Lille, France
France’s most iconic cigarette will no longer be French. Gauloise Brune, once famously smoked by the likes of philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and novelist Albert Camus, moved its factory from Lille to the Spanish coastal town of Alicante. Altadis, the company that owns the brand, said that smokers’ changing tastes had caused sales to slump to the point where a French production site was no longer profitable. French smokers are beginning to turn to light cigarettes, while Gauloise is known for its strong, almost bitter flavor. The conservative daily Le Figaro lamented “the end of one of our greatest symbols of national identity.”
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