La Diada Nacional de Catalunya

Today is a very interesting day in Barcelona! It's La Diada Nacional de Catalunya. In a nutshell, it's a day where people show their support for wanting to make Catalyuna independent from Spain. From what I can tell of it, it's very political, and, I think, very interesting.

Okay, so I'll try to explain it in a little more detail to the best of my ability, but when I asked mi mami it was all told to me en espanol, so I'm hoping I understood correctly (I'm pretty proud of what I did catch from it, though). So basically, Catalunya is a region of Spain, and they have a flag. It looks like this:

 

If you walk around the city, you can see these hanging all over the place. Here's a picture I took myself:

This is just one example, but you can pretty much see them everywhere hanging from the balconies. And the people who have these flags either don't want or don't care if Catalunya becomes independent from Spain (I'm not sure if they don't care or don't want it, that I didn't quite catch)

So then! There's these flags 

These flags represent those who DO want Catalunya to be independent from Spain. And today, they're EVERYWHERE. Por ejemplo:

It was kind of hard to capture it, but, trust me, they're everywhere. 

So, anyways, it's a big day in Spain. There's a...I don't know the word for it--demonstration is probably the closest I can think of, but it's not really a demonstration, that sounds extreme haha...but there's a big line of people around Catalunya that all hold hands to show their support. The line literally goes on for miles down the entire coast. There's also a parade. And almost everyone in the city right now is wearing their flags as a cape (you can see it a little in the picture that I posted above, but there's a LOT more people now...we went during siesta so not many people were there...it's literally PACKED now, me and mi mami are watching it on the news as I'm typing this up).

So, what I found very interesting about today, and me and mi mami talked about it, is that at home in the U.S.--of course all of you know--today is a very sad day where all of our hearts go out to those who were lost in the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Of course I did not forget this and did not forget to take a second when I was up this morning to think about it, but here in Spain, it's a big day of celebration. Just a little bizarre to think that on the day that across America hearts are sad, here everyone is happy and celebrating. Of course, they have no reason to be sad, but you don't really think about something like that until you're out of your bubble in the big world. 

So, of course I know that my understanding is very limited on this subject, but it was still fun to learn about and to take some time to partake in the celebration.