dimension: the inhabitants of ancient Lutetia worshipped the goddess of the river, Sequana, since ancient times,” says Valérie Kozlowski, curator of the archaeological collections at the Carnavalet Museum, who recounts the history of Paris.
Since the time of the Roman Empire, the Seine has been a source of pure and abundant water. With urban development, the river became a dumping ground for human and industrial waste. Over the centuries, various initiatives sought to improve the quality of the water, including the construction of a canal in 1808 and a new drinking water and sewage network in the 19th century, but nothing managed to mitigate the pollution. “Until the 20th century, Parisians had a very close, almost carnal, relationship with the Seine, but everything changed with the construction of stone banks and the arrival of the automobile on its quays. Little by little, this urbanization and modernization distanced Parisians from their river,” adds Kozlowski. In recent decades, the pedestrianization of the banks of the Seine was a turning point. The possibility of immersing oneself in its waters is another step forward, although critics warn that “an ecosystem is not transformed by a magic wand, even if it is Olympic,” as noted on Wednesday by the electronic newspaper Mediapartdenouncing that the storytelling of the municipal team could come to nothing.
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Until the 19th century, swimming in the river was common, as immortalised in Georges Seurat and Honoré Daumier’s paintings. In 1923, swimming in the Seine was banned, although many citizens broke the new rule, as shown in old photographs by Robert Doisneau on the Iena bridge. This was the case until the 1950s, when the danger of the currents and river traffic, added to chemical and bacterial contamination – during the 1920s, doctors already advised bathing in running water after exposing the body to its flow and “closing the mouth when swimming” – made this practice fall into disuse. Hidalgo has made Jacques Chirac’s dream come true during his time as mayor of the capital. At the end of the 1980s, he promised to swim in the river before the end of his term to show that it was no longer polluted, in a gesture of ecological voluntarism that did not bear fruit. Despite his efforts to clean up the Seine, in 1990 he had to admit that he would not be able to keep his promise.
In June 2017, Paris City Hall organised an exhibition of 36 Olympic sports from the Pont Alexandre III, in a spectacular operation to seduce the IOC, with Hidalgo in a kayak, but without getting into the water herself. The aquatic events would be held, they promised then, in this highly polluted river. The power of this image, with the Eiffel Tower as an unrivalled backdrop, swept away their opponents. The challenge was to clean up the river in record time, with the fear that the promise would remain a dead letter, as happened to Chirac decades ago.
After several setbacks in her troubled municipal administration, facing political enemies who have turned her into their bête noire — a case similar to that of Ada Colau in Barcelona — Hidalgo has won a battle in the war of images. “The whole sequence is framed in spectacle politics. These types of symbols are deeply rooted in our political culture, as demonstrated by all our presidents, from François Mitterrand to Emmanuel Macron, who turned their investitures into theatrical productions,” says Jean Garrigues, historian of French politics and emeritus professor at the University of Orleans.
“In France, these symbolic gestures are very important, which is less common in other European countries. The important thing in terms of environmental policy should be to reduce the carbon footprint and build buildings adapted to climate change, but we prefer symbols and images.” Although this has also been the subject of mockery: before Hidalgo, the Minister of Sport, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, had already bathed in the Seine last Saturday.,who has been the subject of countless memes on social media, transformed into a mutant creature or with infectious spots all over her body. Next up is Emmanuel Macron, who in April promised that he would also take a dip in the river before the Games. The date is currently unknown.
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