Crowds march for separatists and riots in Barcelona

The festive atmosphere contrasts with another demonstration of hundreds of young people a few blocks away, where barricades were burned, causing visible smoke columns and throwing objects against the cordon that guarded the central police station.

The police used rubber bullets and tear gas and arrested four protesters, all underage, said a police spokesman. Medical services reported 25 health services in Barcelona.

The city was filled this Friday with separatists, many arrived by columns of thousands of people who participated in five hundred-kilometer marches started Wednesday in different parts of the region.

The protest was the culmination of the mobilization against the ruling of the Spanish Supreme Court, which sentenced Monday nine to thirteen years in prison to nine independence leaders for their unsuccessful secession attempt in 2017.

Peaceful during the day, at night, the demonstrations took a violent air in Barcelona and other cities, a novelty of the movement for independence. During the last three nights in Barcelona, ​​groups of young people with faces covered with fire-built barricades confronted the police in Molotov with fireworks and acid cocktails. Even Thursday night, they ransacked two companies.

The incidents started on Monday, when some 10,000 protesters partially blocked the Barcelona airport., convened by a platform called Democratic Tsunami, which is currently the subject of a judicial investigation for "terrorist offenses".

The crisis in Catalonia takes place a few weeks after the parliamentary elections of 10 November in Spain and has put pressure on the outgoing Socialist Government President, Pedro Sánchez, to whom the right-wing opposition is demanding strong measures.

The Catalan independence government, which is promoting protests against the sentencing, is also sending its autonomous police, the Esquadra Mossos, to crack down on violent actions with the help of bullets and bullets. In the eye of the storm, the president of the Catalan region, Quim Torra, proposed Thursday to hold a new vote on independence during his tenure in this highly divided region on the issue.