Roads blocked in outcry over meeting in Catalan capital on first anniversary of snap poll

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This article is more than 1 year old

Demonstrators have clashed with police in Barcelona during protests against the Spanish government’s decision to hold a cabinet meeting in the Catalan capital on the first anniversary of the snap election called after the regional government’s unilateral independence declaration.

Parts of the city were in lockdown on Friday morning, while elsewhere in Catalonia, more than 20 roads were blocked by members of the direct-action Committees for the Defence of the Republic with the aim of cutting off all access to Barcelona.

Dozens of protesters sat on the AP 7 motorway, which runs down the Mediterranean coast, holding their hands in the air as police in riot gear pulled them from the road. Some were wearing hi-vis vests in a presumed reference both to France’s gilets jaunes activists and the colour associated with the Catalan independence movement, yellow.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Protesters block a section of the AP-7 motorway on Friday. Photograph: Jaume Sellart/EPA

Some roads were blocked with tyres.

On Friday evening, tens of thousands joined a peaceful demonstration in central Barcelona under the slogan “Bring down the regime.”

Thousands of police officers were earlier on duty to cordon off the area around Llotja de Mar, the old stock exchange building, where the ministers were meeting.

Sánchez said the cabinet had met in Barcelona to show that it served all Spain’s citizens. “We’re working on policies and dialogue to answer the needs of Spanish society,” he tweeted in both Spanish and Catalan.

Following Friday’s cabinet meeting, the Spanish government announced that the city’s El Prat airport will be renamed Josep Tarradellas after the politician who led the Catalan government in exile during the Franco dictatorship.

In another symbolic gesture, it also condemned the military court that ordered the execution of the Catalan president Lluis Companys in 1940, and said that seven scientists who were persecuted under Francoism would have their honours restored.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Pro-independence demonstrators shout slogans as they march against Spain’s cabinet holding a meeting in Barcelona Photograph: Emilio Morenatti/AP

The decision to rename the airport was not well received by the Catalan government, which said it had not been consulted over the move.

“It’s clear what concept [the Spanish government] have of Catalonia,” the former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont wrote in a tweet.

“When it comes to the name of the most important and strategic infrastructure, we’re not consulted or allowed to decide or put forward proposals … We’re basically seen as a possession.”

Although Catalan pro-independence leaders had issued repeated calls for people to follow the tradition of peaceful protest, there were outbreaks of violence. A total of 51 people were injured, 30 of them police.

Eleven people were arrested, including a protester who was detained on Via Laietana for being in possession of inflammable materials, according to police.

In the Drassanes area of the city, near the old port, police charged protesters with batons after they began throwing crash barriers at police lines.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A member of the Catalan regional police force kicks away a smoke bomb. Photograph: Josep Lago/AFP/Getty Images

A person was arrested after large stones and other objects were thrown at police in Drassanes. Officers were also pelted with paint and bottles near La Llotja.

Video footage showed a journalist being punched to the ground while reporting on Friday’s events.

An influential grassroots independence movement, the Catalan National Assembly (ANC), has called a large-scale protest for 6pm on Friday.

Priscillia Ludosky, a spokeswoman for the gilets jaunes movement in France, met the president of the ANC on Friday.

Ludosky told reporters she had come to Barcelona to see what the two movements had in common, adding that people in France had also been fighting for “more democracy” and sovereignty.

“I’m here to try to understand what’s going on in our neighbouring country and to see what we have in common and the bad things that all governments have in common,” she said.

The protests took place hours after the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, and the Catalan president, Quim Torra, met and agreed to hold talks to find a solution to the impasse over independence.

In a joint statement, Sánchez and Torra agreed that a conflict existed over the future of Catalonia, adding: “Despite the significant differences over its origin, nature and the means of resolving it, [we] share, above all, a commitment to effective dialogue to bring about a political proposal that is widely supported by Catalan society.”