BARCELONA (Spain), Sept 12 (NNN-AGENCIES) — About 600,000 people marched in Barcelona in support of Catalan independence on Wednesday, police say, one of the lowest turnouts in the eight-year history of the annual march.
The Diada is the anniversary of the city’s fall to Spanish forces in 1714.
A march in Barcelona has been held on the day each year since 2012, to back Catalonia’s independence from Spain.
Close to a million people hit the streets at the same march in 2018, marking a significant drop in numbers.
This year’s event comes just weeks ahead of a verdict for 12 separatist politicians for their role in a banned independence vote in 2017.
Former Catalan vice-president Oriol Junqueras and eight others face the most serious charge of rebellion. Public prosecutors have asked that he spend 25 years behind bars.
Catalonia declared its independence just weeks after holding a referendum. Spain then declared direct rule over the autonomous province.
Facing charges of sedition and rebellion, the men could face up to 25 years in prison if convicted.
Thousands of blue-shirted protesters demanded the release of the separatist leaders during Wednesday’s demonstrations.
Most of the protests were peaceful, although a group of demonstrators threw projectiles at riot police during clashes near the Catalan parliament.
Former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont fled the country after the 2017 referendum, and is now based in Belgium.
Spain dropped European arrest warrants against him and five of his aides in July, although the charges against him remain active – meaning all six face arrest if they return.
While separatists control the regional government in Catalonia, which is home to around 7.5 million people, they have been unable to agree on how to push ahead for independence for the region that accounts for a fifth of Spain’s economic output.
“It is essential to have a united strategy that allows us to achieve independence. The first step is filling the streets on September 11,” the pro-independence ANC said in a statement.
Demonstrators will form the shape of a giant star which the ANC says will symbolise a state “as well as the joint effort of the Catalan people to defend their right of self-determination”.
But unlike in 2017, Catalonia’s two main separatist parties which govern the region are at odds over the path ahead.
Puigdemont’s Together for Catalonia party has called for “confrontation” with Madrid if the Supreme Court hands guilty verdicts against the 12 separatist leaders.
But Junqueras’ leftist party ERC has called for dialogue with Spain’s central government, which is less hostile to the separatists since Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s Socialists came to power in June 2018.
Catalan vice president Pere Aragones of the ERC said Tuesday that the “harsher the sentence… the greater the need there will be to settle this issue politically”. — NNN-AGENCIES
