Against the South-West LGV, a demonstration made of “games” but also excesses in Gironde

DEMONSTRATION – Police in the mud and giant Kaplas. This Saturday, October 12, opponents of the future high-speed rail line (LGV) in the South-West met in Gironde to try « d’amplifier » their movement. Joined by the environmentalist movement Earth Uprisings, they demonstrated against this line which should bring Toulouse closer to Paris in 2032, as you can see in our video above.

According to the gendarmerie, 800 to 1,000 people, including one « forte proportion » of activists “hooded”met in a camp in Lerm-et-Musset, a village 75 km south of Bordeaux. Composed of a “care village” with doctors, a “mixed and mixed camping space chosen”a bar and association stands, the camp began to welcome activists this Friday.

The (undeclared) demonstration then took the form of songs and games, such as a “Giga Kapla”and “A Thousand Bornes” or a “Said the naturalist”. A wooden tower, intended to serve as “lookout” for the future, was notably erected in the Ciron valley, a tributary of the Garonne, and its ancestral beech forest, a Natura 2000 classified site and threatened by the LGV according to opponents.

Clashes with the gendarmerie

The authorities had expected 3,000 to 5,000 demonstrators this week, including “several hundred very violent individuals”. The gendarmes identified around twenty “S files” and people already checked during demonstrations against the A69 in Occitanie. A helicopter monitoring the area during the night from Friday to Saturday was targeted by fireworks mortars which did not hit it.

A short exchange of projectiles also took place on Saturday when demonstrators damaged a stuck law enforcement car, without causing any injuries. Indeed, according to the demonstrators the gendarmes would have “bogged down trying to follow the Giga-Kapla Action against the LGV”before their vehicle was tagged and damaged.

The LGV is widely supported by communities in Occitanie, but, in New Aquitaine, opposition to the project – born in the 1990s and relaunched since 2020 – is long-standing, mixing local elected officials and parliamentarians, residents, foresters and wine growers. Local collectives appealed to the Earth Uprisings, known in particular for their opposition to “basins” of Poitou, for “get off the radar at the national level”.

A “deadly” and “pharaonic” project

This line should shorten the train journey between Paris and Toulouse by 73 minutes and thus divert people from planes. A branch line through the Landes forest should connect Dax to Bordeaux in twenty minutes less than currently and, one day, allow direct connections with Spain.

Work has started north of Toulouse, but the necessary authorization for railway developments south of Bordeaux (AFSB), prior to the LGV project itself planned for 2028, remains to be issued by the end of November. The president (PS) of Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Alain Rousset, defends a “investment for at least a century”supposed ” to go out “ of the road the 10,000 trucks which come back from Spain every day, freeing up existing lines for freight.

But opponents denounce a project “deadly”which according to them would lead to the artificialization of around 5,000 hectares. They advocate a renovation of existing lines to develop “daily trains” and criticize the imposition of a special tax on more than 2,300 municipalities, close to the route, for this project “pharaonic” co-financed by the State, local authorities and the European Union.

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