Fires were still burning in the streets of Paris late on Saturday after a day of clashes between police and demonstrators across France, in protests centred on education, the rising cost of living and the weakening of public services. Police fired tear gas at crowds that the BBC reports numbered between 500,000 and 800,000 nationwide. By the end of the day, the Interior Ministry said more than 400 people had been detained around the country.
In Limoges, about 400 kilometres south of the capital, firefighters were unable to stop a blaze consuming the city's town hall. The local prefecture said two-thirds of the facade had been destroyed and that the building was now "largely lost." Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez told journalists there had been an intrusion into the building and that a fire had been deliberately started inside it.
Why it matters
The unrest comes roughly six months before France's presidential election in April, and it has immediately become a political argument about who is responsible for the disorder. The government of President Emmanuel Macron has blamed the "extreme left" for mobilising Saturday's demonstrations. The leader of the main left-wing party countered that the government was "playing with fire" by "provoking chaos" in the streets.
The scale of the damage also matters beyond the politics of the moment. A historic municipal building burning in a regional city, a police station damaged in Marseille and a tourist office set alight in Lyon point to a protest movement that has spread well past its origins in schools and is now drawing in a much wider range of groups.
How a school protest became a national movement
The demonstrations began last month in schools in poor neighbourhoods on the northern outskirts of Paris. Anger there was initially focused on teacher absences and dilapidated buildings, according to the BBC. That grievance quickly grew into a nationwide campaign against inequality, low public investment and what protesters describe as a decline in educational standards.
Saturday's crowds reflected that widening base. Among those taking part were "yellow vest" activists, the movement known for opposing fuel price increases, alongside trade unions and young people. The BBC reports that a broad variety of groups have joined the protests across the country.
The day was marked by what the Interior Ministry described as an escalation in violence. In Marseille, images showed flames and masked people in the streets, and a police station was damaged. The prefect of the Bouches-du-Rhône department, where Marseille is located, said 107 police officers were injured, three of them very seriously, following looting and violence in the city.
In Lyon, in eastern France, demonstrators set fire to the tourist office, according to AFP and local media. Footage showed protesters standing in front of the burning building, with flames visible inside and outside, and several windows were smashed. Local police said "hostile individuals" prevented firefighters from tackling the blaze safely while officers worked to disperse "violent groups."
In Toulon, in the south, local authorities reported several outbreaks of violence at the front of the procession. Two police officers were injured by projectiles, and authorities said violent individuals dismantled barriers from a Christmas market and used them against police. Officials in Caen, in Normandy, also reported violence on the margins of a demonstration there, with some groups looting and vandalising.
A divided picture of the same day
The BBC's Paris correspondent, Hugh Schofield, described a sharp contrast between the official march, which ran from Place de la République to Place de Clichy, and events elsewhere in the capital. The main procession "seemed to proceed peacefully," he said, but small groups of demonstrators were moving around the city, some of them clearly intent on causing trouble. He compared the situation to the early days of the yellow vest movement eight years ago, when violence by small, uncontrolled groups overwhelmed the police.
The BBC's Adina Campbell, reporting from Paris, said many buildings in the surrounding streets had been wrecked and that some protesters were looting and throwing glass bottles, adding to the disorder. She said demonstrators, some of whom had come from the suburbs with the intention of causing disturbances, were continuing to confront police.
Nuñez, speaking on television, said police had helped peaceful demonstrations go ahead by containing violent participants. He criticised figures on the "extreme left" who, he said, had openly called for revolt, and said they would have to answer for the chaos seen on French streets on Saturday.
Macron said there was "no place for violence" in the country. In a post on social media, he wrote that those who destroyed and attacked prefectures and businesses and looted town halls would be "prosecuted and punished." He added that the country would stand together against "the sowers of chaos, who seek only to bring down our institutions and to prevent those expressing their demands peacefully from doing so."
What to watch
The immediate questions are whether the Limoges fire can be fully extinguished and how far the movement grows from here, with the presidential election now less than six months away and the government and the left trading blame for the violence.
