Guadeloupe

French Overseas Department (French West Indies) / Trip with the Head of State (8 January 2011)

The Ile de Saint-John Perse and Laurent Voulzy was ‘discovered’ in the 15th century by Christopher Columbus, on his way to the New World. Two centuries later, it became a French province, an overseas department in the Caribbean Sea.

The French Head of State and his wife visited Guadeloupe on 9 January 2011 as part of a tour of the French Antilles. On their arrival at the Pôle Caraïbes de Petit-Bourg Airport, Carla and Nicolas Sarkozy were keen to pay tribute to the sterling efforts made by the emergency services in response to the heavy storms and rainfall affecting Guadeloupe at the beginning of the year by greeting some 30 firefighters, together with civil security military personnel, gendarmes, representatives of the ambulance service, policemen and members of the Defense operational centre. Carla and Nicolas Sarkozy then travelled to the commune of Saint-François for a visit including a tour of a local market gardening enterprise, Croc’Saveurs.