Huge numbers of people have turned out at pro-Palestinian rallies across Europe, calling for an immediate end to the war in Gaza and the release of activists on board a flotilla carrying humanitarian aid to the territory.
Police in Rome said about 250,000 people attended a fourth consecutive day of protests on Saturday after Israel intercepted the 45-boat flotilla trying to reach Gaza last week.
Protesters in the Italian capital, including families with children, shouted: “We are all Palestinians,” “Free Palestine” and “Stop the genocide” as many carried Palestinian flags and wore black-and-white-chequered keffiyehs.
In Spain, about 70,000 people took to the streets in Barcelona, according to the police, while the government in Madrid reported nearly 92,000 marched in the capital.
The Global Sumud Flotilla, which was intercepted on Wednesday, departed Barcelona in early September and had been seeking to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza, where a United Nations-backed hunger monitor says famine has taken hold. About 50 Spaniards on the flotilla have been detained by Israel, Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares told public television in an interview broadcast on Saturday.
Marta Carranza, a 65-year-old pensioner demonstrating in Barcelona with a Palestinian flag on her back, said Israel’s policy “has been wrong for many years and we have to take to the streets”.
Elsewhere, several thousand people marched through the centre of Dublin to mark what organisers described as “two years of genocide” in Gaza. Along with Ireland, Spain is among the fiercest European critics of Israel’s military offensive in Gaza.
In Ireland, speakers called for sanctions on Israel, an immediate end to the conflict and Palestinian involvement in any ceasefire plan.
In London, police said they made at least 442 arrests at a gathering in support of the proscribed Palestine Action group.
In Paris, where about 10,000 people gathered, a spokesperson for the French contingent of the Sumud Flotilla, Helene Coron, told the crowd: “We’ll never stop.”
“This flotilla didn’t get to Gaza. But we will send another, then another until Palestine and Gaza are free,” she said.
In Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing government has been criticised for its inaction regarding the siege of Gaza. On Saturday, Meloni accused demonstrators of defacing a statue of Pope John Paul II with graffiti in front of Rome’s main railway station, calling it a “shameful act”.
On September 14, about 100,000 pro-Palestinian demonstrators forced the final stage of the Vuelta a Espana cycling race in the Spanish capital to be halted because an Israeli team was competing. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said Israel should be barred from international sport over the war in Gaza, just as Russia has been penalised over its invasion of Ukraine.
In September, Spain announced it would ban imports from Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, which are illegal under international law.
PRO-PALESTINE marches have gone ahead today with protesters gathering in London and Manchester.
The demonstrations are taking place despite calls from SirKeir Starmerandpoliceto cancel the events following theterror attackon asynagogueinManchesteron Thursday.
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Activists from Defend Our Juries dropped a banner from Westminster Bridge
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Sir Keir Starmer earlier called on the protesters to ‘show respect’ to the Jewish communityCredit: PA
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Protesters hold signs, during a mass demonstration at Trafalgar Square
Dozens of police officers have been seen lined up next to Nelson’s Column in central London ahead of the arrival of hundreds of protesters supporting banned group Palestine Action.
Just after 1pm, protesters from the group Defend our Juries arrived in Trafalgar Square began clapping before sitting down.
They chanted “free, free Palestine” and some began writing “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action”, while others held pre-written signs.
A woman in blue scrubs stood in the crowds with a sign reading “nurse against genocide”.
Several campaigners from the Stop the War coalition are already in Trafalgar Square, holding placards and Palestine flags.
The Metropolitan Police said it had arrested six people over the banner draped on Westminster Bridge in support of banned group Palestine Action.
The force said: “Officers were quickly on scene, the banner had been removed and the six people involved have been arrested for supporting a proscribed organisation.”
Meanwhile, pro-Palestinian supporters grew to around 100 before speeches began outside Manchester Cathedral.
Scotland Yard chief Sir Mark Rowley had asked for protests to be postponed due to the drain on resources while extra officers are stationed at synagogues.
He also warned the rallies “will likely create further tensions and some might say lacks sensitivity” in the wake of the attack.
She was attending her first protest, driven to be seen with thousands of others at a “No Kings” demonstration Saturday morning in El Segundo, eager to make a statement.
