Does a video show street vendors in Paris selling merchandise that came from looted Paris shops? No, that's not true: The video shows street vendors in Madrid, Spain, and was published on X on Oct. 11, 2026, with a caption critical of the Madrid vendors. This timing predates the Oct. 17, 2026, violent escalation of the Paris demonstrations, which began in late September with a student strike.
The video appeared in a post (archived here) by the @MiddleEast_24 account on X on Oct. 21, 2026. It read:
Stolen Merchandise Goes on Sale on Paris Sidewalks Following Rampant Looting Amid Demonstrations Recent footage shows goods being openly sold on the streets of Paris, with the merchandise described as stolen from stores during the unrest.
This is what a screenshot of the video in the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @MiddleEast_24 on X.)
The protests in Paris began in late September as a student strike. On Oct. 17, 2026, Reuters reported the demonstrations took a turn, "Mass protests in France spiral into worst riots in years" (archived here). At the time of writing, Oct. 21, 2026, searches of Google News (archived here) and Yahoo News (archived here) for the phrase "Looting in Paris 2026" show results dating back from one to four days.
The video in question was originally posted by the @deckard75351 account on X on Oct. 11, 2026, (archived here) six days before the Paris demonstrations turned to riots. The X post was captioned in Spanish. The automatic translation by Grok, the AI tool from xAI, reads:
It's not just that they're carrying out an illegal activity, which they are, but that they're obstructing the flow of people on the sidewalk along the stretch from Gran Vía to Callao, one of Madrid's busiest streets. Why do we have to put up with this?
The video does show Gran Via in Madrid, Spain as stated in the post's caption. At 13 seconds in the video (pictured below), it is possible to see the Gran Vía station sign under the red diamond-shaped sign (inset detail below) of Madrid's Metro (archived here). This link to Instant Google Street View (archived here) shows the daytime view of Madrid's famous street at the Gran Vía Metro station pictured in the video.
(Image source: Lead Stories composite using post by @MiddleEast_24 on X and Metro logo inset from metromadrid.es.)
This claim was debunked by the Spanish fact-checking organization Maldita (archived here). They found the same false claim circulating in thirteen different languages.
