Barcelona

Three weeks ahead of the planned October 1st referendum, which threatens to throw the country into chaos, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets across Catalonia on Monday to support a break from Spain.

The FT reports that organisers said that about half a million people signed up to attend the main march in Barcelona, an indication of the strength and commitment of the pro-independence forces.

Reuters reports around one million people rallied for Catalan independence from Spain...

Authored by Guy Milliere via The Gatestone Institute,

Authored by Giulio Meotti via The Gatestone Institute,

Update: Reuters reporst that according to Spanish police, they had "shot down" a person on Monday who appeared to be wearing an explosive belt and Spanish public television said the man was the suspected perpetrator of last week's Barcelona van attack. Catalan police declined to say if the man, shot in the area of Subirats, west of Barcelona, was dead or wounded.

When we described the second terrorist attack to take place in Spain, around midnight local time in the resort town of Cambrils, in which local police killed 5 people who had run over civilians and in which the terrorists were said to have carried "explosives attached to the body", we asked "has Spain become the focal point of another suicide bombing terrorist cell?"