But she was there for her father, as well.
The sign she held aloft as car horns honked in support said: “I’m speaking for those who can’t.”
Her father would have loved to join her, Jennifer told me. But with ICE raids in Los Angeles and arrests by the hundreds in recent days, her 55-year-old undocumented dad couldn’t afford to take the risk.
Steve Lopez
Steve Lopez is a California native who has been a Los Angeles Times columnist since 2001. He has won more than a dozen national journalism awards and is a four-time Pulitzer finalist.
Jennifer is 29. I hadn’t seen her in nearly 20 years, when I wrote about her father and visited her home in Inglewood to deliver $2,000 donated by readers who read his story.
Here’s the back story:
In December of 2005 I got a tip about a shooting in the front yard of an Inglewood home. Two men approached a landscaper and demanded money. He resisted, and in the tussle that ensued, a shot was fired.
Paramedics rushed the man to the emergency room at UCLA, where doctors determined that a bullet had just missed his heart and was lodged in his chest. Although doctors recommended he stay at least overnight for observation, he insisted he felt fine and needed to get back to work.
The landscaper, whom I referred to as Ray, insisted on leaving immediately. As he later explained to me, the Inglewood job was for a client who hired him to re-landscape the yard as a Christmas gift to his wife.
Ray was shot on Dec. 23.
Demonstrators at a “No Kings” event at Main Street and Imperial Highway in El Segundo on Saturday.
(Steve Lopez / Los Angeles Times)
He finished the job by Christmas.
I’ve been thinking about Ray since ICE agents began the crackdown ordered by President Trump, whose administration said its goal was to deport 3,000 people a day. Hundreds have been arrested in the Fashion District, at car washes and at building supply stores across Los Angeles.
That’s led to clashes between law enforcement and demonstrators, and to peaceful protests like the one along Imperial Highway and Main Street on Saturday in El Segundo.
I thought of Ray because Trump generally speaks of undocumented immigrants as monsters, and no doubt there are criminals among them.
But over the years, nearly all my encounters have been with the likes of Ray, who are an essential part of the workforce.
Yes, there are costs associated with undocumented immigrants, but benefits as well — they’ve been an essential part of the California economy for years. And among those eager to hire them — in the fields, in the hospitality industry, in slaughterhouses, in healthcare — are avid Trump supporters.
On Friday, I called Ray to see how he was doing.
“I’m worried about it,” he said, even though he has some protection.
Demonstrators at the “No Kings” event in El Segundo raise their signs, including one that read, “Real men don’t need parades.”
(Steve Lopez / Los Angeles Times)
Several years ago, an immigration attorney helped him get a permit to work, but the Trump administration has vowed to end temporary protected legal status for certain groups of immigrants.
“I see and hear about a lot of cases where they’re not respecting documents. People look Latino, and they get arrested,” said Ray, who is in the midst of a years-long process to upgrade his status.
Ray is still loading tools onto his truck and driving to landscaping, tree-trimming and irrigation jobs across L.A., as he’s done for more than 30 years. But he said he’s being extra careful.
A protester at a “No Kings” event in El Segundo prepares a sign on Saturday.
(Steve Lopez / Los Angeles Times)
“You know, like keeping an eye out everywhere and checking my telephone to see where checkpoints are,” he said.
Ray’s ex-wife has legal status, and all three of their children were born here and are U.S. citizens. The marriage ended and Ray has remarried, but he remains close to the three kids I met in the spring of 2006, when they were 9, 10 and 11.
The younger son, who is disabled, lives with Ray. His older son, a graphic designer, lives nearby. Jennifer, a job recruiter, lives next door and has been on edge in recent days.
“Even though he has permission to be here … it’s scary, and I wasn’t even letting him go to work,” Jennifer said. “On Monday I was getting into the shower and heard him loading up the truck.”
She ran outside to stop him, but he was already gone, so she called him and said, “Oh my God, you shouldn’t be going to work right now. It’s not safe.”
“No Kings” was the theme of the day during a demonstration in El Segundo on Saturday.
