On Friday, the evening before mass protests that were planned across France, he attended a Céline Dion concert in Paris with his wife, Brigitte, prompting comparisons to Louis XIV and Marie Antoinette. On Sunday evening, he was forced to give a televised speech condemning the “unbridled violence” and riots that erupted in French cities over the weekend. The rioters that burned makeshift barricades of bicycles in Paris, destroyed the steeple of Limoges’ town hall and set fire to Lyon’s tourism office were described as “LE CHAOS” on the front page of La Tribune Dimanche, and “SCENES D’INSURRECTION” on Le Parisien Dimanche.
By Sunday, protests had also taken place in Spain, Portugal and Italy. Today’s newsletter explains what happened in France over the weekend, and why this crisis threatens to engulf Macron’s government. First, here are the weekend’s headlines.
The Vatican | Pope Leo told a crowd gathered in St Peter’s Square on Sunday that he would “gradually resume” his activities, at his first appearance before the faithful since undergoing an operation to remove a cancerous tumour from his lung. UK news | A “well-known individual” is trying to secure a permanent injunction against the Guardian and ITN to prevent them from publishing details of serious allegations made against him. US politics | Donald Trump fired his immediately embattled new press secretary, Katie Zacharia, on Friday evening after just five days in the job.
The conservative commentator becomes the shortest serving occupant of the role in US history. Reform | A Reform UK mayor is under police investigation for allegedly showing “naked and sexualised” images of himself to a female member of staff. Luke Campbell, a former Olympic boxing champion, is understood to have been questioned under caution by Humberside police.
Energy | The development of a huge AI datacentre hailed by the UK government has received a fresh setback after Microsoft pulled out of the project over concerns about power supplies. In the early hours of Sunday, cleaners started to remove the detritus from Parisian streets: shards of glass from broken shop windows, smashed bus shelters, burned out cars. The smell of teargas still lingered in the Métro station at Place de la République.
About 855 people have been arrested in Paris, and a total of 2,400 have been arrested across France. Lamia El Aaraje, the Socialist deputy mayor of Paris, said the capital had experienced a level of violence “we had never seen before.” There have been so many incredible images of destruction (see our gallery here) that it’s possible to forget Saturday was, for the most part, defined by peaceful protests. Hundreds of thousands of people, many of them schoolchildren and parents, joined marches across the country.
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