The organizers announce that this Saturday they will again prevent circulation a few meters from the current location
The last authorized concentration brings together less than a hundred people and coexists with criticism from neighbors
More than 850 days after the first cut, the independentists who stopped traffic every night on Barcelona’s Meridiana avenue to protest against “the repression of the State” have done so for the last time this Friday. At least in that part of the city, where they have provoked repeated complaints from neighbors and merchants for the inconvenience they caused. But nevertheless, they promise to keep doing it just a few meters away.
The ‘last ones of the Meridiana’ were actually a few dozen survivors of the wave of protests that Barcelona experienced in October 2019, after the convictions of the ‘procés’ leaders. Those riots are over; the Government changed and the new ‘president’, Pere Aragonès, opted for a dialogue table; and Pedro Sánchez pardoned the imprisoned independentistas. But the irreducible of the Meridiana were still there, with an obstinacy less and less understandable even for his fellow travelers ideological.
“The neighbors complain a lot,” says the clerk of a business near the place where the cuts occurred. And she stresses that, in recent weeks, the situation had become more annoying after a group opposed to the protests, organized under the name ‘Meridiana Sin Cortes’, stood up to them with another concentration. “It’s the last night, luckily”, shouts a girl, forced to get off her motorcycle when the independentistas begin to occupy the road. The Generalitat has moved the protest from this Saturday to the square in front of the Sant Andreu Arenal Renfe station, where they would not affect traffic.
At eight o’clock at night the Guàrdia Urbana puts up its fences and cuts off the Meridiana. The demonstrators, less than a hundred, begin to shout slogans. “Today there are many because it is the last day; many times it’s 15 or 20“Says a neighbor who watches the rally from a safe distance. “I don’t think they’ll let him. They have been doing social gatherings here at night for two years,” jokes another neighbor opposed to the pro-independence mobilization.
And one of the spokespersons for the group ‘Meridiana Resisteix’ seems to agree with him. “Morning [por el sábado] we will cut traffic in Fabra i Puig with calle Pardo“, he says when he picks up the microphone. If it happens, the new cut will take place just a few meters from the current one.
Turull, only VIP
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Apart from the applause that this announcement arouses, and those that are heard when it is announced that the ‘ex-conseller’ Jordi Turull is present -he is the only VIP-, the night passes calmly. Two circumstances contribute to increasing the sensation of unreality that an uninformed observer would perceive when seeing that less than a hundred people cut off, with police permission, a main traffic artery in a large city. The first: the optimism of a lady who picks up the microphone to announce that the concentration “it’s news outside of here, from the Pyrenees upwards”. “People from Japan retweet us!” she assures.
The second: at 8:45 p.m. another concentration appears on the Meridiana, as numerous as or more numerous than the independence movement. They are Ciutat Meridiana activists against evictions. Those of ‘Meridiana Resisteix’ welcome them, but the distance between both claims becomes evident. “I don’t know what we’re doing here,” says a girl who was protesting against the lack of housing. And she walks away.