Video shows street vendors in Spain, not people selling items looted in France
What was claimed
A video shows people selling items looted in France during nationwide unrest.
Our verdict
False. The video was filmed on Gran Vía in Madrid, Spain, and has been online since at least 29 September, before the recent looting seen in France.
A video showing street vendors selling designer bags and football shirts has been shared with false claims that it shows people selling items looted during the recent unrest in France.
The video was actually filmed on Gran Vía, a street in Madrid, Spain.
The video has been shared hundreds of times on X, Facebook and Instagram, wrongly connecting the scene to the looting which took place earlier this month in several cities across France.
About 12 seconds into the video we can see a distinctive red diamond sign for the Gran Vía metro station in Madrid. A neon green pharmacy sign can also be seen in the background with the Spanish word “Farmacia” written on it, helping us to geolocate the video to nearby Farmacia López Vicente on Gran Vía in Madrid. The word “Madrid” can also be seen on one of the buses on the street.
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The video was online before the looting
There have been reports of attempts to resell recently looted items on online platforms like Vinted. But this video has been online since at least 29 September, before large-scale protests in France on 17 October escalated to include widespread looting.
It can be hard to tell authentic footage from videos taken out of context during fast-moving events—our misinformation toolkit can help.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because this video was filmed in Madrid and predates the recent unrest seen in France.
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