Sept 11- La Playa y La Demostración

Today was a National catalan holiday commemorating the defeat of the Catalan troops during the War of the Spanish Succession. The Catalan people are very proud of their heritage and want to be their own country because they have their own language and their culture is different from the rest of Spain. Since the Catalan region is more wealthy than the rest of Spain, they have to pay more taxes than other areas of Spain. The support for Catalonia's independence has increased in the past several years due to the economic crisis, and with the Spanish nationalism with its attacks against the Catalan language and its attempts to re-centralize Spain. Every year on the 11th of September the Catalan people gather in the streets with flags and instruments and march around singing and yelling as a demonstration to show that they do not want to be a part of Spain. This year there was about 1,000 buses bringing in protestors from out of town. There was expected to be about 40,00 people coming from out of town for the demonstrations plus all of the locals, a much larger than demonstation than any of the past years. We went to the beach today and then stopped by the demonstrations to see watch the Catalan loyalty in action!