BARCELONA:
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez held emergency talks with opposition
leaders yesterday about violent protests by separatists in Catalonia. Scores of
people have been hurt and dozens arrested in the past two nights of clashes
between protesters and police in Barcelona and other Catalan cities.

Protesters are
furious at the jailing of nine separatist leaders for their role in a failed
2017 independence bid that sparked a deep political crisis. The convictions on
Monday revived tensions in the wealthy northeastern region, split between
Catalans loyal to Madrid and those who want it to break away from Spain. In
Barcelona on Tuesday night, police charged hundreds of masked demonstrators who
threw projectiles at officers and set garbage bins and cardboard boxes on fire.

In a tweet,
Sanchez said the government "firmly and resoundingly condemns the violence
that seeks to break co-existence in Catalonia." Yesterday thousands of
protesters departed on foot along highways from five Catalan towns towards
Barcelona. They planned to gather there on Friday, when unions have called a
general strike in the region. Sanchez received conservative opposition leader
Pablo Casado of the Popular Party yesterday morning.

He was scheduled
to meet later with the leaders of centre-right Ciudadanos and far-left Podemos.
He said he would "convey the government's determination to guarantee
security, with firmness, proportionality and unity." The separatist
movement has said there will be no let-up in the protests. They erupted after
the Supreme Court on Monday convicted 12 Catalan separatist leaders of sedition
over the 2017 referendum and short-lived declaration of independence. The court
handed prison sentences of between nine and 13 years to nine of them and fines
to the other three. The ruling thrust the Catalan dispute to the heart of the
political debate ahead of Spain's November 10 general election, its fourth in
as many years.

'No return'

Police arrested
29 people in the province of Barcelona, 14 in Tarragona province and eight in
Lleida, Spain's interior ministry said. Officials said 125 people were injured
in the protests, including 72 police officers, some with broken bones.
Municipal cleaning crews used hoses to clear the streets of Barcelona of debris
from the dozens of fires which were set overnight.

The violent
protests marked a break with the mainly peaceful and festive pro-independence
rallies which have been held in Catalonia since the separatist movement gained
momentum nearly a decade ago. The separatist camp is frustrated over Catalan
regional president Quim Torra's failure to deliver on his government's promise
to achieve independence.

On the wall of a
luxury watch shop in an upscale Barcelona neighborhood, someone had scrawled
"Torra, traitor". "We have embarked on a road of no
return," the Committees for the Defense of the Republic (CDR), a radical
separatist movement, tweeted. It called on the separatist regional government
to "take a step forward by breaking with the Spanish state."

'Raising
tensions'

Catalonia's vice
president Pere Aragones urged demonstrators to avoid violence. He said that
would give Spain's central government a pretext to intervene in the region --
as it did when it suspended Catalonia's autonomy after the 2017 independence
bid. "Do not give them what they want," he said. Spain's conservative
parties have branded Sanchez a traitor for accepting the backing of Catalan
separatist parties to help him secure power in 2018, and for his willingness to
negotiate with them.

The conservative
parties have urged him to take a harder line against the protesters. "In
the face of the violent unrest which is raising tensions in Catalonia, Sanchez
must activate the national security law," Casado said. "It is urgent
to guarantee security and public order." On Monday, some 10,000 people
blocked access to Barcelona airport, Spain's second busiest, for several hours
on Monday. Demonstrators issued calls on social media to "Turn Catalonia
into the new Hong Kong" -- a reference to recent demonstrations against
Chinese influence in that territory. - AFP