page_title: 2017 Catalan general strike
section_title: Actions
hierarchical_section_title: 2017 Catalan general strike / Actions
caption_attribution_description: Català: Aturada de país 3 octubre 2017. Concenració per la pau, pel respecte i per la democràcia a Deltebre. Caminada des de l'ajuntament, pel carrer Girona fins el Pont Lo Passador English: A walk for peace from the town hall of Deltebre across the Lo Passador bridge to Sant Jaume d'Enveja
context_page_description: Catalan separatists held a general strike on 3 October 2017 following Catalonia's referendum on independence two days earlier. The referendum, which was held in defiance of Spanish national court orders, resulted in over 900 people injured as the national police attempted to prevent Catalans from voting. The violence galvanized separatist support for the strike, whose planning predated the crackdown, and led to endorsements from the Catalan government, the Catalan branches of the country's two largest labor unions, and pro-independence cultural groups.
  Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators, including 700,000 in Barcelona, participated in the strike. Despite high tensions, protests were civil, festive, and without incident, similar to prior pro-independence rallies. While protesters targeted Spanish police and national government sites, other effects included suspended public transportation and port activities, canceled university classes, and closed businesses small and large.
context_section_description: On 3 October, two days after the referendum, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators blocked roads across Catalonia, including main thoroughfares in Barcelona. Farmers blocked highways with their tractors. By 9:30 a.m., the Barcelona bus and subway systems were almost entirely halted. Catalonia's railway company suspended service, the national railway ran minimally, and the ports of Barcelona and Tarragona closed, as did places of work from small stores to the large, wholesale food-trading market Mercabarna. Universities canceled classes and the large public market La Boqueria was nearly empty. The strike included the staff of the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art and Sagrada Família basilica, and Barcelona's football team, FC Barcelona. Barcelona's airport and most other large industries, however, ran without disruption. Many students and farmworkers participated. By midday, in Barcelona, tens of thousands of people occupied the city's major streets—Avinguda Diagonal, Gran Via, Via Laietana—en route to the major demonstrations at the city's administrative center, Plaça Sant Jaume, and the intersection of Barcelona's other city squares at Ronda de la Universitat. Demonstrators gathered before the region's town halls before a planned action at 6 p.m. Barcelona city police later estimated the city's crowd to be 700,000 people in size.
  The Spanish police were a focal point of protest as a response to their actions during the referendum. A manifesto from the Board for Democracy, read from atop a car, called for withdrawal of Spanish security forces and more dialogue in lieu of force. It charged the state with aggressive violation of the public's "fundamental rights and democratic liberties". Protesters chanted, "Spanish police get out!" Demonstrators surrounded the hotels housing Spanish police to demand they leave Catalonia, which was also demanded by Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont. In the small towns of Calella and Pineda de Mar, protests led some hotels to eject their Spanish police guests. Xavier García Albiol, the leading Catalan figure of the Spanish prime minister's party, was booed when voicing his support of the Spanish police in Pineda de Mar. Protests at the National Police Corps station in Barcelona continued from the day prior for its role in repressing the referendum. Demonstrators also protested the Spanish Delegation to Catalonia and showed broad contempt for the Spanish press, whom they accused of manipulative reporting and casting separatists as greedy and violent.
  Despite high tensions, protests were civil, festive, and without incident, similar to prior pro-independence rallies. In one case, a protester who threw a beer can into riot police was surrounded by fellow protesters who chanted "We are a people of peace" and encouraged him to leave. Firefighters and the Catalan police acted in an improvised role as peacekeepers at some protests. In one instance, the Catalan police defused a volatile standoff by convincing the Spanish police to leave. Posts on social media encouraged peaceful protest and resistance to incitement. The Catalan government forewarned against plainclothes officers who may infiltrate gatherings to sow discord. Some shops were forced to close by protesters who graffitied "strikebreakers" on their storefronts.
  Protesters also sought to maintain momentum from the referendum. Some wore the Estelada (separatist flag) in yellow, red, and blue. Crowds sang Catalan singer Lluís Llach's "L'Estaca" and the Catalan anthem, "Els Segadors". On the Via Laietana, they chanted "Withdraw the forces of occupation" and "The disgrace of Europe" to the tune of the rock song "Seven Nation Army".
caption: Demonstrators for peace cross the Lo Passador bridge from Deltebre to Sant Jaume d'Enveja in southern Catalonia
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