On Tuesday, as many as 1.5 million took to the streets of Barcelona in an unprecedented show of popular support for autonomy from Madrid as Barcelonans blame Madrid for Spain’s economic crisis that is dragging their wealthy region down.

The Daily Telegraph of London reports that, “surging unemployment and financial disarray have stoked a fever of separatism in Catalonia, a comparatively prosperous part of Spain whose leaders say their wealth is being sucked dry by the central government.”

Separatists waved red and yellow striped Catalan flags – one of the oldest still in use in Europe – and chanted the Catalan anthem on a National Day marking the conquest of Catalonia by Spain’s King Philip V in 1714 after a 13 month attack on Barcelona.

According to the Telegraph, “the regional government said the crowd was 600,000 strong. Local police gave figures as high as 1.5 million.”

53-years-old Teresa Cabanes, who came from Santa Coloma de Gramamet in the outskirts of Barcelona, attended the march and said, “this is a blow for the government. People like me came from everywhere. I don’t think they were expecting something as big.”

To read the entire article from the Daily Telegraph of London, link here:

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