Mai 1968, vizita lui Charles de Gaulle în România și protestele din Franța reflectate în presa româno-franceză
MAY 1968, CHARLES DE GAULLE’S VISIT TO ROMANIA AND THE PROTESTS IN FRANCE REFLECTED IN THE ROMANIAN-FRENCH PRESS

Summary/Abstract: The press coverage of the first visit of a French president to Romania was meticulously prepared by the representatives of the foreign ministries of the two countries. It all started in 1967, when the event was first announced. Throughout the five days, French Television, the France Presse news agency and the main Paris newspapers – Le Monde, Le Figaro and LʾHumanité – were invited to accompany the Romanian-French presidential party. The visit was later postponed due to the Six-Day War and rescheduled in 1968, on different routes than the ones originally planned, the only destination outside Bucharest remaining on the itinerary being Craiova. Contacts were resumed regarding the journalistic coverage of the event, the schedule was reworked, and a month before General de Gaulle’s arrival on 14 May, the French media was very complimentary about Romania. The journalists who came to Bucharest reported the event extensively, very impressed by the reception of the Romanians, but they also reported on the growing protests of students and workers, brutally repressed by the police, events which shortened the visit to our country by one day. On 17 May 1968, when the French President was giving a fiery speech in Târgovişte, at the Royal Court under the Chindia Tower, the other members of the delegation were informed in turn that Paris had decided that the visit to Romania would end the following day and not on 19 May, as initially planned. The space given by the French press to the delegation’s foray into Romania was diminishing as the tension of The Red May confrontations grew in intensity. It was to be Charles de Gaulle’s last and most glorious foreign visit, precisely because of the protests in France that took place at the time and which led to his resignation from office less than a year later and, why not, his death in 1970. I researched documents in order to prepare an original study to present the coverage in the Romanian-French press of the events that took place at the same time in the two countries, in order to clearly define the context in which the visit of the head of state Charles de Gaulle to Romania and the protests in France took place.

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