Roads blocked, students strike a year after Catalonia vote
Sant Julia De Ramis, Oct. 1: Prosecession activists in Spain’s Catalonia region blocked major transportation routes and thousands of students marched in Barcelona on the anniversary on Monday of an independence referendum that was crushed by police and failed to produce a separate Catalan state.
College and high school boycotted classes and made emotional speeches at mass demonstrations to commemorate the October 1, 2017, vote that Spanish courts had deemed illegal and ordered suspended.
The anniversary of the event that sparked Spain’s gravest political crisis in decades was being marked by a fractured Catalan independence movement amid a timid dialogue with the central government, now in the hands of a minority Socialist administration.
In Girona, north of Barcelona, hundreds of activists halted high- speed railway traffic for most of the morning by occupying the train tracks. Some protesters then moved to the local headquarters of the Catalan government’s provincial delegation, replacing the official Spanish flag from the public building with a separatist emblem.
Local activist groups that emerged after last year’s independence declaration, known as Committees for the Defense of the Republic, shared photos and posts on social media showing blockages of regional roads and several points along the AP- 7 highway, the main north- south artery running through eastern Catalonia and leading to the French border.
Traffic was affected in Lleida and Barcelona, the regional capital, where marches were held throughout the day.