A few days before the resumption of negotiations with Madrid, the Catalan separatists demonstrated on Saturday in the streets of Barcelona but without managing to mobilize en masse, against a backdrop of disillusion and divisions four years after the failure of the 2017 secession attempt .
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With the slogan “
Let's fight to win independence
”, this event was called for the “Diada”, a celebration of Catalonia that has become for a decade the scene of major independence demonstrations.
108,000 demonstrators
As every year, it started at 5:14 p.m. (3:14 p.m. GMT) precisely, in commemoration of the capture of Barcelona on September 11, 1714, during the War of the Spanish Succession, by the troops of King Philippe V.
If at the height of the rise of independence in Catalonia, the “Diada” had gathered 1.8 million separatists in 2014, mobilization has fallen in recent years.
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On Saturday, the municipal police counted 108,000 demonstrators, a figure much lower than that of 2019 (600,000).
The organizers mentioned the figure of 400,000.
In 2020, only 60,000 people had participated, but the pandemic had prevented a normal demonstration from being organized.
