Travel disrupted as Catalans protest over arrests
PROTESTERS blocked roads and train lines across Catalonia yesterday, provoking commuter anger.
A strike was called by a pro-independence union after eight separatist leaders were still held in detention in Madrid over their divisive secession drive.
Roads and motorways were blocked, causing widespread disruption in the region, which has been plunged into uncertainty over its deposed government’s bid to split from Spain.
The protests had eased in the afternoon, with only about six blockages – from about 60 earlier – remaining in the region, an interior ministry official said.
The independence crisis has shaken a European Union still getting to grips with Britain’s decision to leave the bloc, and raised fears of social unrest as well as prolonged disruption to the eurozone’s fourth-largest economy.
Spain’s Constitutional Court yesterday struck down the declaration of independence made by Catalan politicians on October 27 – which led Madrid to dismiss the government and take control of the region – declaring it unconstitutional and void.
Madrid is organising new regional elections in Catalonia for next month, as it tries to stem the fallout from Spain’s deepest political crisis in decades.
Huge banners were draped across tunnels in Barcelona, blocking entry, and activists also cut off main roads linking the region of 7.5 million people to France and to the Spanish capital.
At one protest in Sitges, southwest of Barcelona, demonstrators on a highway set up banners, deckchairs and a tabletop game of chess as long queues of motorists formed.
But the work stoppage was smaller than during a general strike on October 3 that followed Catalonia’s banned independence referendum, in which 90% voted to break from Spain.
During that strike most shops and tourist attractions closed down in Barcelona while they remained open yesterday, though activists blocked access to the popular Sagrada Familia basilica.