Unionist Ciutadans leaders add fuel to fire removing yellow ribbons

Unionist Ciutadans party leaders Albert Rivera and Inés Arrimadas removed yellow ribbons themselves in the Catalan town of Alella on Wednesday, thus adding fuel to fire in the controversy already heated over this issue in Catalonia.

Activists in support with the jailed and exiled leaders have been hanging up yellow signs in public spaces in the past few months, while some unionist activists have been removing them recently, with parties promoting it such as Ciutadans.

In fact this party called a protest for Wednesday evening to reject an alleged attack to a woman whose children were removing such signs. Yet it is not clear whether the reasons behind the incident had anything to do with politics.

Spain-Catalonia security meeting

This, as the Spanish and Catalan governments will meet on September 6 in Barcelona to hold a meeting on security in Catalonia.

It will be the first one since both executives came into power this spring –during the whole presidency of Mariano Rajoy spanning from 2011 to 2018 such meeting only took place once in 2017.

Both executives disagree over whether to speak about the yellow ribbon controversy that has been picking up momentum recently.

While the Catalan government rejects tackling the issue as it is a matter public order and this is "exclusively" handled by the Catalan police and not subject to coordination, the Spanish home affairs minister insists that Spanish police forces can take part in such issues if they think it necessary. Thus Madrid believes the yellow ribbon controversy has to be one of the issues covered on September 6.