By Larbi Arbaoui
By Larbi Arbaoui
Morocco World News
Taroudant, September 11, 2012
Hundreds of thousands of marchers took to the streets of Barcelona to demonstrate on the occasion of Catalan National Day Sept. 11, 2012, in an unprecedented show of mass support for independence from Madrid.
The protestors rallied into the city waving the region’s independence flag and shouting out slogans “Catalonia: a new European state” and others against the Spanish government’s tax laws.
Alfred Bosch, an MP from the Republican left of Catalonia, told the BBC: “All the flags I can see are the pro-independence flags of Catalonia with the lonely star right in the middle of the triangle.”
Although Catalonia enjoys its own autonomy in certain areas, it remains subject to Spanish rule. While it recognizes and guarantees the right to autonomy for all the country’s regions, The Spanish Constitution of 1978 states that Spain is an indissoluble nation.
Spain has for long beset by separatism, especially from the Basque and the Catalan regions.
According to the Guardian, Polls published on Tuesday show support for independence running at 46.4%, twice as high as in 2008, when the financial crisis began. Catalans hold the belief that their region is the richest of the country. Stemming from this belief, they consider that their region contributes unfairly to revive the country’s reeling economy.
