REPORTING. “The free party is never over”: in the Cher, these irreducible “party people” continue to dance

On the fifth day of the festival, Tuesday May 5, there are now less than 3,000 final participants in the free party in the Cher, near Bourges, compared to 20,000 at the start of the event, last Friday. Four people were treated in an absolute emergency, more than 3,500 reports were drawn up. Some school bus lines were interrupted along the free-party route and 75 middle school students were unable to go to class on Monday. If a few participants are starting to show the impact, most still seem in good shape and ready to hold on.

Some partygoers have an increasingly heavy step and a blank look as they walk down the aisles, like Théo, who is putting away his things and getting ready to hit the road: “I must have slept about fifteen hours since Thursday evening… So let’s say that I have 20% battery left. But I can sleep during the journey, so it’s okay.”

Others, Swann and Anthony for example, have experience of these festive marathons and know their bodies. “In truth, we are alive and well, as we should be. We slept well, especially during the day. Impeccable, they describe. I went to bed around 7 a.m., woke up around 2 p.m., just to get a good night’s sleep a little later, then things went very well.”

“For now, it’s okay. I think that when I get home this evening or tomorrow, we’ll take a nice big nap just to catch up a little. But we’ll take it easy on the way back, not too quickly, that will be important.”

A party player from Cornusse

à franceinfo

“I don’t sleep much but I’m still in good shape. The secret is to eat and drink lots of waterexplains another party member with small eyes. Little eyes? I’ll have to take a little nap afterward it’ll be better.”

If the latter have indeed consumed narcotics, sometimes to go the distance, it is also possible to like free parties and not take drugs, assures Guillaume, a Parisian who wants to stay until the end. “I don’t consume, so I don’t drink alcohol either. I have food, I eat every day, I have fun, I walk around, it’s a campsite in fact. We laugh, we see people dancing to the same music. We come from all over Europe, we meet people. So I feed on life, that’s what I consume. That’s what I do. I’ve been free partying for 20 years, I’m 37”he says.

The defense of a way of life is also what keeps Sarah, a 33-year-old from Tours, going: “As soon as I start to get tired, we go to bed and come back full of energy. And before, it wasn’t the same, before there was no sleeping. Now, I sleep at 2 or 3 a.m., I go to sleep, we eat.”

“The more the years pass, the more invested we feel in the causeassure Sarah. Because in fact at the beginning, we did that, we didn’t really know why. The free party is not just a free party, it is political. We do not agree with all these systems. The last wall [de son]the last box, the last car that goes bam bam, we’re going to be there, boom boom.” Some participants also wait until the last moment and will go through the forest to avoid police roadblocks and therefore escape fines.