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Under a blue sky, Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo took a dip in the Seine this week to applause from hundreds of onlookers, many of whom had worked on the years-long project to clean up the river for Olympic swimming events.
The stunt made worldwide headlines with just days to go before the opening of the games, boosting the already high international profile of the 65-year-old green crusader who has been mayor since 2014. She was re-elected to a second term in 2020.
Yet before Hidalgo’s long-promised swim, a social media campaign spread under the hashtag #jechiedanslaseine (“I poop in the Seine”) with people pledging to defecate to express their dislike for the mayor and her politics. “They have put us in the shit, so now it’s up to them to swim in our shit,” read a dedicated website.
This campaign displayed the often immoderate hatred that the Socialist mayor inspires among some Parisians, who rail against her drastic reduction of car traffic and imposition of rent controls. The first female mayor of Paris ranks among the country’s least popular politicians — a recent poll showed a 70 per cent disapproval rating — and her presidential bid in 2022 was catastrophic.
Hidalgo, however, has laughed off the poop campaign, according to people who work for her, and beamed after executing a confident crawl in the Seine. The French government has spent around €1.4bn to upgrade infrastructure to hold the triathlon and marathon swimming Olympics events in the river.
“It was a dream and now it’s a reality,” she said. “After the games we will have swimming in the Seine for all Parisians.”
Pierre Rabadan, a former professional rugby player who works as Hidalgo’s sports adviser, says he has never seen her publicly display her feelings about the vitriol. “In the harsh world of politics, if you show weakness, people will exploit any chink in the armour,” he observes. “She is combative, a bit like a wrestler, and very determined to follow through on her ideas.”
The spotlight will now be on Hidalgo and Paris as it hosts an ambitious yet risky version of the Olympics. One risk will be the extravagant opening ceremony with athletes on an armada of boats, which a security expert called a “criminal folly” since it would be impossible to police.
The French capital is also seeking to hold a more sustainable, affordable Olympics — in order to slash greenhouse gas emissions only two arenas have been built. Most events will be held at temporary venues at historic monuments in the city centre, causing major disruption for residents.
Hidalgo’s twin missions as mayor have been to give Paris a radical green makeover and keep the city accessible to middle and lower-income people by investing billions in social housing, often through buying properties and converting them.
Her dedication to the green cause has made her famous abroad where she is more respected at appearances at the UN and COP climate conferences than at home, where she is criticised for poor city management and degraded public finances.
Born near Cadiz, Spain to an electrician father and a seamstress mother, Hidalgo moved to Lyon as a child and became a French citizen as a teenager. Her first job was as a labour inspector for the government.
A convinced social democrat, she went into politics in the mid-1990s as an adviser to various ministers at a national level. In 2001, she was elected on a Socialist list to the Paris city council in the 15th arrondissement on the left bank, where she still lives. She was the longtime number two to her predecessor as socialist mayor Betrand Delanoë, and succeeded him in 2014.
Attitudes towards her hardened among some Parisians in 2016 when she got rid of a highway running along the Seine and turned the quays into a leafy pedestrian zone now enjoyed by cyclists and people out for runs or strolls.
“She’s had very extreme policies against car drivers, and by extension, against people living in the banlieues,” said Pierre Chasseray of the pro-car lobbying group 40 millions d’automobilistes (40mn drivers).
The city has built 1,500km of bike lanes recently, hiked parking prices for SUVs, and banned cars from major arteries like the Rue de Rivoli, reserving them mostly for cyclists.
In City Hall, where she is in coalition with Greens and Communists, Hidalgo has a “reputation for being irascible”, says Green councillor Alexandre Florentin, who nevertheless says he admires her. She has bridled at any suggestion that she is not “the most green mayor the planet has ever seen”.
Environmental groups have criticised Hidalgo and the Olympic organisers for “greenwashing” with a claim to minimise waste while being sponsored by drinks company Coca-Cola, a major generator of plastic. Her fierce rival on the city council, the rightwing politician Rachida Dati, accused her of wasting public money in the so-called Tahiti Gate scandal last year when she took a week-long trip there only to scrap a visit to the competition site for Olympics surfing.
Hidalgo, however, remains defiant. “If there weren’t the Games, we wouldn’t have gotten to this moment,” she said of swimming in the Seine. “They were an accelerator that directed all our energies towards an objective.” Whether Parisians like it or not.