Violent episodes “tarnished” on the 11th day of strike movements against Emmanuel Macron’s pension reform, while the number of protesters was down in France today amid an increasingly tense climate between trade unions and the executive.

In the south of Paris, a restaurant was attacked in which the French president had celebrated his victory in the first round of the presidential elections, in 2017. Firefighters intervened in time and put out the fire that broke out at the entrance of “La Rotonde”, which had been arson attacked again in 2020 during the marches of ” yellow vests”.

At the same time, railway workers invaded the building of the American financial company BlackRock, in Paris. Protesters entered the Le Centorial office building, located near the Opéra Garnier, holding red flares and shooting smoke bombs.

Also, protesters lit fires and destroyed several bus stops in Place Denfert-Rochereau, Paris.

In the capital, the CGT union spoke in the afternoon of 400,000 demonstrators, compared to 450,000 last Thursday. The authorities, who had spoken of 93,000, have not yet released their estimate for today.

In major French cities, turnout also appeared to be down. In Rennes, usually a stronghold of the protesters, the prefecture spoke of 8,500 citizens who took to the streets, while the unions speak of 20,000.

The same trend seemed to prevail in other large cities of western France, such as in Nantes (15,000 to 50,000 people) and in Brest (10,000 to 18,000), but also in the south, in Nice (2,400 to 20,000) and Marseille (10,000 to 170,000) or even at central france, in Clermont-Ferrand (7,500 to 20,000);

Authorities last night predicted a less massive nationwide demonstration of between 600,000 and 800,000 people, with 60,000 to 90,000 in Paris. A total of 11,500 police and gendarmes had been mobilized.

Unions, however, expected a large turnout in the protests against the increase in the retirement age from 62 to 64 years. “There is a lot of questioning” of this reform, stressed the head of the CFDT union, Laurent Berget.

Blockades of high schools and university buildings took place in the morning in Lyon (east), Rennes (west), Lille (north) and Paris, including the Sorbonne.

Blockades at the entrances to major cities also caused traffic jams.