Béziers is like Nîmes without the Roman bits, but with even more social problems and drug-dealing. In both la Corrida has a massive following (and YES they DO kill the bulls) and in Béziers there is nostalgia for the period in the 70s when there was a winning rugby club. This combination of Blood, Violence, cultural and economic deprivation, with an unhappy mix of pieds noirs and the very Algerians who expelled them but have now migrated to live in the tower blocks means that there the newly cleaned façades are like whited sepulchres..