Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
750,000 at Barcelona rally call for release of jailed separatists
BARCELONA, Spain — Hundreds of thousands of people backing Catalonia’s bid to secede from Spain packed the streets in downtown Barcelona on Saturday to demand the release of jailed separatist leaders.
The rally’s grass-roots organizers called for 10 members of the secessionist movement in the northeastern Spanish region to be freed from prison.
Eight former members of Catalonia’s dissolved Cabinet and two activists are in jail while Spanish authorities investigate their alleged roles in promoting an illegal declaration of independence last month in violation of Spain’s Constitution.
A separate court in Madrid granted bail Thursday to another six Catalan lawmakers also being investigated over the secession push.
“We want to tell the world that we want freedom for our prisoners and freedom for Catalonia,” Agusti Alcoberro, the vice president of grass-roots group National Catalan Assembly, said in Barcelona, the region’s capital.
Barcelona’s police said 750,000 people attended the rally.
The Catalan conflict is the worst constitutional crisis to threaten Spain in nearly four decades.
A day after Catalonia’s Parliament voted in favor of a declaration of independence Oct. 27, Spain’s government activated extraordinary powers given to it by the Senate to fire the region’s government, dissolve its parliament and call local elections.
While those separatist leaders now in jail obeyed a summons to appear in court in Madrid, deposed Catalan president Carles Puigdemont and four of his former ministers fled to Belgium, where they now await an extradition hearing to return them to Spain.
Regional elections will be held Dec. 21.