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Scores of people were hurt as protesters clashed with police in violent scenes near Camp Nou stadium as Barcelona played Real Madrid.

Masked protesters set bins on fire and threw rocks and glass bottles at police, who responded with foam bullets in a street near the stadium, which was hosting the first 'El Clasico' of the season.

Five people were arrested and 46 hurt during the pro-Catalonian independence protests, according to emergency services, with eight people taken to hospital for further care.

The protesters, many of them carrying Catalan separatist flags, set up barricades in the middle of the street, which they then set on fire after police arrived in dozens of vans, according to an AFP reporter at the scene.

Demonstrators rocked a police van and took down street signs that they added to the barricade.

(Image: TONI ALBIR/EPA-EFE/REX) (Image: TONI ALBIR/EPA-EFE/REX)

It was the first violent protest in Catalonia since October when Spain’s top court jailed nine Catalan separatist leaders over their role in a failed 2017 bid for independence, triggering days of protests.

Wednesday night's La Liga game had initially been scheduled to take place in October, but was postponed due to security concerns amid the unrest in the wealthy northeastern region.

The protest was called by secretive Catalan protest group Democratic Tsunami, which says it favours peaceful civic disobedience.

The group's main goals are to get Spain to negotiate on Catalonia's right to self-determination and to achieve freedom for the jailed separatists.

Chanting "Independence" and "Free political prisoners", several thousand Catalan protesters gathered near Camp Nou stadium on Wednesday hours before the match, which ended 0-0.

(Image: AFP via Getty Images) (Image: AFP via Getty Images)

Despite a heavy police presence, some of the protestors blocked a major avenue near the stadium, disrupting traffic ahead of the game.

Minutes before the match began Catalan police broke up fighting that flared between some Barcelona fans and pro-independence protesters, detaining one person for throwing projectiles at them.

As the second half got underway masked demonstrators broke down an exterior fence in a failed attempt to gain entry to the stadium, a police spokesman said.

The group set fire to waste containers to create a barricade before several vans of police arrived to disperse the crowd, Reuters TV footage showed.

(Image: Marta Perez/EPA-EFE/REX)

(Image: AFP via Getty Images)





Many protesters carried banners that read "Spain, sit and talk" and Democratic Tsunami said on Twitter it would distribute 100,000 of those banners to the people attending the game.

The organisation also told people to bring inflatable balls and to write on them a "message for the world".