Home Affairs puts an end to Meridiana protest

After more than 660 days since protestors started cutting off Meridiana avenue after the Independence Bid leaders were sentences, the Department of Home Affairs will no longer authorise the protests. Instead, it proposes a nearby location, as advanced by 'Nación Digital' and confirmed to ARA by sources in Home Affairs. The resolution will be effective as of Saturday. Sources in Home Affairs have pointed out that this decision has been taken to make the right to demonstrate compatible with the right of neighbours not to suffer nuisance after three years of roadblocks. However, the decision was also influenced by calls for counter-demonstrations by unionist parties, the last of which occurred on February 1. "For weeks now there have been episodes of tension and we want to reverse this situation", the same sources remarked.

The General Directorate of Security Administration validated the resolution on Wednesday after transferring the proposal earlier in the week to the organisers, who preferred to keep the current location. The roadblocks initially took place every day from 8pm, but their frequence changed over time, with an interruption during lockdown.

DThe The Department has proposed that protests are instead held in the square that links Meridiana with Passeig Fabra i Puig, in front of the Renfe station. It is very close location, but that will thus avoid traffic interruptions and diversions. However, only eight months ago Elena defended the cuts in the Meridiana. Responding to a question from the PP deputy Eva Parera in Parliament, Elena said then that the protest was "a mobilisation that has all the legal requirements to be carried out". And he added: "It cannot be that there are two types of demonstrations: the ones we like and the illegal ones". And she gave as an example the demonstrations against the Spanish government that the PP promoted in the Salamanca neighbourhood of Madrid in the middle of the Covid pandemic to defend its position.