In Carnac, "anger" and "dismay" after the excitement around the destruction of small menhirs

"We threatened to burn my house", indignant Olivier Lepick, the mayor of Carnac (Morbihan), where the controversy born of the destruction in a commercial area of ​​menhirs whose value is debated, arouses "consternation. ". "They threatened to kill me because I was sold," adds the elected official (Horizons), who received AFP at his home, in this town on the Breton coast of 4,200 inhabitants. "One of my daughters, in her twenties, even received messages targeting me on her personal Instagram (...) I am angry to see my wife, my children, implicated and threatened “, denounces Mr. Lepick, who will file a complaint.

Since Friday, the gendarmerie has been carrying out regular patrols around his house, on the decision of the sub-prefect of Lorient. The affair broke out at the beginning of June when Ouest-France revealed the existence of a blog post by an amateur archaeologist from Carnac claiming that about forty small menhirs had been destroyed in a construction site of a store of DIY. Several media then "resumed without checking by illustrating this report with the images of the alignments", castigates the mayor. Media, including AFP, used photos of the famous alignments, which he said contributed to maintaining confusion with the small destroyed menhirs whose archaeological value can no longer be established.

World famous, this megalithic site classified at the Center of National Monuments includes nearly 3000 menhirs. An application for inclusion on the UNESCO World Heritage List should be submitted at the end of 2023, according to the city of Carnac. Reacting to the emotion aroused by this case, the Regional Directorate of Cultural Affairs (Drac) of Brittany underlined the "still uncertain and in any case not major nature of the remains" found during the preventive excavations of 2015. The mayor had attested for his part, he "perfectly complied with the legislation" and also invoked "the low archaeological value" of the stones found.

But that was not enough to calm the situation and the Saint-Cornély church, dating from the 17th century, was tagged overnight from Saturday to Sunday. "To shave everything like the menhirs", could still be read on the entrance facade of the building on Monday. The inscription, half-erased, arouses the curiosity of some passers-by or tourists who stopped to take a picture of it.

“I think the mayor made a very serious mistake. Obviously, that never justifies death threats and the fact that he is under protection, that goes a long way,” laments AFP Agathe Lecoulant, a 21-year-old political science student, who is visiting southern Brittany. with a friend. The prefect of Morbihan Pascal Bolot, who went to Carnac on Sunday, also condemned "these actions as well as the unacceptable behavior of which the elected official and his family are victims", in a press release. This document was even taped to the notice board of the building permit, in good standing, of the DIY store. “It's scandalous, the threats that have been made to the mayor, the tags on the church. I'm disgusted by this kind of thing, ”laments Christian Obeltz, the author of the blog post, at the origin of a media frenzy that has caused a lot of misunderstanding.

"There was a formal defect, I don't know who it is, but I did not accuse the town hall, nor the Drac, nor the architect of the Buildings of France", recalls the amateur archaeologist. Two small Breton autonomist parties, the Breton Party and the Breton Democratic Union (UDB), as well as the deputy Les Républicains (LR) of Côtes-d'Armor Marc Le Fur have called for an investigation to define the responsibilities. "We may know in this way what the malfunction is," says Christian Obeltz. For his part, the mayor of Carnac hopes that this case will allow "strengthening of controls" on sites that could house archaeological remains. "We do not know if they were menhirs and we will never know unfortunately, because at the end of this administrative blunder, the archaeological site was destroyed", specifies Olivier Lepick.