Global General
Spain: Catalan villages vote for independence
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-12-14 10:17
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 FC Barcelona's President Joan Laporta gestures during his speech support for a campaign to promote the Catalan independence vote in Vic, Spain, Friday, December 11, 2009. [Agencies] |
Anti-Spanish sentiment in Catalonia can run very high. Next week the regional parliament will debate a bill to ban bullfighting. That probably has as much to do with concern over cruelty to animals as it does with a pastime associated with traditional Spain.
Sunday's paper ballots were counted by the organizers themselves, with monitors from places such as Corsica, Quebec and Northern Ireland, which have their own independence movements.
School coach Maria Teresa Montserrat, 54, said Sunday she voted for independence as a way to assert the distinct identity that many Catalans feel. "We are not better or worse than anybody else, we're just different," she said.
Beside her, townsfolk grilled "butifarra" sausages, a regional specialty, and drank white wine out of miniature wooden barrels.
Metal worker Enric Flores, 49, sheltered from the cold and rain under the stone arcade of a street market in the town of L'Arboc, population 5,000. Loudspeakers blared Motown songs in Catalan.
"Seen from the outside, life here looks very good, but we feel discriminated against," Flores said. Although the vote is nonbinding, "the government in Madrid must take this referendum into account," he added.
Antonio Duran, 53, a traveling salesman, dismissed the whole thing as nonsense.
"Catalonia is an important region of Spain, but that's all," he said.
