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LGV du Sud-Ouest: demonstration by opponents in Gironde to “amplify” the fight

Joined by the environmentalist movement Earth Uprisings, opponents of the future high-speed rail line (LGV) of the South-West, which should bring Toulouse closer to Paris in 2032, tried to “amplify” their movement on Saturday in Gironde , under the surveillance of the authorities. According to the gendarmerie, 800 to 1,000 people, including a “high proportion” of “hooded” activists, gathered in a camp in Lerm-et-Musset, a village 75 km south of Bordeaux .On the borders of the Landes forest, the demonstration (undeclared) took the form of games – “Giga Kapla”, “Mille Bornes” or “Dixit naturaliste” – against the future connection between Bordeaux, Toulouse and Dax (Landes) . A “large useless project” worth around fifteen billion euros, excluding recent and future inflation, denounce the organizers. A wooden tower, supposed to serve as a “lookout” for the future, was notably erected in the valley of Ciron, a tributary of the Garonne, and its ancestral beech forest, a Natura 2000 classified site and threatened by the LGV according to opponents. 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 firework mortars which didn’t touch him. A short exchange of projectiles took place on Saturday when demonstrators damaged a stuck law enforcement car, without causing any injuries. – “Get out of the radar” -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 the “basins” of Poitou, to “go off the radar at the national level”. “The challenge is to generalize the mobilization so as not to let this insane and ruinous LGV pass,” explained Jean Olivier, member of the “LGV non merci” coordination. “We really need to amplify communication on all the problems linked to this project”, added Marie-Christine Hergle of the collective “LGV NiNa” (Neither here nor elsewhere). The fight also goes through “legal channels”, like Girondin parliamentarians (from LFI to LR, via EELV and the MoDem) who are demanding from the government a moratorium and/or local referendum on the LGV. – A “pharaonic” project – This line must shorten the train journey between Paris and Toulouse by 73 minutes and thus divert plane users. A branch line through the Landes forest should link Dax to Bordeaux in twenty minutes less than currently and, one day, allow direct connections with Spain. The route of the line towards the border “passes through my living room “, lamented to AFP a sixty-year-old opponent from the Basque Country, regretting a demonstration that was “too good-natured”, where there were “not enough people”. “It’s like the megabasins or the A69 , these projects no longer make sense today”, judged among the demonstrators a student from Bordeaux for whom the SNCF “could already ensure that the train works better and is less expensive”. Work began in 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 delivered by the end of November. The president (PS) of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Alain Rousset, defends an “investment for at least a century”, supposed to “take” off the road the 10,000 trucks which come up from Spain every day, by freeing up existing lines for freight. But opponents denounce a “deadly” project, 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 “pharaonic” project co-financed by the State, local authorities and the European Union.jed-eve/ppy/er