Summary:
Protests over living costs, wages, housing and education took place across France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Portugal over the weekend of 30–31 October. In each country the day followed the same shape: organised marches through the afternoon, and, after dark, gatherings of black-clad and masked groups that brought clashes, arson and looting in several cities.
In France, Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez attributed the violence to the ultra-left and the radical extreme left, and described a Molotov cocktail thrown at a gendarme in Paris as attempted murder. The Interior Ministry’s count reached 779 arrests.
In Germany, more than 100 police officers were injured and 54 people arrested after evening violence in Frankfurt, where shops were looted, among them a weapons store. The domestic intelligence service had warned before the weekend that parts of the left-extremist scene were mobilising for the protests.
In Spain, police arrested around 10 people linked to the Blocus Telegram network, which coordinated unauthorised evening actions and directed looters to shops without police presence. Italy held a general strike called by the base union USB, marked by tensions in Rome. In Portugal, housing movements organised camps and marches.
Further protests are expected across Europe in the coming weeks. In France, major union confederations have called a nationwide strike for 5 November, with student blockades starting 2 November. Spanish unions have called a general strike for 11 November. Portuguese housing activists have demanded an Iberian strike on the same day; the major Portuguese confederations have not called one. Germany’s Gen Z regelt has announced local actions through early November, with Europe-wide protests scheduled for 20 November.
Detailed Report
1. Hundreds of Thousands March Across Five Countries as Evenings Turn Violent
Protests over living costs, wages, housing and education took place across France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Portugal over the weekend of 30–31 October. In each country the day followed the same shape. Organised marches filled the afternoon. After dark, groups in black clothing and masks gathered in several cities, and the evenings brought clashes, arson and looting.
France’s Interior Ministry counted 320,000 participants, 70,000 of them in Paris. In Italy, where the base union USB had called a general strike, the Interior Ministry estimated about 255,000 across more than 50 cities. In Germany, the Gen Z regelt initiative, which called marches in more than 30 cities, reported more than 160,000 online registrations.
The demands differed by country. In France they centred on the cost of living and education cuts. In Germany the Gen Z regelt platform combined school funding and living costs with opposition to any return of compulsory military service. In Italy the USB strike joined wages to opposition to war and rearmament. In Portugal the marches and camps were over housing.
2. France Arrests 779 After Night of Violence in Eight Cities
Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez told reporters on 29 October that 31 October was “at very high risk of public order disturbances” and presented “in many respects an atypical character.” He said calls for Halloween-evening gatherings came from the ultra-left movement, the radicalised extreme left and radicalised yellow-vest sites. The messages accompanying them called for revolution, insurrection, looting and wrecking. Some 70,000 police and gendarmes were mobilised, and risk assessments cited 300 to 600 ultra-left militants expected in Paris. Nuñez warned that Halloween would not be “a legitimate reason to hide one’s face in public space in order to commit public order offences.”
The intelligence services distinguish the two currents. The ultra-left is made up of small anti-electoralist groups — antifas, anarchists and anarcho-autonomists — that operate outside the parties and unions and favour direct action. The radical extreme left is the organised wing: militants of groups such as the New Anticapitalist Party and Révolution Permanente, which take part in elections and carry out “violent field actions” by a “well-defined procedure.” A security source told AFP the two “are not the same thing,” even though they joined forces on 17 October.
Nuñez said after the night that groups of casseurs, the French term for violent vandals, and looters had formed in each procession. Many, he said, were animated by the ultra-left movement and the radical extreme left. Their objective, he said, had been to take the city centres with “unheard-of violence.” He cited Paris, Montpellier, Toulouse, Rennes, Marseille, Nantes, Angers and Tours. In Paris, a Molotov cocktail was thrown at a barrier of mobile gendarmes, and one gendarme caught fire; his injuries were described as light. “When you throw a Molotov cocktail on a barrage of members of the forces of order, I call that an attempted murder,” Nuñez said.
