“They messed up my shoulder. I can barely move my arm”, says Guillem, twenty-eight, who told Jacobin he was protesting nonviolently at Barcelona’s Plaça Urquinaona when the riot police charged. He shows us wounds on one shoulder and the top of his right leg, where he was hit by rubber bullets. Just hours later, the square was littered with many such bullets — and the tear gas canisters which police had used to disperse demonstrators.

Certainly, the state reaction has been violent — and the demonstrations massive. On Friday afternoon, hundreds of thousands of workers, students, and other marchers converged on the Catalan capital as part of a one-day general strike, prompted by last Monday’s conviction of political and civil society leaders for “sedition” — including former Catalan vice-president Oriol Junqueras, handed thirteen years’ jail time.

Friday saw the peak of the mobilizations. Just hours after the ruling was published last Monday, some 10,000 demonstrators occupied Barcelona’s El Prat airport, and mobilizations continued throughout last week as increasingly brutal police repression was employed against protesters. As the strike brought the city to a halt, organizers claimed that 850,000 had turned out for the mass rally.