Clap Your Hands if You Believe in Monegasques

What are Monegasques? Apparently they are the citizens of Monaco. However they are not just any citizens of Monaco; they are people who were born there of native stock. They comprise about twenty percent of the population apparently. All the other inhabitants of Monaco consist of those people who moved to Monaco just before the financial police in their country of origin felt their collars. With the possible exception of the Grimaldi family itself I don't think I know of any Monegasques and I'm starting to seriously wonder whether any actually exist.

For starters Monaco is so built up that there probably isn't room for a woman to give birth without the baby hitting a couple of tax evaders on its way out. Secondly, and much more importantly, how could these people possibly afford to live in Monaco? I rather suspect that any child not of millionaire birth is discreetly escorted to the border when they're old enough to walk. Think about this for a moment, Monaco revolves around wealth (and a fair bit of wealth revolves around Monaco) but what about those people who don't have any and are only in Monaco because of an accident of birth. I find it difficult to believe that clerks, postmen, pool cleaners and the like could possibly afford the rents in Monaco even if they were born there. This theory is given credence by the fact that a good proportion of the people who work in Monaco actually commute from France.

Monaco is somewhat on the small side, I've been in carparks that are larger, and even cramming its thirty thousand odd citizens (of both sorts) in must be quite a chore. Despite this Monaco has room for an oceanographic centre and a royal palace. They even have a football team which competes in the French league. Actually their football team does quite well due to the fact that large numbers of skilled footballers tend to move to Monaco and then drop in to play a few games for the local team to keep in practice. Football aside teams from Monaco don't exactly set the sporting world on fire although if money laundering ever becomes an Olympic sport (and there are representations from the Turks & Caicos and the BVI) then it will be gold, gold, gold to Monaco all the way. I can't help wondering what the presence of so many international stars does to the ambitions of rising young Monegasque footballers. Another reason I think for refusing to believe in Monegasques.

There is some evidence that there might be a few Monegasques about. For instance the prince is guarded by about a hundred of them. The Compagnie des Carabiniers du Prince are raised in Monaco (although the officers are, apparently, French) and hang around the palace looking impressive. That's about it for a military presence in Monaco although their fire brigade is officially a military force and has its own arsenal. Seriously, who arms their fire brigade? Social workers in Monaco probably have their own armoured vehicles. Even as I typed that last sentence I could visualise social workers in Australia nodding in agreement and going green with envy.

Despite the wealth of job opportunities available in the palace guarding and combat fire fighting fields I really don't think its enough to soak up all the available Monegasque manpower indicated by a twenty percent share of the population. I think there are at most a couple of hundred Monegasques who move around a lot at census time. They are probably over represented in such things because most of the inhabitants of Monaco have already proved they're not crazy about providing too much in the way of information to people from the government asking questions.