Huge turnout for Catalan independence rally

From BBC News:
"Some 1.5 million people have been taking part in Catalonia's annual independence rally in Barcelona, according to police. Tens of thousands of people poured into the city waving the region's independence flag and brandishing the colours red and yellow.

This year's march aimed to be the biggest ever - and a protest against the Spanish government's tax laws. Catalonia wants Madrid to review its tax agreement and provide a bailout.

The size of the turnout for the rally, which is held annually on 11 September to mark the Siege of Barcelona 300 years ago, forced organisers to change its route.

Alfred Bosch, an MP from the Republican left of Catalonia, told the BBC: "All the flags I can see are the pro-independence flags of Catalonia with the lonely star right in the middle of the triangle. And everybody is wearing these flags. I have never seen so many pro-independence flags in my all life."

Protester Teresa Cabanes told Reuters: "This is a blow for the government. People like me came from everywhere. I don't think they were expecting something as big."

The huge volume of people overwhelmed the mobile phone network, which shut down for hours as a result."

From Mundane Charts 2

The second of seven exact Uranus-Pluto squares on Sept. 19 is sharply focused in Spain, where the spirit of empowered revolution for social change and self-determination is playing out on a massive scale.

And an expression of the Uranus-Pluto world transit in the natural world: Guatemala volcanic eruption forces mass evacuation

Archetypal Pluto is the god of the underworld and related to earthquakes, volcanoes, and upheaval. The first stage of the ongoing Uranus-Pluto square is firstly Plutonian, dealing with breakdowns that are ultimately transformative and regenerative- while embracing Uranian opportunities to free ourselves from limiting patterns, as existing structures are shattered.

A quote from "Healing Pluto Problems" by Donna Cunningham:
‎"Why Does it Hurt So Much? Alan Watts said, 'To resist change, to try to cling to life, is like holding your breath; if you persist, you kill yourself.' The question of why transformation hurts so much goes back to the old distinction between the personality level and the spiritual level. On the personality level, the Pluto transit may be hell to go through. On the soul level, it may be the best thing that's every happened to you. We need to learn to see with our inner eyes, not the outer. There is a purpose for the pain, but our range of vision is very limited, especially when we are immersed in the problem. The world of appearances judges these transits and finds them bad because they hurt. We suffer from spiritual and emotional myopia, not being able to see far enough to grasp the reason for the pain or what transition it is bringing. We are heading toward health but we don't recognize the turning around. It's like having an operation; we are cutting out some diseased part of the body that has been draining our health. Right after the operation it hurts like anything, but the body is already beginning to heal. That's what Pluto is like."