The standoff between the organizers of Vieilles Charrues and the elected officials of Carhaix threatens the festival

“If nothing changes by this summer, the 2024 edition of Vieilles Charrues could well be the last,” warns the festival in a long press release sent Monday April 22, 2024. While the 32nd edition, which will welcome David Guetta, Sting and Dadju, to be held from July 11 to 14, 2024, tempers are heating up again between the organizers, the town hall of Carhaix (Finistère) and the community of communes of Poher.

The Vieilles Charrues festival has existed since 1992, based on a 100% associative, non-profit model and thanks to “the participation of more than 7,000 volunteers belonging to nearly 130 local associations, to which more than 140 are donated each year. 000 euros, or 2.4 million for more than 20 years.

During the summer of 2023, “the festival publicly announced its interest in the premises of the former consular chambers (in the parking lot of which the main entrance to the event is located) and a sales agreement was signed on December 1. » The organizers would like to have permanent facilities (toilets, lighting, electricity) to organize concerts outside the festival dates. “The association planned to occupy these new premises from the summer of 2024,” they declare. According to them, “the municipality made known on February 23 by bailiff and just before the end of the legal deadline, the decision to pre-empt the building”. They regret that the decision to buy these buildings came “without prior discussions or explanations”.

In March, new disappointment for the festival. “Poher community announced to us on March 8 that it had decided to no longer make half of the land occupied by the festival campsites available from 2026, and required us to move them.” The areas proposed by the community of municipalities would not be sufficient since they were already occupied in past years to compensate for the lack of places. “The agreement ratified with the Brittany region and Poher community in December 2023 promised the security of the land made available for campsites and certain festival car parks,” specifies the festival.

Finally, in April, the Carhaix municipal council approved the rental rates for land in the Kerampuilh district, where the event takes place. “The town of Carhaix sent us on April 12, less than three months before the festival, an invoice for €367,000 for the use of the Kerampuilh meadow, buildings and the provision of municipal agents. Unfortunately, once again, there was no consultation or “sign of announcement” on the subject,” complains the festival.

If the organizers of the Vieilles Charrues festival proclaim their attachment “to Carhaix and its inhabitants for almost 30 years”, they announce that they are studying “the possibility of going elsewhere”. Speaking to AFP, Jean-Luc Martin, president of the Vieilles Charrues association, explains that he is looking for alternatives presenting “100 hectares in Brittany”. “Today, the festival is organized on 85 hectares but we sign an agreement each year with the town hall and each year, small pieces of land are stolen from us,” he explains. “A day will come when we will no longer be able to organize the festival because we welcome 80,000 people every day on the site. We want to be sure that we can sustain the use of the land for the next 10 years.”

In 2020, the Carhaix town hall proposed the creation of a mixed economy company (SEM) for the management of the Kerampuilh park, site of the festival. A proposal which “in principle suits us”, indicated Jean-Luc Martin. But the board of directors of Vielles Charrues “spoke out against the memorandum of understanding proposed by the town hall”: “There was no trace of the possibility of building on the land,” he explains.

For the mayor of Carhaix and president of Poher community, Christian Troadec (various left, regionalist), the management and presidency of the festival are “playing politics and blackmail”. “If they want to run for mayor of Carhaix in 2026, let them do so and the citizens will decide,” he told AFP on Tuesday April 23, 2024. Proof in his eyes of the political maneuvers in progress , the mayor, who is one of the founders of the festival, recalls that in 2020 the organizers had already expressed the possibility of moving the festival outside of Carhaix, to another town in central Brittany.

“They have lost the spirit of the festival,” considers the elected official, assuring: “there is no longer anyone from the original team on the board of directors. They left the void.” Currently, “they are organizing blackmail on facts which were anticipated and signed with them”, assures the elected official. For him, the organizers “since 2013 have aimed for gigantism” and are “in a sort of cultural productivism”. “It is my duty to defend the general interest and to ensure that the site remains a public site, open to other users” than Vieilles Charrues.