I am going to temporarily abandon my theme of fun observations of Spanish life and focus on the Catalan independence vote, which has taken a pretty serious turn. I mentioned the other day that northern Spain is planning to vote for independence, again. This time, the Spanish government said that such a vote was illegal. Northern Spain said they were doing it anyway, southern Spain said "no you can't," northern Spain said "yes, we can," etc.
Today, Spanish police raided election offices and confiscated voting materials. They also arrested 14 elected officials who were in favor of holding a vote, including the Secretary of the Treasury. I walked through several large protest rallies today. It's almost midnight, and people are still making a lot of noise outside. So yeah, things are a little tense here in Barcelona.
This is a gathering at the government building this evening at the Plaza Jaume, where the Spanish and Catalan governments have offices directly across from each other in a small square, ostensibly to facilitate communication.
And on the way back to may apartment, almost everyone on my street participated in an impromptu protest against the Spanish government by banging pots and pans from their windows:
And on a completely different, tone-deaf and insensitive note that I really feel kind of bad about, I had a delightful dinner of marinated mushrooms with eggplant and ceviche of cod with tomato confit and some odd little fruit, at a restaurant highly recommended by the New York Times.
No comments:
Post a Comment