Our nearest town, Lavelanet, is a big one for the area - 7000 + inhabitants. It’s fallen on hard times as the textile industry that kept it busy and prosperous is in ever more terminal decline. Shops have closed, hotels are boarded up. But the council works hard to keep things positive. There are festivals - the yearly Jazz’velanet which livens up November and various other points of the year, la Fête de la Noisette, Festiv’Art, Printemps des Poètes …… and events of all kinds every month. Cultural events are often centred on the municipality-run cinema, which doubles as a theatre and performance space of all kinds. That’s where we went yesterday, to see Andre Halimi’s ‘Lettres de Délation’. This tells the story, previously almost unknown to me, of those French who during the occupation in
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