Around one-and-three-quarter million people visit Corsica each year, drawn by a climate that's mild even in winter and by some of the most astonishingly perse landscapes in Europe. Nowhere in the Mediterranean are there beaches finer than Corsica's perfect half-moon bays of white sand and transparent water, or seascapes more inspiring than the granite cliffs of the west coast. Even though the annual influx of tourists now exceeds the island's population sevenfold, tourism has not spoilt the place: there are a few resorts, but overdevelopment is rare and high-rise blocks are confined to the main towns.
Set on the western Mediterranean trade routes, the island has always been of strategic and commercial appeal. Greeks, Carthaginians and Romans came in successive waves, driving native Corsicans into the interior. The Romans were ousted by Vandals, and for the following thirteen centuries the island was attacked, abandoned, settled and sold as a nation-state, with generations of islanders fighting against foreign government. Two hundred years of French rule have had a limited effect on Corsica, and the island's Baroque churches, Genoese fortresses, fervent Catholic rituals and a Tuscan-influenced indigenous language and cuisine show a more profound affinity with neighbouring Italy.
Corsica's uneasy relationship with its motherland has worsened in recent decades. Economic neglect and the French government's reluctance to encourage Corsican language and culture spawned a nationalist movement in the early 1970s, whose clandestine armed wings are still engaged in a bloody conflict with the central government. The violence seldom affects tourists but signs of the "troubles" are everywhere, from the black "Corsica Nazione" graffiti sprayed over roadsigns, to the bullet holes plastering public buildings.
The late 1990s also saw a marked upsurge in political assassinations, most of them episodes in long-standing vendetta-style feuds between rival separatist factions and their Mafia partners. Attempts by Alain Juppé's Gaullist government to diffuse the crisis became embroiled in controversy when the prime minister himself was accused of conducting secret negotiations with the nationalist paramilitaries, while outwardly insisting he "never talked to terrorists". Lionel Jospin's socialist government has fared little better. It kept alive an eight-month ceasefire, but this ended violently in February 1998 when the island's popular prefect (the de facto governor of Corsica) was shot dead on the streets of Ajaccio. Although none of the mutually loathing terrorist groups admitted responsibility, the killing provoked widespread public outrage and a definite erosion of support for the armed struggle.
The French government, however, was unable maintain this public sympathy after the replacement prefect, Bernard Bonnet, was implicated in a scandal known as " l'affaire de la paillote " ("the shack affair"). Acting under his direct orders, a team of police commandos was caught red-handed burning down a restaurant illegally erected on a beach near Ajaccio. Bonnet was imprisoned for his role in the debacle, discrediting the state and provoking a swing of support back towards the nationalists, who polled 24 percent in the ensuing elections.
Relations with Paris may have reached an all-time low, but only the most hard-line radicals on the island these days advocate total independence. Aside from four international airports, eight maritime ports and hugely subsidized transport links with the mainland, Corsica is bankrolled by nearly a billion francs of government money each year. It also receives roughly 7 billion francs annually (€4116 per head of population) in EU subsidies, making it the most heavily subsidized region in France. Moreover, Corsicans are exempt from social security contributions and the island as a whole enjoys preferential tax status, while one third of the permanent population is an employee of the state. Increasingly, the armed struggle is seen by islanders as biting the hand that feeds.
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