Riots Rock Barcelona After Separatist Strike Draws Huge Crowd
(Bloomberg) -- Rioting rocked Barcelona for a fifth night after a general strike drew a crowd of half a million people onto the streets of the Catalan capital to protest jail sentences for the leaders of a bid two years ago to secede from Spain.
While the strike passed off largely peacefully, Barcelona and other Catalan cities tipped into renewed violence Friday night. Televised images showed water cannon being used to disperse protesters who mounted burning barricades and showered police with rocks.
Spain’s acting Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said a hard core of about 400 very violent agitators was responsible for the sustained attacks on police that had left 207 officers injured this week. Police have so far made 128 arrests, he said in a news conference in Madrid on Friday night.
The strike called by two unions provided a lightning rod for anger at Supreme Court sentences totaling about 100 years handed down Monday to nine separatist leaders who tried to engineer an unconstitutional break from Spain in 2017. The unrest is playing out against the backdrop of an election campaign that will call Spanish voters to the polling booths on Nov. 10 for the fourth time in as many years.
Grande-Marlaska attempted to downplay the size of the estimate of the crowd for the strike given by Barcelona police, saying previous pro-independence demonstrations had been much bigger. Violent incidents across Catalonia left 62 people injured Friday, La Vanguardia newsapaper reported.
To contact the reporter on this story: Charles Penty in Madrid at cpenty@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Chad Thomas at cthomas16@bloomberg.net, Robert Jameson
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