South-West high-speed line: Gathering in Gironde of opponents of the railway project, a gendarmerie helicopter targeted by gunfire

Collectives of opponents and the radical environmentalist movement Earth Uprisings are mobilizing on Saturday in Gironde against the future high-speed rail line (LGV) in the South-West, a gathering placed under surveillance by the authorities.

According to the gendarmerie, 800 to 1,000 people, including a “high proportion” of hooded radical activists, were present around 8 a.m. in a camp set up on private land in the small town of Lerm-et-Musset, 75 km to the south. from Bordeaux.

It is there, on the borders of the Landes forest, that an undeclared demonstration with still unclear contours is to take place in the afternoon, presented by the organizers as a series of “games” against the future connection between Bordeaux , Toulouse and Dax – “big useless project” worth around fifteen billion euros, they denounce.

The authorities had mentioned this week the possible participation of around 3,000 opponents with “several hundred violent people”. “Weapons by destination” – crossbows, pétanque balls – were seized during pre-flight checks.

“The objective is not to allow a ZAD to be established,” the prefect of Gironde, Etienne Guyot, told AFP on Friday.

According to the gendarmes, around twenty “S files” and people already checked during demonstrations against the A69 in Occitanie are present. A police helicopter monitoring the area was targeted by fireworks mortars, without causing any injuries or damage.

According to the prefecture, incidents have already taken place: “shots in the direction of the gendarmerie helicopter were heard,” she specifies on X.

“Pharaonic” construction site

Work has started north of Toulouse but the necessary authorization for railway developments south of Bordeaux (AFSB), prior to the LGV project itself expected in 2028, remains to be delivered by the end of November.

The LGV aims to connect, in 2032, Toulouse to Paris in three hours and ten minutes, saving one hour on the current route. A branch crossing the east of the Landes forest should connect Dax to Bordeaux in twenty minutes less and, one day, allow direct connections with Spain.

The President (PS) of Nouvelle-Aquitaine Alain Rousset defends an “investment for at least a century” which would make it possible to “take” off the road the 10,000 trucks coming up from Spain every day, by freeing up existing lines for freight .

But opponents – local elected officials and parliamentarians, residents, foresters and wine growers – denounce a “deadly” project which, according to them, would lead to the artificialization of around 5,000 hectares, notably crossing the Ciron valley, a tributary of the Garonne, where there is an ancestral beech forest.

They advocate a renovation of existing lines to develop “everyday trains” and criticize the imposition of a special tax on 2,340 municipalities close to the route for this “pharaonic” project, co-financed by the State, local authorities and the European Union.