After the activation Thursday of 49.3 to pass the pension reform, the anger does not run out of steam in the street. In Paris, the Place d’Italie district was thus the scene of clashes with the police on Saturday evening, materialized in particular by fires from garbage cans or even the throwing of projectiles.
According to a police source, 81 people were arrested in and around Place d’Italie, where calm had returned around 10:30 p.m. This is the third evening of tension in the capital.
Garbage fires and tear gas
Opponents of the reform moved from the 8th to the 13th arrondissement, as gatherings in Place de la Concorde and on the Champs-Elysées had been banned earlier in the day by the police headquarters. Finally, at the call of the CGT Ile-de-France, a procession of “4,000” people according to the police marched towards the Butte-aux-Cailles district in the Place d’Italie district. During this rally, garbage can fires were lit, the windows of billboards and bus shelters targeted, construction barriers used to block streets.
Around 8 p.m., the police intervened, in particular the Motorized Violent Action Repression Brigades (BRAV-M), and used tear gas. The police made charges. Dispatched to put out a fire in Place d’Italie, the firefighters were prevented from doing so by groups of young people and the police “intervened to push the troublemakers”, said a police source. In the mess, people shouted “Macron resignation”, or “if you think of Macron you will never have dough”.
Between 6,000 and 15,000 demonstrators in Nantes
Elsewhere in France, the anger was also palpable on Saturday. Gatherings took place in several places in the regions, from large cities to medium-sized towns: Lille, Amiens, Caen, Saint-Etienne, Roanne, Besançon, Dijon, Grenoble, Gap, Annecy, Lodève, etc. A few hundred demonstrators also marched in Marseille.
Some processions counted several thousand people, as in Nantes (6,000 according to the police, 15,000 according to the unions) or Brest (between 5 and 8,000), with some tensions. In Bordeaux, an improvised procession brought together 1,900 people according to the prefecture. “The President of the Republic is obviously following the evolution of the situation” on the ground, for his part indicated the entourage of Emmanuel Macron.