At the end of the day, June 29, the Alcazar library in Marseille was the target of rioters. In many cities in France, the situation has become increasingly tense since the death of Nahel, 17, killed Tuesday morning by a police officer during a check that went wrong. His death provokes daily nocturnal riots, the violence of which escalates each night. Marseille is not immune to this nocturnal violence.
On social networks, it is indignation. The Destination Ciné twitter account quotes Heinrich Heine: “Where you burn books, you always end up burning people…” In the video that accompanies this tweet, we see the rioters sending fireworks on the facade of the building. But according to the local media La Provence, the rioters did not manage to enter the Alcazar library. It was just an attempted fire. The demonstrators simply broke the windows and tried to burn down the entrance to the building without doing more damage. This morning, on the library’s website, a message: “Following the events of last night, the Alcazar library is closed today. Thank you for understanding.”
According to Stéphane Gireau, deputy head of the press service for the metropolis of Marseille, calm has returned this morning. “We are not in charge of the library, which is a town hall building,” he explains. Nevertheless, his teams went to clean the public road in the morning. “The street furniture and the bus shelters were destroyed, when I went there I saw that the windows of the glass facade had been destroyed and replaced by wooden palisades”, reports Stéphane Gireau.
The building is a former 19th century theater, converted into a municipal library in 2004. Already on June 25, 1873, a fire ravaged the premises. It will take four months of work to reopen the theater. If in the 1960s the place was abandoned, it was here that Yves Montant, Tino Rossi and Dalida experienced their first hours of glory.
Since Tuesday, France has been on fire. Every night, garbage cans, public infrastructure, street furniture or even buses or trams are burned, barricades are erected. The clashes between the police and the rioters gave rise to violent arrests. In Marseilles as elsewhere, traders are victims of looting. The metropolis has announced that it will release a support fund for the latter. Contacted, the town hall has not yet responded.
