The Times - UK - 04.12.2021

the times | Saturday December 4 2021 49

Wo r l d

The mainstream conservative contend-
er for the French presidency will emerge
tomorrow from a party run-off with the
odds favouring Valérie Pécresse, a can-
didate feared by Emmanuel Macron.
Pécresse, 54, president of the Paris
regional council, came a close second
place in the first round on Thursday
behind Éric Ciotti, the radical right-
wing MP in Côte d’Azur, but the three
eliminated contenders have all backed
her as better qualified to win the April
elections for the Republicans party.
After the conservatives lurched right-
ward to compete with Marine Le Pen

A celebrity gardener who won wide
praise after killing a burglar has been
accused of organising the crime in an
attempt to scare his wife.
Daniel Malgouyres, 72, whose gar-
den in Saint Adrien garden near Béziers
in southern France has been garlanded
with prizes, went on trial this week
charged with murder.
Police said he planned a fake burg-
lary in 2017 after Françoise, 62, his wife,
discovered that he had a lover.
Deputy-superintendent Thierry
Laporte told Montpellier criminal
court that Malgouyres wanted to
frighten his wife into leaving home so
he could keep the hundreds of thou-
sands of euros they had stashed away.
The court heard that Malgouyres
hoped to separate from his wife without
having to share the money they had
earned after opening their garden to

Adam Sage Paris

address, officials have only just found

Alesha. A picture was published of him

beaming next to the animal, whom he

named Keskileene, meaning “Promis-

ing” in the Yakut language.

Putin is known as an animal lover.

His dogs — Buffy, Yume, Verny and

Pasha — were gifts from foreign

leaders. He once received a Siberian

tiger as a birthday present, while Mos-

cow’s mayor has given him a goat.

Alesha called the cow Promising

despite a solid record in President Sark-

ozy’s cabinet and in her Paris role. The

defeat of Xavier Bertrand, the Republi-

cans favourite, and Michel Barnier, the

former Brexit negotiator, upset

Macron’s calculations. He had cast Ber-

trand, president of the northern Hauts-

de-France region, as his key adversary.

With Bertrand out and Zemmour, an

anti-Islam television polemicist,

Rise of Paris chief puts Macron on alert

France
Charles Bremner Paris

and Éric Zemmour, the nationalist anti-

immigrant candidates, Ciotti, 56, is not

being written off. The political world fo-

cused, nevertheless, yesterday on the

prospect of a showdown between Ma-

cron and the woman whom his lieuten-

ants used to dismiss as his female clone.

“I am the only one who can beat

Emmanuel Macron. At the Élysée

Palace, they’re going to have to rewrite

their scenario,” Pécresse said after

reaching the run-off round. “I am a

woman who wins and gets things done.”

The former senior civil servant, who

entered politics as an aide to President

Chirac in 1998, was savouring her

revenge against a male-dominated

party that wrote her off as a lightweight

siphoning off Le Pen’s support, Pécresse

would have a real chance of breaking

through, commentators said.

A minister told Le Parisien: “We

would have preferred Bertrand because

he doesn’t have the stature. Pécresse

comes over more serious and above all

more sincere. And then she’s a woman.”

The Republicans have never fielded a

female candidate and no woman has

reached the presidency. François Bay-

rou, the veteran leader of the Demo-

cratic Movement and an ally of

Macron, calls Pécresse his biggest

threat because she appeals to much of

the same centre-right urban electorate.

Another minister told Le Point web-

site that Pécresse was dangerous for the

president. “She is a woman. She stands

for the calm liberal right. She doesn’t

ooze dishonesty like Bertrand. Her

posh side pleases good conservatives.”

Pécresse has set out to show that she

is as tough as her rivals on law and order

and immigration. She claims that

France is endangered by “Islamo-left-

ists” and that their influence is spread-

ing. She has been striving to distance

herself from Macron, 43, attacking him

for “burning through the state coffers”

to bribe voters with benefits and subsi-

dies. Last year she described him to The

Times as “a French Tony Blair” who was

failing to heal deep national divisions.

Éric Zemmour: “Am I the French Trump?

No, I’m more like Boris”, Magazine

Valérie Pécresse

says that she is

“a woman who

wins and gets

things done"

Killer gardener ‘staged robbery to scare wife’

public visits. They had hidden the cash

in the freezer and pots to avoid paying

income tax.

