The day of broken dreams

Catalan independence referendum 2017 tensions reach Barcelona's Passeig de Lluís Companys, where the faces of demonstrators reflect hours of anxious waiting as giant screens broadcast live the speech delivered by the President of the Generalitat, Carles Puigdemont, before the Parlament.

The formal proclamation of the Catalan Republic is immediately frozen by the independence leader himself to allow a window for negotiations with Madrid, effectively stalling the expectations of the crowd.

This political manoeuvre comes ten days after the referendum of 1 October 2017—a ballot marked by violent clashes with law enforcement and concluding with an estimated 43% turnout and a 90% majority in favour of the "yes" vote, despite the official ban imposed by the Spanish Constitutional Court. The choice of parliamentary compromise defuses the enthusiasm of the crowd, who clutch their estelades flags in a sudden silence, punctured only by expressions of disbelief and protest.

Conversely, the Prime Minister of España, Mariano Rajoy, initiates proceedings to trigger Article 155 of the Constitution—a legal mechanism never before implemented in the country's democratic history—designed to suspend regional autonomy and remove the Catalan executive, an institutional threat that will materialise on 27 October.

As evening falls, the protest site empties rapidly, leaving the avenues deserted and transforming the perimeter of the gathering into the visual stage of a suspended political transition and widespread popular disillusionment.

Article 155 and the Years That Followed

Rajoy's invocation of Article 155 took effect on 27 October 2017, the same day the Catalan parliament voted to formally declare independence; Madrid dissolved the Catalan government, called new regional elections, and took direct control of Catalonia's administration for the first time in Spain's democratic history. Puigdemont and several ministers left for Belgium rather than face prosecution; he was briefly detained in Germany in 2018 under a European arrest warrant, but a regional court there refused to extradite him on charges of rebellion. Puigdemont has spent most of the years since in Belgium, becoming a member of the European Parliament in 2019 despite Spanish efforts to have his immunity lifted, and continuing to lead the Junts per Catalunya party from abroad.

Twelve of the movement's leaders who had remained in Spain stood trial before the Supreme Court beginning in February 2019. That October, nine were convicted of sedition, several also found guilty of misuse of public funds, and sentenced to between nine and thirteen years in prison. The verdicts triggered days of street protests across Catalonia. In June 2021, Spain's government pardoned all nine, though the pardons did not extend to Puigdemont and others who remained abroad.

A broader resolution followed in 2023, when Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez's Socialist party agreed to an amnesty law covering the independence process in exchange for parliamentary support from Catalan pro-independence parties after that year's general election, clearing the legal path for Puigdemont's eventual return from exile.

The square where the crowd gathered, Passeig de Lluís Companys, is itself named for a president of the Generalitat with unfinished business of his own: Lluís Companys, who had declared a short-lived Catalan state within a federal Spain back in 1934, was captured in France by the Gestapo in 1940 and handed to Franco's regime, which executed him by firing squad at Montjuïc Castle later that year, the only democratically elected head of a European government to be executed in the 20th century.

More than seven years after the Catalan independence referendum 2017 first set these events in motion, the question of Catalonia's status within Spain continues to be contested through parliamentary and legal channels rather than through the streets, a shift from the tense standoff pictured here.