Barcelona Boils

From Our Own Correspondent

BBC

News, News Commentary

4.4 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 17 October 2019

⏱️ 27 minutes

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Summary

There's been violence for several days in Barcelona in reaction to the jail sentences handed out on Monday to Catalan separatist leaders. Guy Hedgecoe has been on the streets as demonstrators and riot police clashed. He says there's no end in sight to this deepening conflict.

There's a general election in Canada on Monday, and Justin Trudeau is hoping for a second term as prime minister. But the man who was once an emblem of hope and progressiveness has seen his reputation tarnished. Jennifer Chevalier in Ottawa says he's now got a fight on his hands.

There was much excitement last week in Ethiopia when it was announced that the prime minister Abiy Ahmed had been awarded this year's Nobel Peace Prize. But at home, despite considerable achievements, his popularity has diminished, as Tom Gardner reports from Addis Ababa.

Recycling rubbish can be a lucrative industry. But in Romania that’s been made harder by government regulations on private companies. Nick Thorpe has been to find out more.

The Svaneti region of north-west Georgia is spectacularly beautiful and home to a particular ethnic group. the Svan. They number only a few thousand and their cultural traditions are under threat. But they are generous hosts. Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent drops in for lunch.

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.
0:05.0	Hello, today.
0:08.0	Not long ago, Justin Trudeau was the golden boy of Canadian politics.
0:12.2	Now he's up for re-election and his reputation is not what it was.
0:16.8	Nor is that of Abbey Ahmed the Ethiopian golden boy who's just won the Nobel Peace Prize.
0:26.4	We're knee deep in rubbish in Romania and out to lunch in the Caucasus Mountains of Northwest Georgia. But first there's been a third night of violence on the streets of Barcelona.
0:35.2	Protesters set up burning barricades and threw missiles at the police.
0:39.6	It all began on Monday after the Supreme Court in Spain handed down prison sentences of up to 13 years to nine leaders of the Catalan independence movement.
0:50.0	They'd been found guilty of sedition for their role in an attempt to break
0:54.4	Catalonia away from Spain in 2017. More protesters from five cities are
1:00.4	reported to be converging on Barcelona and unions have called for a general strike
1:05.0	tomorrow. But the President of Catalonia has condemned the violence and called for it to stop
1:10.5	immediately. Guy Hedgeco is in Barcelona.
1:15.0	When people from Barcelona talk about the transformation their city has undergone in the last 30 years,
1:21.0	they tend to link it to the 1992 Olympic Games. That was when
1:26.2	the Catalan capital finally shook off its reputation as a shabby provincial place and
1:31.5	opened itself up to the world with an ambitious overhaul that left it modernised and regenerated
1:38.1	Since then it has become a magnet for tourists too much so for some people's liking. In recent years many
1:44.9	Barcelona locals have campaigned against the arrival of massive cruise liners at
1:49.6	the city's port and against the proliferation of air B&B tourism properties.
1:55.0	But this week Barcelona underwent another more sudden change.
2:00.0	After news was announced on Monday of stiff jail sentences for independence leaders,
	...

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