Catalans rally in support of independence from Spain

- Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets across Catalonia on Sunday to support a break from Spain which local leaders want to deliver for next year in spite of legal blocks by the central government.

Catalans gathered in five cities across the northeastern region, including Barcelona, and waved yellow banners in time to music, symbolizing the rhythm of a beating heart uniting an independent republic.

Police said that in Barcelona alone about 540,000 people took part. The mass rally on Catalonia's national day, La Diada, comes as the pro-independence local assembly vows to press ahead with plans to form an new state in 2017, raising pressure on leaders in Madrid to respond at a time of disarray in national politics.

Two inconclusive general elections have left Spain without a new national administration for more than eight months, in part due to squabbling among parties over how best to counter or defuse Catalonia's separatist challenge.

Spain's conservative caretaker government has firmly opposed any move towards secession and resorted to challenges via the constitutional court, though this has escalated the stand-off in recent months under acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.

"We don't really care anymore about who will govern in Madrid," said Montse Pedra, 39, a speech therapist at the rally in Barcelona, where campaigners waved the starred blue, red and yellow pro-independence flags.

She said she was no longer hopeful Catalonia would be granted a referendum on independence like Scotland's in 2014 - where people voted to remain in Britain - but was looking beyond that.

"Here that's not going to happen one way or another, so we're going to just declare independence, and that's it," Pedra added.

Whether regional leaders will manage to produce the break they have promised is unclear.

Pro-separatist parties won a majority of seats in the regional assembly last year and have starting laying the ground for laws and institutions for an independent state, though such moves have been deemed illegal in court.

"The whole process is going a little slowly," said another participant, 64-year-old maths teacher Rafael Subirats, adding he thought independence was unlikely to happen by 2017.

Secessionists fell short of winning an overall majority of the vote last September, which according to anti-independence campaigners weakens the mandate for a split. (FullText)