Angry crowd: Catalonia is Spain
Hundreds of thousands rally against independence for region
BARCELONA: Chanting “Don’t be fooled, Catalonia is Spain!” and waving Catalan, Spanish and European Union flags, hundreds of thousands of people rallied in the Catalan capital Barcelona, furious at a move by the region’s dismissed leaders to break away from Spain.
The crowd, which included parents with young children, retired couples and large groups of youths, made its way along the city’s Paseig de Gracia avenue under a bright blue sky as a police helicopter flew overhead.
Carmen Gutierrez, 60, an insurance worker, waved a giant red and yellow Spanish flag and danced to Spanish singer Manolo Escobar’s Y viva Espana (And Long Live Spain) as the song blared from speakers.
She said she was at work on Friday when Catalonia’s regional parliament voted to declare independence and said to herself: “This won’t go far.”
“I feel sorry for the people who believed it,” she said.
Gutierrez, who was born in Andalusia, said Catalonia’s separatist leaders are “guilty of dividing us, guilty of putting our pensions in danger, guilty of causing our banks to leave”.
That was a reference to the decision by Catalonia’s two biggest banks to move their legal headquarters to other parts of Spain in recent weeks due to the political tension.
Municipal police said the crowd numbered about 300,000.
Organisers said 1.3 million turned out and the central govern- ment’s representative in Catalonia put the figure at one million.
“The streets don’t belong just to the separatists,” said Alex Ramos, a doctor and the vice-president of Societat Civil Catalana, a group opposed to independence that organised the rally.
“There can’t be a Catalan republic,” said Oscar Torres, an 83-yearold pensioner.
Demands for independence have sparked Spain’s biggest political crisis in decades. Catalans are divided over independence.
Although two million people voted in a banned independence referendum on Oct 1, “there are 7.5 million Catalans”, Torres said.
“We have to find a solution that can satisfy the ego of the secessionists as well as the ego of Spanish authorities.”
The separatists “are very well organised, visible”, he added.
But he insisted those who want Catalonia to remain a part of Spain are “much more numerous”.
Many in the crowd called for Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont to be jailed.
Spain’s public prosecutor’s office will file rebellion charges against Puigdemont this week, a spokesman for the office said on Friday. — AFP