Laporte said that Malgouyres had

promised the burglars, David Viers, 43,

and Richard Bruno, 57, that they could

keep the €100,000 in the safe. The offi-

cer said that the plan went wrong when

the gardener’s wife refused to divulge

the code to the safe despite being

punched and threatened with a gun.

The court was told that Malgouyres

went upstairs with Viers and shot him

dead. Laporte said that Viers was killed

after he threatened to reveal the truth

to the wife when he realised that he

wasn’t going to get his payoff.

Bruno and Richard Llop, 56, a friend

of Malgouyres, are also accused of

helping to organise the scam. They

have pleaded guilty, claiming that Mal-

gouyres was behind the plot.

Malgouyres denies the allegations,

insisting that he defended himself

against real burglars. He told police that

he suspected the crime was planned by

his son Olivier, 41, with whom relations

had deteriorated.

Malgouyres spent 18 years turning

the stone quarry where he played as a

child into one of France’s finest orna-

mental gardens, complete with water

lilies, lotus flowers, bougainvilleas,

agaves, pampas grass and rose beds.

It won a television competition to

find the country’s favourite garden in

2013 and attracts 40,000 visitors a year,

who pay a €6 entrance fee.

Malgouyres’s wife told the court that

she suspected his real intention was to

have her killed to avoid a costly divorce

settlement after she learnt he was

having an affair with Yolanda Davila

Pardo, a Venezuelan employee.

Malgouyres has said, however, that

Davila Pardo was only a passing fancy

and added: “My lover was the garden.”

The trial continues.

President Putin likes to give puppies.

He once sent one to a seven-year-old

girl in Tula, south of Moscow, and

another to a pupil in Kyrgyzstan. This

year, however, he dispatched a cow to

Russia’s far east.

Many of the gifts have been request-

ed by children during Putin’s annual

June “phone-in with the people” — in

which citizens seek his help. Invariably,

Putin promises to go over the heads of

local bureaucrats and sort things out.

This year Alesha Sokolnikov, 13, from

the Churapchinsky district of Russia’s

Sakha republic, asked the president for

a cow for his family, who have struggled

since their home burnt down four years

ago. Owing to a mix-up with his

Holy Cow! Putin answers

boy’s prayers with livestock

Russia

Tom Parfitt Moscow

causes the disintegration

of these materials and

contributes to their

rapid deterioration.”

The danger is

heightened because

Cordoba is the hottest

city on the Iberian

peninsula. In summer,

when it reaches almost

47C, conservationists

detected the highest

levels of condensation.

“When the moment of

greatest evaporation

converges with the

moment of greatest

influx of tourists... the

absolute humidity

indices of the

environment rise very

noticeably, which poses a

risk to... the materials

most sensitive to

moisture,” the report

said. One of these

materials is wood, from

which the roof is largely

made. The report said it

was “fundamental to

implement all measures

that improve the

ventilation... to control

the flows of visitors,

avoiding agglomerations

and spreading them out

during visiting hours”.

The risk has caused

concern among heritage

experts. During the

Islamic period in Spain

it was the second-biggest

mosque by surface area

after the Holy Mosque

in Mecca. Famed for its

prayer hall’s forest of

columns and double-

tiered arches, it has

been influential on

western Islamic art.

Cordoba’s crown jewel

needs to let off steam

The Great Mosque of Cordoba, which became a cathedral in 1236, is known for the forest of columns and double-tiered arches in its prayer hall

MATTEO COLOMBO, POCHOLO CALAPRE/GETTY IMAGES

T

ourists are

threatening the

survival of the

Great Mosque

of Cordoba, one

of the world’s most

celebrated Islamic

monuments, with the

condensation they cause

(Isambard Wilkinson

writes). The danger

posed by sightseers has

been highlighted in a

report submitted to the

government this week.

The mosque, built

between the 8th and

10th centuries on the

site of a former church,

has been a cathedral

since the southern

Spanish city’s

reconquest by Christian

forces in 1236. It has up

to two million visitors a

year.

Condensation has

damaged several areas,

including its horseshoe-

arched mihrab, the

prayer niche indicating

the direction of Mecca.

The lack of ventilation

poses a great risk

because the body heat

emitted by each visitor

contributes to the

evaporation of water in

the architectural

structures of the

cathedral-mosque, the

report adds. “[This]