An intense smell of singeing took over the center of Paris on Sunday. Several charred cars, mountains with burned motorcycles and bicycles, broken shop windows everywhere and embers of barricades with garbage were testimony to the battle on October 17 between the riot forces and dozens of masked men, who returned to the charge a day later in front of the vandalized statue of the Republic to the shouts of "ACAB!" (acronym for "All Police Are Bastards" in English).
New scenes of high tension, with the usual rain of tear gas, revived the worst moments on Magenta Boulevard, where more than 20 businesses were looted and partially destroyed, such as the Urban Bakery cafe, where the attackers hit the façade with blunt objects to loosen debris and use it as a throwing weapon against the police.
"We knew there was going to be violence and that's why we closed the cafe a day early and protected the windows with plywood," explained an employee on site, Lilianne Prestat. "They broke in, to take what little there was, but the worst was what they did to the façade. Apparently they hammered it until the pipes were exposed... This doesn't look like France, I've never seen savagery like this."
More than 100,000 Parisians, largely students, marched along Magenta Boulevard in an indignant but festive tone in the first stages of Saturday's march. "I was already going to close the store, although I even had time to greet the protesters from inside to show solidarity with their cause," recalls Jahirul Azam, in front of a Lyca Mobile store.
"But when the crowd passed, the vandals arrived with their balaclavas and hoods," he recalls. "The first thing they did was rip out the video surveillance cameras, and then they took around fifty computers and more than 100 mobile phones, and they ruthlessly destroyed the counters. I estimate that this has cost me at least 150,000 euros. Who is going to pay us?"
To the shouts of "Tabac, Tabac, Tabac!", the La Barrique café-tabac, on Beaurepaire Street, was another of the targets of the attackers, who forced the metal closures. "They pushed me unceremoniously and hurt my forehead," recalls the manager Aline, who takes off her cap to show the stitches in a video that went viral on the networks. "They came with bags to fill with everything they could find, especially tobacco. And not happy, they ended up burning the establishment, which was very loved in the neighborhood."
Firefighters managed to put out the fire before it spread through the building. From the outside window you could see the mass of charred counters and chairs. A few meters from there, two cars were set on fire in the middle of the street. The systematic destruction, with broken shop windows and destroyed bus shelters, spread along Haussman Boulevard and Sebastopol Boulevard, which dawned on Sunday with a smoking pyre of more than thirty motorcycles and bicycles in the middle of the street.
The streets St. Martin and St. Dennis, frequented by tourists, meanwhile offered a surreal image. "We never expected to see something like this in Paris," commented two Italian tourists, Gianni and Francesco, who came to the auto show and found themselves trapped in the chaos outside the St. Martin gate on Saturday. "We had read about the student demonstrations and we had been warned, but we started hearing the sounds of grenade launchers and seeing smoke in the streets and we had to run in terror towards the hotel with our eyes red from the tear gas."
The Unisport store on St. Dennis Street was another favorite target. "I think they had previously chosen the stores they wanted to loot and this was obvious because of the sneakers," a worker who identified himself as Jacques alleged on Sunday. "I have never seen so much destruction in this city, not even during the yellow vest uprisings. When I came here early, with the silence in the background, it was as if a tornado had passed through. I really believe that it is creating an explosive social situation, and I fear that this is only the beginning."
The mayor of Paris, Emmanuel Grégoire, meanwhile went on Sunday to visit the affected merchants between the Place de la Bastille and the Place de la République. It is estimated that more than 1,500 businesses were affected by looting and looting on Saturday, around 400 in Paris alone. Grégoire acknowledged on the spot that the assaults were "premeditated and methodical." The mayor regretted that the police, totally overwhelmed, could not fulfill their function of protecting citizens in the midst of chaos.
