August. The lanes around la Ponche are packed, port-side tables sell at a premium, and somewhere between two superyachts a fisherman is still trying to move his catch at the place aux Herbes. That friction is exactly what Les Echos chose to write about.
The French financial daily runs a long piece on what Saint-Tropez is living through right now: a slow, grinding tension between the Provençal village identity it has always claimed and a luxury economy that chips away, season after season, at whatever ordinary life used to exist here. The issue is not new. It is just louder.
Mayor Sylvie Siri has been firm about it for years: no accepting the idea of overtourism, no letting the village hollow out. Keep the Tropéziens on the peninsula. The intention is clear. The reality is rougher: property prices have long since pushed out anyone who might have stayed.
Still, the season rolls on. And every summer in Saint-Tropez, the same question comes back, a little sharper each time: who does this village actually belong to?
