BARCELONA: Catalan pro-independence groups blocked roads and clashed with baton-wielding police on Friday in protests against a Spanish government cabinet meeting in Barcelona branded a provocation by separatists.

The weekly cabinet meeting usually takes place in Madrid but Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s Socialist government decided to hold it in the Catalan capital as part of efforts to reduce tensions.

It appeared to have the opposite effect in some streets of the capital of the northeastern region, which last year made a failed attempt to break away from Spain.

Reporters saw baton-wielding riot police charge activists throwing stones and street barriers three times.

Protesters threw metal barriers and stones at officers and tried to breach a police barrier a few hundred metres (yards) from where the meeting was taking place.

Several thousand other demonstrators gathered peacefully near the city’s Franca rail station. Some held signs reading: “Occupying forces, out”.

Sanchez and the head of Catalonia’s separatist government, Quim Torra, have expressed a commitment to an “effective dialogue” to try to resolve the dispute over the wealthy region’s status within Spain.

At the cabinet meeting itself, the government approved a 22-per cent increase in the minimum wage, a pay hike for public workers and announced investments in infrastructure projects in Catalonia. “We came here to show (our) affection, (our) attachment to Catalonia,” government spokeswoman Isabel Celaa said afterwards.

“We are working for the wellbeing of all our fellow citizens.” But the timing of the meeting — a year to the day after Madrid held snap elections in the region after blocking its move for independence — offended some Catalans.

“This is a provocation. They have come here to provoke us,” said one demonstrator, textile worker Carles Serra, 45.

Spain’s wealthiest region, Catalonia is home to some 7.5 million people and has its own language.

A radical separatist group, the Committees for the Defence of the Republic (CDR), blocked a dozen main roads from around dawn on Friday, regional transport authorities said. “We will be ungovernable on Dec 21,” the group repeatedly tweeted.

Published in Dawn, December 22nd, 2018