Catalonia’s ‘silent majority’ speak up
SPAIN: They were dubbed the ‘‘silent majority’ but yesterday hundreds of thousands of Catalans who reject the region’s unlawful declaration of independence from Spain made their voices heard under a under a sea of red-andyellow Spanish and Catalan flags.
Demonstrators numbering 300,000 according to Barcelona’s police - although the organisers put the turnout at 1.1 million poured into the centre of Barcelona to say that the republic proclaimed by Carles Puigdemont, Catalonia’s deposed leader, was an illusion with no basis in reality and no hope of prospering. ‘‘This is Spain, and so it will stay. We’ve got the law on our side and the rest of the world,’’ said Alberto Villena, a pensioner who moved to Barcelona from southern Spain half a century ago to ‘‘help build Catalonia’’.
Dressed in a Real Madrid shirt and draped in a large Spanish flag, Villena was adamant that a majority of Catalans, many with mixed heritage like him, would defeat the region’s separatist politicians. ‘‘I’ve got children born here and grandchildren and we’re all Spaniards. These politicians have been deceiving people saying Catalonia is ‘independent’. We are more Spanish today.’’
Organised by the antiindependence platform Catalan Civil Society, yesterday’s demonstration was supported by the Popular Party of Mariano Rajoy, Spain’s Prime Minister, the main opposition socialists, and Ciudadanos, a centrist antinationalist party whose stronghold than ever here is in Catalonia.
Spain’s anti-secession forces can take hope from the first major opinion poll published since elections in Catalonia were set for December 21 by Rajoy, showing that pro-independence parties are on course to lose their slender majority in the region’s parliament with just 42.5 per cent of the popular vote.