Seduced by France’s rugged Deep South

In the first of a monthly series exploring his adopted country, Anthony Peregrine eats anchovies and talks rugby with the French Catalans in Roussillon

If you are to go among minority peoples early in 2017, may I suggest the French Catalans? They are found in France’s “Deep South”, where it bumps into Spain (and thus into the better-known “Spanish” Catalonia). I’ve just been, to kick off a 2017 tour de France. As my third French decade opens, I’ll be gadding about the land, visiting bits I like, have ignored for too long, or never known, but should have.

I started in what the French know as “Roussillon” because it makes sense to launch a tour of France with folk whose history is at least half-Spanish. Also because the region furnished France’s best chance of winter warmth. So it proved. As I bounced in, the high sky was brochure blue and the sun sharp enough for lunch, and evening aperitifs, on outside terraces.

Thus also was the landscape flattered. Here, the Pyrenees end abruptly at the Mediterranean, creating cliffs and creeks, corniches, valleys and slopes so steep that vineyards are vertical. The region accounts itself extreme, fierce of sun, colour and temperament, given to the playing of rugby, the eating of anchovies and the cultivation of moustaches.

Like most minorities, of course, Catalans will occasionally get on your nerves. (We’re dispensing with the minuses up front.) Their claims to identity may become strident, as if being born somewhere was any more a legitimate source of pride than emerging with a full set of fingers. Their self-image as contestataire (rebellious) also grows wearisome. But (a big “but”) the French Catalans are far too open and cultured to back bombast with bombs, or bore you senseless with separatist aspirations. They have a strong presence, and that’s sufficient.

You may sense this in starting point, Perpignan, which – like a spruce reformed drunk – is a revelation: shaved, articulate and shiny of complexion. Not long ago, the town wore an air of mild desperation. It over-relied, too, on Salvador Dali’s claim that Perpignan station was the centre of the universe. (It isn’t. It isn’t even the centre of Perpignan but a long slog out to a banal spot, full of ticket machines and punk-shaved derelicts, and flanked by a new,

Collioure, above and below right, is ‘the start of the thinking person’s Riviera’