#2 30 years of generally low-level separatist violence on the island.
While the corsican nationalists were generally NOT a murderous lot (except among themselves, all the historical leaders have been successively snuffed by their pals), "low level" doesn't really describe the corsican situation : in the 90's, there were about 600 bombings a year (not all politically motivated, remember, Corsica is the land of the vendetta by excellence, and historical research has shown for example that violent mortality among young men in the 19th century nearly equaled the same age bracket's WWI loss ratio IIRC), including a bona fide VBIED aimed at a rival leader in the late 90's that could have killed scores, but didn't only by chance; nowadays, I think it's down to "only" 100-150 bombings a year. Corsicans are notorious for long having been very active in three areas, organized crime, public administration/politics, and colonies (notably marines and foreign legion).
Of course, the run of the mill shootings up of a police station was so common it was not even worth mentioning - corsicans are the only french department (250 000 inhabitants, with lots of strangers) where firearms are very common, up to assault rifles and Rpg for the nationalists, and many law-abiding citizens pack heat, in full tolerated illegality (Corsica is handled with much "precautions" by the republic, and many things tacitly allowed there are not exactly reciprocated for the lowly continental).
I recall reading in a forum an american talking about french RKBA, and saying, when told french laws are restricitive in that area, that "no, no, that was no true, he once went to visit french friends, and they had lots of rifles and handguns and even a full-auto weapon"; of course, the fun part was he was talking about corsican friends.
This probably explains why the 2005 ramadan riots DIDN'T spread to Corsica :-).
Anyway, each time the topic of Corsica comes up, I can link to those pics of nationalists (scroll down for effect). Yeah!
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A bomb blast destroyed the tax office in the Corsican town of Bonfacio on Monday, just days after the conviction for murder of a pro-independence activist from the French Mediterranean island.