falange

Ciutadans, People's Party, and far-right Vox participate in Barcelona's main October 12 march

Nearly 4,000 Spanish unity supporters and extreme-right forces gathered this Monday in Barcelona’s ‘Plaça de Catalunya’to celebrate Spain’s National Day. Although this time neither the Spanish People’s Party (PP) nor anti-Catalan nationalism Ciutadans confirmed their attendance, the PP’s leader in Catalonia, Xavier Garcia Albiol, in the end took part in the rally, together with other PP members. With the slogan ‘Barcelona, capital city of Spanishness’, members of Falange –the fascist party of Franco, which is still legal in today’s Spain, groups opposing Catalonia’s independence and retired soldiers displayed Spanish flags, shouted ‘Catalonia is Spain’ and burnt pro-independence flags in the centre of the square. Spain’s National Day commemorates the day Columbus landed in America, in 1492. In Madrid there is a big army exhibition but in the last years the day has been regarded as opposition to Catalonia’s push for independence and other regions of Spain’s exaltation of Spanish nationalism and the denial of other regions autonomy, especially Catalonia and Basque Country.   

In addition, the Catalan President, Artur Mas, responded to the Public Prosecutor Office's warnings by stating that he is the person responsible for opening the polling stations. Besides, three judges from Barcelona, Badalona and Tarragona decided to reject the petitions of taking away the participatory process' ballot boxes for "not being proportional". On November 9, in the middle of the participatory process, there were still some judicial actions on-going that were trying to stop Catalans from voting. The first group of actions were those carried out by the Public Prosecutor Office – whose head is directly appointed by the Spanish Government, which threatened to identify volunteers and which has already obtained a detailed list of voting centres. The second group were the complaints filed by Spanish nationalist parties and some private citizens. Populist UPyD and extreme-right parties PxC and Falange filed complaints on Saturday, asking for the ballot boxes to be removed.