1.5 million take to streets of Barcelona in support of independence
As many as 1.5 million took to the streets of Barcelona on Tuesday in an unprecedented show of mass support for autonomy from Madrid, blaming Spain's economic crisis for dragging their wealthy region down.
10:09PM BST 11 Sep 2012
Surging unemployment and financial disarray have stoked a fever of separatism in Catalonia, a comparatively prosperous part of Spain whose leaders say their wealth is being sucked dry by the central government.
Crowds waved red and yellow striped Catalan flags – one of the oldest still in use in Europe – and sang the Catalan anthem on a national day marking the conquest of Catalonia by Spain's King Philip V in 1714 after a 13 month siege of Barcelona.
The regional government said the crowd was 600,000 strong. Local police gave figures as high as 1.5 million.
Marchers said the sheer size of the crowd – swollen with people from around the region who descended on its capital in bright sunshine – would at last make Madrid hear their message.
"This is a blow for the government. People like me came from everywhere. I don't think they were expecting something as big," said 53-years-old Teresa Cabanes, who came from Santa Coloma de Gramanet, in the outskirts of Barcelona, to march.
"We feel that the central government is fooling with us. We Catalans are giving away a lot of money to Spain."
With Spain's economy in freefall from the euro zone debt crisis, Catalans complain of paying billions of euros more in taxes than they receive back from Madrid, even as their regional government has been forced to fire workers and cut services.
The colossal outpouring on Tuesday was a sign that the economic crisis has transformed issues of cultural identity into a mainstream political movement bent on autonomy. A poll by the regional government in July showed for the first time that more than half of Catalonia's population favours independence.
Source: Reuters
