Barcelona (AFP)
Giant tifo, banners, shouts "Llibertat!": The audience at Camp Nou made their independence demands heard before kick-off and during the clasico between FC Barcelona and Real Madrid on Wednesday evening.
At the 55th minute of the meeting, dozens of beach balls were thrown on the lawn from the stands, to protest against the rubber bullets fired by the police to suppress independence demonstrations in recent months.
The match was therefore interrupted for one minute, enough time to clear these balls from the playing area.
Previously, before the start of the most followed club match in the world (more than 650 million viewers around the world according to the Liga), a giant tifo was deployed in the colors red, blue and yellow, those of Barça and Catalonia.
The club's anthem was sung by the nearly 100,000 supporters present at the Camp Nou stadium.
And between the end of the hymn and the kickoff of the meeting, thousands of blue banners were brandished under the cries of "Llibertat" (freedom, in Catalan).
It was the action planned by the independence platform Tsunami Democratique, which distributed these blue banners as of Wednesday afternoon during the demonstrations which gathered nearly 5,000 sympathizers around the stadium according to the police.
Banners which displayed the slogan of the platform: "#SpainSitAndTalk", (Spain, sit down and dialogue, in English).
The meeting kicked off without a hitch at 8 p.m. (7 p.m. GMT) as scheduled.
Outside the stadium, a few skirmishes took place in the evening between demonstrators, and the police made a charge to dispel the demonstrators. A container was also caught in the flames, as observed by an AFP journalists.
© 2019 AFP