The Interior Ministry’s count reached 779 arrests. Police carried out 40,000 identity checks, 15,000 of them in the Paris region. Five members of the forces of order were injured in Paris, four police officers and one gendarme, three of them by Molotov cocktails. The marches themselves passed largely peacefully, kept out of the city centres on President Macron’s instruction.
3. 54 Arrests in Frankfurt as German Intelligence Flags Left-Extremist Mobilisation in Advance
Frankfurt saw the worst of the German violence. After the daytime demonstration, groups attacked police and looted shops, among them a weapons store. In all, five shops were looted and 17 more damaged. More than 100 officers were injured, one of them seriously, after a stone strike broke his teeth.
Hessian Interior Minister Roman Poseck said about 100 clearly identified left-wing extremists had infiltrated the protest. Fifty-four people were arrested, aged 13 to 29, most of them German nationals. He later put the number of violence-ready disruptors at 1,000 to 1,500, predominantly from a migrant milieu.
The warnings had come before the weekend. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the domestic intelligence service, and its state offices in North Rhine-Westphalia, Berlin and Bavaria reported that parts of the left-extremist scene and some foreign-related extremist groupings were mobilising for the protests. The agencies describe the method of left-extremist actors as influencing legitimate democratic discourses, adding their ideological positions and radicalising social protest. The North Rhine-Westphalia office said the mobilisation came in large part from “communist youth and cadre groups,” and noted links to Internationale Jugend, which the Baden-Württemberg office has classified as a cover for the left-extremist group Kommunistischer Aufbau.
The German marches had been called by Gen Z regelt, a youth-led initiative with local groups in multiple cities, whose demands centre on school funding, living costs and opposition to conscription. Its spokespersons expressed solidarity with French students. The initiative states that extremist groups, unconstitutional symbols, racism and agitation have no place in its actions, and rejects all forms of violence.
4. Telegram Channels Steered Looters Shop by Shop; Spanish Police Moved First
Spanish police had moved against the organisers before the weekend began. The Blocus network, a set of Telegram channels used to coordinate unauthorised evening actions, instructed participants to come “all in black and with hood.” Others called for Halloween masks. Channels identified shops without a police presence and steered looters to them in real time. Some channels shared materials on making explosives and Molotov cocktails. Telegram closed multiple channels after material was referred to the Centre for Intelligence against Terrorism and Organised Crime, the interior ministry’s counter-terrorism hub.
Around 10 people have been arrested in direct connection with the network. Among them is the suspected founder and main promoter, a 20-year-old detained in Picanya, Valencia, on 30 October. A court in nearby Torrent remanded him to provisional prison without bail and barred him from internet-connected devices. Despite this, new channels appeared within hours. The others arrested are channel administrators and promoters in Valencia, Catalonia, Bilbao, Málaga and Tenerife, several of them minors. The charges include membership of a criminal organisation, looting and criminal damage.
Spain’s weekend followed unrest of its own a week earlier. Riots in Barcelona on 24 October led to about 132 arrests, 83 of them minors. On 31 October itself, a maximum-level police deployment in Barcelona and Catalonia produced three arrests and no major disturbances.
5. Italy’s General Strike: Large Turnout, Breakaway Violence in Rome
In Italy, the base union Unione Sindacale di Base called a 24-hour general strike on 30 October under the slogan “Lay down your weapons, raise your wages.” The union sits outside the main confederations and has long been associated with radical-left and anti-militarist positions. Marches followed in more than 50 cities, joined by workers, students, housing movements, pro-Palestine groups and social centres.
In Rome, a group broke away from the march near the Colosseum, threw bottles and set bins alight. Eight people were arrested for repeated attempts to breach police cordons. Pro-Palestine flags and communist symbols were visible along the routes, and some coverage reported graffiti calling for the hanging of Matteo Salvini and Giorgia Meloni. Some of the strike’s original organisers objected to the masked participants.
