BARCELONA: Five people were injured and seven arrested on Saturday as members of Spain’s far-right Vox party demonstrating in Barcelona against Catalan independence clashed with separatist activists there, police said.

The violence came amid rising tension in the run-up to parliamentary elections next month and the continuing trial of 12 Catalan leaders for their part in the failed 2017 independence bid.

Police estimated that around 5,000 members of Vox demonstrated in the Catalan capital, in the words of their leader Santiago Abascal to “defend to the very end a united Spain”.

“Spain will not resign itself to being destroyed,” Abascal told the crowd.

Several groups of radical Catalan separatists, many of them masked, had organised counter-demonstrations around the Vox rally, which took place in the Plaza de Espana.

Carrying banners denouncing fascism about 300 of them set up barricades, burning rubbish bins, and throwing bottles and stones at officers, said police.

Vox made its electoral breakthrough when it won seats in the Andalusia regional assembly last December. It is expected to pick up more nationally in the April 28 parliamentary elections.

In the trial of the Catalan nationalists, it has taken the position of a “popular prosecutor”, a role particular to the Spanish justice system, which allows it to be an accuser alongside state prosecutors.

Spain’s socialist government has rejected suggestions that prosecution of the Catalan separatists has been unfair.

The Catalan separatist crisis that has plagued Spain ever since a failed breakaway bid by the wealthy region two years ago promises to play a central role in Spain’s April 28 national election.

While the ruling Socialists led by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez are trying to focus on social issues, the opposition parties on the right are competing for which of them can take a harder stance on reigning in the secessionists.

That includes the upstart far-right Vox party, which is hoping to increase voter support with a pledge to crush the separatist movement by stripping Catalonia’s regional government of its powers and recentralising control in Madrid, the capital.“Catalonia is not a nation! It is something much more important; it is a part of Spain!” Abascal told the crowd on Saturday.

Abascal railed against the attempt by Catalan separatist lawmakers to declare independence in 2017, a fateful decision that set off Spain’s worst constitutional crisis in nearly four decades. The separatist movement’s leaders are now either on trial in the Supreme Court or are outlaws from Spain after fleeing the country.

“The most sacred thing is unity,” Abascal said. “We will suspend Catalonia’s self-government, intervene in its administration, and outlaw the separatists.” The polarising presence of Vox was met by protests from Catalan separatist groups that turned violent. Protesters threw objects and burned wood in the street during run-ins with police in riot gear, who deployed to keep them separate from the campaign event.

Catalan regional police said they arrested seven protesters, three for attacking a person going to the nationalist rally. Police said five people, including one officer, received light injuries.

Published in Dawn, March 31st, 2019