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Judge prohibits Badalona City Hall from working on Spain’s National Day

October 11, 2016 07:49 PM | ACN

Administrative Court Number 14 of Barcelona has prohibited Badalona City Hall from opening any municipal offices on Spain’s National Day, this Wednesday the 12th of October. The municipal government of Badalona announced earlier this week that it would offer their workers the possibility of working during the festivity in exchange for another free day, the 9th of December, coinciding with the Immaculada long weekend. This measure would have allowed the opening of offices providing services to citizens, with a skeleton staff of at least 50%, but the judge believes there are political intentions behind the municipal government decision to turn the 12-O into a voluntarily holiday and that these would harm "the general, social and collective interest" of the celebration, as well as the "ideological freedom" of workers. Parallel to the rise of Catalan national sentiment, the 12th of October is regarded in Catalonia as a day used by extreme-right forces to claim the union of the country and fight independence. 

Spain’s National Day celebrations in Barcelona smaller than in the last years

October 12, 2015 03:13 PM | ACN / Sara Prim

Nearly 4,000 Spanish unity supporters and extreme-right forces gathered this Monday in Barcelona’s ‘Plaça de Catalunya’to celebrate Spain’s National Day. Although this time neither the Spanish People’s Party (PP) nor anti-Catalan nationalism Ciutadans confirmed their attendance, the PP’s leader in Catalonia, Xavier Garcia Albiol, in the end took part in the rally, together with other PP members. With the slogan ‘Barcelona, capital city of Spanishness’, members of Falange –the fascist party of Franco, which is still legal in today’s Spain, groups opposing Catalonia’s independence and retired soldiers displayed Spanish flags, shouted ‘Catalonia is Spain’ and burnt pro-independence flags in the centre of the square. Spain’s National Day commemorates the day Columbus landed in America, in 1492. In Madrid there is a big army exhibition but in the last years the day has been regarded as opposition to Catalonia’s push for independence and other regions of Spain’s exaltation of Spanish nationalism and the denial of other regions autonomy, especially Catalonia and Basque Country.