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A town hall on fire, another flood and dearer flights · Pollar Sounds

• 0:00
  Hi there, this is Pollar, and welcome to 3x3.
• 0:04
  Three stories, three angles: what happened.
• 0:07
  How it's being told.
• 0:09
  What we don't know yet.
• 0:12
  And after each story, we want to hear what you think.
• 0:15
  So, let's begin.
• 0:22
  First up, a weekend that started as a march about prices
• 0:26
  and ended with a town hall on fire. What happened?
• 0:29
  So, on Saturday the 17th of October, more than half a million people marched across France,
• 0:35
  according to the interior ministry.
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  They were angry about the cost of living, about schools,
• 0:40
  and about recent police violence.
• 0:42
  And most of that was peaceful, right?
• 0:45
  Most of it, yes. But in Paris, Lyon, Marseille and other cities,
• 0:50
  groups, thousands strong in places, looted shops and set fires.
• 0:55
  In Limoges, the town hall, which is 143 years old,
• 0:59
  burned until its roof and clock tower collapsed.
• 1:02
  And since then?
• 1:03
  About 2,400 people were arrested on Saturday alone,
• 1:07
  nearly 1,000 police were hurt,
• 1:09
  and the government says over 3,000 shops were hit.
• 1:13
  Since Tuesday, police have arrested two men over the town hall fire.
• 1:17
  And it wasn't only France. The same weekend, police say about 2,000 people,
• 1:22
  many of them teenagers, marched in central Milan, and some fought police.
• 1:27
  32 were arrested, 23 of them minors.
• 1:31
  Minors... so, mostly teenagers.
• 1:34
  Yes. And Italy's government answered with a decree.
• 1:38
  500 more soldiers on Milan's streets until the end of the year,
• 1:41
  a new crime of violent rioting with up to five years in prison,
• 1:45
  and parents paying for damage done by their children.
• 1:48
  And France has imposed curfews in parts of Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Lille and other cities,
• 1:54
  some only for minors.
• 1:56
  Its interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, offered to resign. President Macron said no.
• 2:04
  How it's being told.
• 2:08
  Well, it really depends who's telling it.
• 2:11
  France's Prime Minister, Sébastien Lecornu, told parliament
• 2:15
  that small far-left groups had planned what he called
• 2:18
  an insurrectionary scheme, in some places.
• 2:21
  Sébastien Lecornu: …the planning, in some places, of an insurrectionary scheme
• 2:26
  Sébastien Lecornu: led by small far-left and ultra-left groups.
• 2:31
  But the investigative site Mediapart quoted an intelligence officer, anonymously,
• 2:36
  saying they'd been told to blame the radical-left party, La France Insoumise.
• 2:41
  The ministry denies it, and Lecornu calls that "unthinkable."
• 2:45
  In Italy, the defence minister, Guido Crosetto, calls it a "hybrid war,"
• 2:50
  fought through TikTok and YouTube.
• 2:52
  But Italy's own interior minister, Matteo Piantedosi,
• 2:56
  says there's no clear evidence yet that anyone organised it,
• 2:59
  though he says something doesn't add up.
• 3:02
  Germany's interior minister, Alexander Dobrindt, went further.
• 3:06
  He told Bild it was "an armed struggle" against a free society.
• 3:11
  The European Commission was more careful.
• 3:13
  It said peaceful marchers shouldn't be equated with people who commit violence.
• 3:17
  And the boss of Carrefour, Alexandre Bompard,
• 3:20
  says his stores lost strong spirits, not food.
• 3:24
  "This is crime," he says, "not purchasing power."
• 3:28
  He still calls the anger about prices legitimate.
• 3:34
  What we don't know yet.
• 3:38
  There's a new national protest this Saturday, the 24th,
• 3:42
  and the unions have called a nationwide strike on the 5th of November.
• 3:45
  Lecornu promises a "massive" police operation.
• 3:49
  He met union leaders on Wednesday, and the biggest union says he offered nothing.
• 3:53
  Who pays. One estimate puts the insurers' bill at up to 1.2 billion euros,
• 3:59
  half as much again as the riots of 2023.
• 4:03
  And where the loot goes.
• 4:05
  Stolen perfume and handbags have turned up on resale sites like Vinted,
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  and the French government has demanded the platforms take those listings down.
• 4:13
  Over to you. When half a million people march peacefully and a town hall burns,
• 4:18
  whose side are you on?
• 4:20
  Should soldiers patrol city streets after a riot?
• 4:23
  And would you think twice before buying a bargain on Vinted this week?
• 4:30
  Second, Spain. Two years after floods killed more than 230 people around Valencia,
• 4:37
  another storm hit the same region. What happened?
