Unrest flared across France on Saturday amid demonstrations against rising living and fuel costs that built on weeks of high school protests, heightening a sense of fiscal and social crisis in the country. More than half a million people joined 110 marches throughout the country, according to the interior ministry, making it the biggest day of protest since unrest began to surge nationally roughly a month ago. One of France’s main unions, the C.
G. T., estimated a higher number of 800,000 protesters. The protests marked a convergence between a student-focused movement that has spurred demonstrations out of hundreds of schools, and a broader social movement that appeals to French citizens of different ages.
In many places, the protests were overtaken by violent confrontations between rioters and police officers, including in Marseille, France’s second-largest city, where people briefly broke into the city hall and knocked over a bust of Marianne, a symbol of the French Republic, before the police cleared them out. By nightfall, roughly 400 people, most of them adults, had been arrested across the country, according to the interior minister, Laurent Nuñez.
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