A 600-strong police contingency was deployed on Friday in Barcelona as the Spain’s government was set to hold its weekly cabinet meeting in the Catalan capital amid plans by separatist groups to hold protests and block roads throughout the region.
For Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, the choice of the venue is both a show of resolve not to allow full independence and part of a strategy to secure the survival of his minority government with the help of Catalonian pro-independence parties by negotiating a greater degree of autonomy with their leaders.
On Thursday (December 22) night, Sanchez met Catalonia’s pro-independence regional government head Quim Torra in a hastily arranged meeting where they agreed to open a dialogue in a symbolic joint declaration to ease tensions in the protracted crisis over Catalonia’s ambitions to split from Spain.
Catalonia unilaterally declared independence in October 2017, triggering Spain’s worst political crisis in decades and prompting the previous conservative central government to seize control there for several months