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  So, a storm the Spanish call "dana Adam"
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  sat over the south of Valencia province and the north of Alicante over the weekend.
• 4:48
  In Pego, more than 600 litres of rain fell per square metre in a day and a half.
• 4:54
  600 litres?
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  On every square metre, yes.
• 4:58
  Spain's weather agency, AEMET, had its top warning out, red, for extraordinary danger.
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  But this time, the authorities moved early.
• 5:08
  Right. On Monday morning, the regional government ordered about 850,000 people
• 5:14
  in 145 towns to stay at home.
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  And the cost?
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  At least five people died. In Oliva, one of the worst-hit towns,
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  people went home on Tuesday to houses where, residents say,
• 5:26
  the water had risen above 1.5 metres in a couple of hours.
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  How it's being told.
• 5:37
  Most coverage measures it against October 2024.
• 5:41
  Back then, the emergency alert reached people's phones after 8 in the evening,
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  too late, says the judge investigating it.
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  And this time, the regional president, Juanfran Pérez Llorca,
• 5:52
  says his government was warned in time.
• 5:55
  So the Valencian government tells it as a lesson learned.
• 5:58
  One victims' group from 2024 is blunter.
• 6:02
  What changed, its president says, is that nobody in charge was out at lunch.
• 6:07
  The Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, went to Oliva on Tuesday,
• 6:11
  and he tells it as a climate story.
• 6:13
  Pedro Sánchez: …we have had deaths again in a dana,
• 6:19
  Pedro Sánchez: in a situation of climate emergency…
• 6:23
  And for the people in Oliva... it's simpler than that.
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  "We've lost everything," one resident told Europa Press.
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  What we don't know yet.
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  How much it will cost.
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  Madrid has promised to declare the area a disaster zone,
• 6:42
  which unlocks state money for rebuilding, but it hasn't said how much.
• 6:47
  Whether lockdowns become the new normal.
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  Ordering 145 towns indoors in the middle of a flood is a big call.
• 6:55
  Over to you. Would you stay indoors because of a red alert on your phone?
• 7:00
  Should every flood be told as a climate story?
• 7:03
  And should towns that have flooded before keep building where the water goes?
• 7:10
  Third, flying. What happened?
• 7:13
  On Tuesday in Brussels, Ryanair's boss, Michael O'Leary,
• 7:17
  said airfares in Europe will rise next year by 10, 15, maybe 20%.
• 7:23
  He called it the biggest increase in airfares in European history.
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  20%. Okay... why?
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  Fuel, mostly. Since the US and Israel went to war with Iran in late February,
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  jet fuel has more than doubled in price.
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  Airlines buy fuel in advance at fixed prices,
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  but O'Leary says for most of them that runs out next spring.
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  And Ryanair itself?
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  It has only 15% of next year's fuel locked in.
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  So it's exposed, and he says most rivals are too.
• 7:54
  He's cutting routes as well, isn't he?
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  20 routes and more than a million seats from Belgium this winter.
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  He blames Belgium's flight tax, which goes from 5 euros to 7 in January.
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  He says he'll cut back in France too.
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  How it's being told.
• 8:14
  Mostly as a warning to holidaymakers.
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  But it's also an airline boss making his case.
• 8:20
  O'Leary wants lower flight taxes,
• 8:22
  and he wants the EU's carbon charge on flights stretched to long-haul routes,
• 8:26
  which would hit rivals like Lufthansa and Air France-KLM.
• 8:30
  He also told Euronews that Ursula von der Leyen is "useless" on competitiveness.
• 8:35
  And part of it is already in the data.
• 8:37
  France's civil aviation authority says fares from French airports
• 8:41
  were up 10.6% in September, compared with a year earlier.
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  What we don't know yet.
• 8:52
  Whether other airlines follow.
• 8:54
  O'Leary also says Lufthansa and Air France will probably get more state aid.
• 8:59
  Where oil goes. His forecast assumes fuel stays this expensive after spring.
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  And whether Belgium's tax stays.
• 9:07
  Ryanair says another million seats go next summer if it does.
• 9:11
  Over to you. Would a 20% rise stop you flying?
• 9:15
  Should flight taxes go up or down when tickets get dearer?
• 9:19
  And was cheap flying something we got used to...
• 9:21
  that was never going to last?
• 9:27
  Those were three stories, in three angles.
• 9:30
  The sources for each are at pollar.news.
• 9:33
  Tell us what you think, in the comments or on Pollar's socials.
• 9:37
  In the next episode, we'll read out the best answers.
• 9:40
  Thanks for listening to this episode of Pollar.
• 9:49
  A quick word about Pollar.
• 9:51
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• 9:54
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• 9:57
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