Toulouse (AFP)
A joint operation between the French and Spanish security forces began on Tuesday morning to dislodge pro-independence protesters who have been blocking the highway linking France and Spain since yesterday, according to the French authorities.
"A Franco-Spanish operation to unblock the axis is in progress since 07H30," told AFP a spokesman for the prefecture of Pyrénées-Orientales.
The two directions of traffic on the A9 being blocked, the mobilization causes disturbances on the secondary road network. On Monday evening, the closure of the motorway was extended French side to Narbonne (about 90 km from the border).
Hundreds of Catalan separatists have been blocking the Montpellier-Barcelona motorway since Monday and plan to continue blocking on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The platform "Democratic Tsunami" and Committees of Defense of the Republic (CDR), formed by groups of radical independentists, are at the controls of the operation, triggered the day after the legislative elections in Spain.
This blockade is a new protest against the conviction in mid-October of nine Catalan independence leaders to heavy prison terms for their role in the secession attempt of 2017.
In Catalonia, the three independentist parties won a seat and have 23 deputies in the room out of the 48 seats in play in the region.
© 2019 AFP