Thousands of people in Catalonia were poised to unite yesterday to form a 400km human chain in a bold push for independence from Spain which is fiercely opposed by Madrid. The chain was due to stretch across 86 cities, towns and villages along the coast of the northeastern region on the Mediterranean, passing landmarks such as the Sagrada Familia basilica in Barcelona and the city’s Camp Nou soccer stadium.
The event, tagged the “Catalonian Way Towards Independence,” coincided with the region’s national day, or Diada, which recalls the final defeat of local troops by Spanish king Philip V’s forces in 1714.
“It’s going to be a historic day,” said Carme Forcadell, the president of the Catalonian National Assembly, the grassroots group organizing the human chain. She predicted over 400,000 people would take part.
Photo: AFP
Participants will link arms at 17:14 a reference to the year 1714, which for many Catalonian nationalists marks the beginning of three centuries of oppression by the Spanish state.
The protest is an attempt to emulate the 1989 Baltic Way chain that called for the independence of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania during the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Hundreds of thousands of people joined in a huge national day rally in Barcelona last year as Catalonian separatist stirrings were stoked by the cuts to health and education services.
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s right-leaning government refuses to countenance a breakup of Spain, and has vowed to block a referendum on self-rule that Catalonian regional president Artur Mas has promised for next year.
In a sign of its determination, Madrid called on the Constitutional Court to strike down the region’s latest attempt to assert itself: a parliamentary declaration of sovereignty in January.
The court agreed to hear the case, meaning the declaration is suspended until it makes a ruling.
A referendum would be a “unilateral declaration of independence that would have serious consequences for Spain and also for Catalonia” which would have to “bid farewell to the European Union,” Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo said on Tuesday.
On Tuesday evening, however, Mas hit back. Catalonians “must be consulted next year on their political future,” he said.
The road map was clear, he added.
“The right to self-determination, a referendum, national transition and the formation of a state,” should be done “democratically ... peacefully and with broad majorities.”
The Catalonian government wants Spain to follow the example of Britain, which has allowed a referendum on Scottish independence to take place next year. Proud of their distinct Catalan language and culture, yet suffering in Spain’s recession, many of the 7.5 million people in debt-laden Catalonia resent seeing their taxes redistributed to other parts of Spain.
The Catalonian government argues that it receives considerably less per capita public expenditure than the average for all Spanish regions, while contributing much more to the Spanish treasury than most regions.
Catalonia has a jobless rate of 23.85 percent — lower than the national average of 26.26 percent, but still painfully high — and a public debt of 50.9 billion euros (US$67 billion).
The region had to go cap-in-hand to Madrid in January to ask for 9.07 billion euros from a fund to help debt-laden jurisdictions.
About 5,000 volunteers were due to help run the protest. Some 1,500 buses were to help move protesters into position.
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of