300 block Barcelona's Diagonal Avenue during strike for Palestine

Around 300 people blocked Barcelona's Avinguda Diagonal (Diagonal Avenue) near Palau Reial during the strike against the "genocide" in Palestine, organized by the CGT and Solidaritat Obrera unions. 

"Murderous Israel" and "Free Palestine" were some of the slogans shouted by the demonstrators, mostly young people, who marched along the thoroughfare's central lanes at first but then also along one side, blocking trams as well as traffic. 

They stopped at the Israeli Consulate, which was protected by police, where they shook fences. 

Demonstrators also threw paint at a Starbucks on Avinguda Diagonal. 

The march finished at Plaça del Sòl de Baix in the Les Corts district. 

'Process of extermination' 

CGT member Maurici Victory justified the strike because Israel's "offensive has continued" to lead to "a process of extermination of the Palestinian people." 

The trade unionist explained that the intention of the strike was, on the one hand, to highlight "all the companies that collaborate with the Zionist regime" and, on the other, "the complicity of the Catalan and Spanish institutions with the ethnic cleansing that is taking place in Palestine." 

Elsewhere, teaching at the University of Barcelona's Faculty of Philosophy and Faculty of Geography and History were suspended for the day because a picket line blocked access to the buildings.