MADRID
Hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated in Barcelona Sunday demanding the right to self-determination in Spain’s Catalonia region.
An estimated 100,000 people attended the demonstration.
Catalonia is Spain’s richest region and its 7.5 million people account for about 16 percent of the Spanish population.
Catalan President Artur Mas has signed a decree calling for an independence referendum on November 9, defying the Spanish national government’s vow to halt such a vote.
The calls for an independence vote have grown in the wake of a financial crisis that hit Spain recently and which led to austerity measures.
"We are calling for elections; we want to vote in the next three months. We want to start in the spring of 2015 with a new parliament," Carme Forcadell, Chairperson National Catalan Assembly, said.
However, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy had said earlier during his recent visit to China that a referendum would only cause “chaos.”
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