(Steve Lopez / Los Angeles Times)
Jennifer works from home but couldn’t concentrate that day. She used an app to track her father’s location and checked the latest information on ICE raids. So far, Ray has made it home safely each day, although Jennifer is hoping he slows down for a while.
Twenty years ago, when I wrote about Ray getting shot and his insistence on going back to work immediately, one of the readers who donated money — $1,000 — to him was one of his landscaping clients, Rohelle Erde. When I checked in with her this week to update her on Ray’s situation, she said her entire family came to the U.S. as immigrants to work hard and build a better life, and Ray did the same.
“He has been working and making money and helping people beautify their homes, creating beauty and order, and this must be so distressing,” Erde said. “The ugliness and disorder are exactly the opposite of what he represents.”
The evening before Saturday’s rally in El Segundo, Jennifer told me why she wanted to demonstrate:
“To show my face for those who can’t speak and to say we’re not all criminals, we’re all sticking together, we have each other’s backs,” she said. “The girl who takes care of my kids is undocumented and she’s scared to leave the house. I have a lot of friends and family in the same boat.”
Jennifer attended with her son, who’s 9 and told me he’s afraid his grandfather will be arrested and sent back to Mexico.
“He’s the age I was when you met me,” Jennifer said of her son.
She took in the crowd and said it was uplifting to see such a huge and diverse throng of people stand up, in peaceful protest, against authoritarianism and the militarization of the country.
Mother and son stood together, flashing their signs for passing motorists.
His said, “Families belong together.”
Jennifer told me that her father still has the bullet in his chest.
Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets of Warsaw to show support for the opposing candidates in next weekend’s tightly contested Polish presidential run-off, which the government views as crucial to its efforts for pro-European democratic reform.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk hopes to galvanise support for his candidate, liberal Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, to replace outgoing Andrzej Duda, a nationalist who has vetoed many of Tusk’s efforts to reform the judiciary.
“All of Poland is looking at us. All of Europe is looking at us. The whole world is looking at us,” Trzaskowski told supporters who waved Polish and European Union flags on Sunday.
Tusk swept to power in 2023 with a broad alliance of leftist and centrist parties on a promise to undo changes made by the nationalist Law and Justice government that the EU said had undermined democracy and women’s and minority rights.
Trzaskowski beat nationalist opponent Karol Nawrocki by 2 percentage points in the first round of the election on May 18 but is struggling to sustain his lead, according to opinion polls.
The two candidates are locked in a tight contest before the June 1 run-off with the latest polls projecting a tie of 47 percent of the vote each.
Nawrocki’s voters – some wearing hats with the words “Poland is the most important,” a nod to United States President Donald Trump’s America First policies – gathered in a different part of the capital to show support for his drive to align Poland more closely with Trump and the region’s populists.
Supporters attend a march in Warsaw for Karol Nawrocki, the presidential candidate supported by the main opposition Law and Justice party, before the second round of the presidential election [Lukasz Glowala/Reuters]
“I am the voice of all those whose cries do not reach Donald Tusk today. The voice of all those who do not want Polish schools to be places of ideology, our Polish agriculture to be destroyed or our freedom taken away,” Nawrocki told the crowd.
Some of his supporters carried banners with slogans such as “Stop Migration Pact” and “This is Poland” or displayed images of Trump.
“He is the best candidate, the most patriotic, one who can guarantee that Poland is independent and sovereign,” Jan Sulanowski, 42, said.
An estimated 50,000 people attended the gathering of Nawrocki’s supporters while about 140,000 people participated in the march supporting Trzaskowski, the Polish Press Agency reported, citing unofficial preliminary estimates from city authorities.
Jakub Kaszycki, 21, joined the pro-Trzaskowski march, saying it could determine Poland’s future direction. “I very much favour … the West’s way to Europe, not to Russia,” he said.
At Trzaskowski’s march, newly elected Romanian President Nicusor Dan pledged to work closely with Tusk and Trzaskowski “to ensure Poland and the European Union remain strong”.
Dan’s unexpected victory in a vote on May 18 over a hard-right Trump supporter was greeted with relief in Brussels and other parts of Europe because many were concerned that his rival George Simion would have complicated EU efforts to tackle Russia’s war in Ukraine.
