Several hundred people, most of them masked, marched this Thursday evening in the center of Rennes to denounce the immigration law, breaking several shop windows in the process and burning trash cans. This wild demonstration, called by several far-left movements, brought together around 450 people at the start of the evening according to the prefecture. Starting from Place Sainte-Anne around 8:30 p.m., the procession crisscrossed the city center behind a banner proclaiming “racist law anti-fascist response”.
The demonstrators, often dressed in black, broke several business windows and attempted to set fire to a bank branch on Place Hoche. A downtown clothing store was also targeted by protesters who smashed the window and took clothes. Several trash cans were also set on fire, according to the prefecture. The demonstration continued in the streets of the city center around 10 p.m.
It comes a few hours after the Constitutional Council largely censored the immigration law. The government announced that it was preparing to promulgate the text “in the coming hours” to apply the first measures “from this weekend”. During the day, several hundred farmers on board around a hundred tractors demonstrated peacefully in front of the Rennes prefecture to demand rapid action in the face of the crisis they are going through.