6. Housing Camps March in Lisbon and Porto as a WhatsApp Channel Calls for Looting
In Portugal, housing movements organised camps and marches in Lisbon and Porto over the weekend. The tent encampments, set up in mid-October, have been cleared by police in repeated pre-dawn operations; the most recent, on 1 November, ended with 13 arrests for disobedience and injury counts that police and organisers dispute.
The Coletivo Comunista Revolucionário, an explicitly communist group, has marched with hammer-and-sickle banners reading “Expropriação contra a especulação” — expropriation against speculation. In Porto, a marcher described the organisers as “communist groups” and noted Soviet Union flags alongside the Portuguese flag.
Separately, a WhatsApp channel with more than 500 members circulated calls for a “rebelião” — rebellion — and for looting at the Colombo shopping centre in Lisbon on 31 October. Police said they were monitoring.
7. The Weekend Was the Start: Protest Dates Stack Up Through November
Organisers across the countries have set dates for further action through November, several of them converging on 20 November.
In France, the main trade union confederations have called a nationwide day of strikes and demonstrations for 5 November, over wages, public services and government budget cuts. Student and lycée groups have called blockades of schools and universities from 2 to 5 November. Sabrine Kharbach, spokesperson for the Union étudiante, said the student blockades were called to build towards the workers’ strike. The Yellow Vest coordination has called for support of the strike and for continued strikes and blockades on 6 November, with demonstrations on 7 November under the name Act IV.
In Germany, a spokesperson for Gen Z regelt told the German news agency dpa that 31 October had been “only the first step.” The initiative has called actions at schools and universities for the week of 2 to 6 November, and its website mobilises for nationwide protests on 14 November. It will take part in the Europe-wide protests on 20 November. The Bundesschülerkonferenz, the national school student conference, has a separate call for the same date, having distanced itself from the 31 October events over their organisational opacity.
In Spain, a 24-hour general strike is set for 11 November, called by the country’s two main union confederations alongside the tenants’ unions — the first such strike they have jointly backed since 2012. Its demands combine housing and wages: limits on rents, protection against evictions, and wage increases tied to the cost of living. The strike falls three weeks before a general election on 29 November.
In Italy, the CGIL union confederation has proclaimed a national general strike for 20 November, covering the entire working day in the public and private sectors. General secretary Maurizio Landini announced the strike on 17 October and linked it to the government’s budget law, which he said directs spending to rearmament while the cost of living rises. Rail and air-transport strikes follow into 21 November.
In Portugal, a National Day of Fighting for Housing is set for 14 November, called by the Casa para Viver and Porta a Porta platforms, with actions planned across the country, including the islands of Azores and Madeira. The demand for an Iberian general strike on 11 November, aligned with the Spanish strike, began with revolutionary communist groups and was adopted unanimously by the Lisbon encampment assembly.
The dates converge on 20 November: the Europe-wide protest call, the CGIL strike, the International Youth Strike that Italian student networks are helping build, and the Bundesschülerkonferenz’s demonstration all fall on the same day.
Conclusion
A weekend of protests over living costs, wages, housing and education across five countries ended in evening violence; with 779 arrests in France, more than 100 officers injured in Frankfurt and looting directed through Telegram channels in Spain. The officials in France, Germany and Spain point to the same actors: Nuñez attributes the French violence to the ultra-left and the radical extreme left, the German agencies had warned of left-extremist mobilisation before the weekend, and Spanish police arrested the Blocus network’s organisers in advance.
The mobilisation now enters a more disruptive phase. A French general strike is set for 5 November, with student blockades from the 2nd and further blockades and demonstrations to the 7th. Spain’s first jointly backed general strike since 2012 falls on 11 November. Portugal’s housing platforms have called a National Day of Fighting for Housing for 14 November. Gen Z regelt has mobilised for further protests on 14 November. On 20 November the CGIL general strike and Europe-wide youth protests fall on the same day.