Jean-Baptiste Motroni

Jean-Baptiste Ferdinand Motroni was born on 10 November 1934. His family roots were in the Cap Corse, the peninsula north of Bastia, and throughout his life he remained attached to his village of Sisco and to the hamlet of Sagro, in the commune of Brando, where he lived on family land. He trained as a masseur-kinésithérapeute, a physiotherapist, and practised that profession before devoting himself to public life. He became involved in socialist politics early, as a member of the SFIO, the French Section of the Workers' International that later gave way to the Socialist Party.

Motroni was first elected to the general council in 1973, when Corsica still had a single departmental council, as the first representative of the newly created canton of Sagro-di-Santa-Giulia, which joined the territories of Brando and Nonza on the eastern and western sides of the Cap Corse. After the island was divided into two departments he continued to represent the canton on the general council of Haute-Corse, winning six terms in all and serving until March 2011. He also spent around ten years as a member of the Corsican regional assembly.

He was the substitute of François Giacobbi, senator for Haute-Corse, and when Giacobbi died in March 1997 Motroni took his place in the Senate on 8 March 1997. In the Palais du Luxembourg he sat with the Socialist group and on the economic affairs committee. He stood for a full term in the senatorial election of September 1998 but was defeated by Paul Natali of the RPR, and his mandate ended on 30 September 1998.

Weeks later, in November 1998, the government of Lionel Jospin appointed him to the Economic and Social Council as a qualified figure in the economic, social, scientific or cultural field, and he served there for several years. In December 2010, aged 76 and then the longest-serving general councillor in Corsica, he announced that he would not seek another term. He was succeeded in 2011 by Ange-Pierre Vivoni, mayor of Sisco.

Motroni was married to Eugénie Motroni, née Tomasini, and they had two daughters. At the time of his death he had several grandchildren and great-grandchildren. On his retirement from the general council he said that besides politics, which never stopped fascinating him, he loved his family, reading, gardening and travel, and that he was a regular user of the internet and the iPad. Colleagues remembered him for his finesse of mind and his sense of humour.

Jean-Baptiste Motroni died on 28 October 2026, aged 91. His death was announced by his family and reported the same day by France 3 Corse ViaStella. The cause of death was not made public; the family's notice thanked his doctor and nurses for their care. His funeral was held on 29 October 2026 at the church of Saint-Martin in Sisco, followed by burial in the family vault in Sisco.

With nearly four decades on the general council, Motroni was one of the longest-serving local politicians in modern Corsican history and a link to an era of island politics of which few witnesses remain. He was proudest of the practical work done with the mayors of the Cap Corse on sanitation, roads and the safeguarding and restoration of the area's heritage. In his farewell interview he argued that elected officials must show absolute probity, saying that anyone who diverted a single euro of public money should be barred from standing for election for ever.