Short answers, pulled from the story.
Pasquale Paoli, born in 1725, led a rebellion against foreign powers and founded the Corsican Republic, governing from Corte from 1755 to 1769. He established a deliberative assembly called the Diet, elected by universal manhood suffrage, and the republic was the first working example of Enlightenment constitutional principles until the American Revolution.
On the 21st of August 1975, twenty members of Corsican Regionalist Action, led by Edmond Simeoni, occupied the Depeille wine cellar near Aléria to protest the economic situation and land takeovers in the eastern plain. French Interior Minister Michel Poniatowski sent 2,000 riot police and gendarmes, and the assault on the 22nd killed two gendarmes and one ARC member. The episode led directly to the founding of the FLNC on the 4th of May 1976.
The National Liberation Front of Corsica, or FLNC, was founded on the 4th of May 1976 as a merger of two armed groups: the Fronte Paesanu di Liberazone di a Corsica and Ghjustizia Paolina. Its founding was announced at a press conference in Casabianca and marked by bombings across Corsica and mainland France.
By 2012, polls showed support for full independence at 10-15% among Corsicans, while support for increased devolution within France ran as high as 51%. Among the general French population, 30% expressed a favourable view of Corsican independence.
Edmond Simeoni, born in 1934 and died in 2018, is considered the father of modern Corsican regionalism and nationalism. He led the occupation of the Depeille wine cellar at Aléria in 1975 and was politicised by the campaign against nuclear testing at Argentella in 1960. His son Gilles Simeoni, born in 1967, became the first president of the Corsican regional executive council.
In the 2017 Corsican Assembly elections, the pro-autonomy coalition Pe a Corsica won 56.46% of the vote and 41 out of 51 seats. In the same year's French legislative elections, three of the four deputies elected from Corsica were nationalists from Pe a Corsica: Paul-Andre Colombani, Michel Castellani, and Jean-Felix Acquaviva.