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A wave of protesters has invaded French cities. Between 400,000 and 800,000 people gave life to festive, popular and peaceful demonstrations almost everywhere, tainted – especially at the end, when the peaceful demonstrators had already returned home – by the usual scuffles between the black bloc and the police. But the chaos of October 17 was not repeated.
Nuñez: «A thousand arrested»
This time, in Paris and in dozens of other centres, a very different day was experienced from the one that ended with thousands of arrests, destroyed shops and looting. At the end of the day, the Minister of the Interior, Laurent Nuñez, announced “a thousand arrests”: “At the same time on 17 October we were at 385. This avoided the worst today”, he said. It is no coincidence that 70,000 policemen, gendarmes and special services agents had been mobilised.
Orléans, the anti-RN march and Bardella’s re-election
Perhaps this dissuasive force also served to discourage the violent, who during the day were also greatly feared in Orléans for the congress of the Rassemblement National. Instead in Orléans, with several leaders at the head of the march, including the socialist secretary Olivier Faure and the secretary of the CGT union Sophie Binet, the demonstration – 13,000 according to the police, 26,000 according to the organizers – took place amidst colorful slogans against Marine Le Pen and anti-RN chants. Meanwhile, within the congress, without any surprise, the re-election of Jordan Bardella, the only candidate to succeed him to the office of president, took place with 99% of the votes.
Paris, the diverted route and the clashes at the end of the procession
In Paris, where one hundred thousand were marching, tension grew in the last few hours also due to the prefecture’s decision to withdraw approval for the traditional route, Bastille-Nation, rerouting the procession onto the peripheral boulevard des Maréchaux, from place d’Italie to the Porte de Vincennes. Despite the protests, including those of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who from the Parisian demonstration defined them as “provocations that only waste our time”, the demonstrators accepted the change.
Only at the end of the march, with the vast majority of demonstrators already leaving, there were clashes between some black blocs, who threw rockets and stones and set fire to bins, and the police, who used tear gas and water cannons to disperse them.
Scuffles from Toulouse to Grenoble
Scuffles also occurred in other cities. The most serious incident was recorded in Toulouse, where a demonstrator suffered a serious wound to his hand – some fingers apparently severed – probably from the explosion of a bomb that was close to him. Tension also occurred in Marseille upon the arrival of the procession at the Porte d’Aix, with the police charging a few dozen people entirely dressed in black. In Lyon, however, some demonstrators crossed the lines established by the prefecture to delimit the area prohibited for demonstrations, while in Lille and Grenoble around 400 black blocs indulged in vandalism.
Mélenchon to Macron: “give in” or leave
Among the crowds that marched through the streets of the cities, there were many slogans against out-of-control prices, but from today also against the bans on demonstrating and the limitations decided this week by the government and considered by many to be “liberticidal”. Mélenchon, at the head of the Parisian demonstration, appealed to Emmanuel Macron to “give in” to the students’ demands, or to leave: “If he doesn’t, he will only be left with the exit door.”
Yet another poll, six months before the presidential elections, sees the leader of La France Insoumise challenging in the run-off – whatever his centre- or centre-left opponents – an increasingly solitary Marine Le Pen.