The investigation was opened after damage occurred specifically to supermarkets and to wine traders on the sidelines of a demonstration on Saturday in Béziers attended by thousands of grape growers, prosecutors said on Monday.
A Lidl store was vandalized and ransacked, according to Hérault prefecture. “They were grape growers who were on their way back from a demonstration, but at this stage we don’t have any identification,” said Béziers public prosecutor Arnaud Faugère.
The interior of the store “was completely destroyed at the end of Saturday by the grape growers,” complained a Lidl France national management representative.
“We haven’t sold Spanish wine for a good year in all of Occitanie. The damage is quite extensive, but we are doing everything to reopen the shop as quickly as possible,” he added.
(2/2) Marmottan Museum: the spectacular theft of Monet’s masterpiece
Crime story tells major criminal cases every week.
A merchant’s barrel was emptied
Later that evening, at around 11 p.m., people forced the doors of the Divipro company, a wine merchant, located in the town of Nissan-lez-Ensérune, near Béziers.
Twenty-six barrels containing wine were opened and spilled, the equivalent of 300 cubic meters of wine, or 3,000 hectoliters, according to prosecutors who added that two separate investigations had been opened.
At least 4,000 demonstrators, according to the prefecture, and 7,000 according to organizers, staged a peaceful protest on Saturday interrupted only by the explosion of firecrackers. Grape growers want to express their disappointment and call on public authorities to act, especially in the face of foreign competition and large-scale distribution that are driving down grape prices and global warming.
“We condemn the damage but we also understand it, especially for these traders who everyone knows buy grapes very cheaply,” reacted Hérault’s FDSEA (a departmental branch of the agricultural union FNSEA) spokesman Jean-Pascal Pelagatti.
“On the other hand, this action in Lidl is very unfortunate, because it affects the general public”, continued the grape farmer who confirmed that he wanted the demonstration to be “calm in the city, we managed to control the procession but we did not control the vehicles outside”.
