Near-Miss At Barcelona's Airport

Via the Telegraph:

The heart-stopping moment two passenger planes avoided a catastrophic collision was caught on camera on Saturday. Footage shows a Boeing 767 from the Russian airline UTair coming in to land on a runway at Barcelona's El Prat Airport. But with the plane just feet from touching down, an Aerolineas Argentineas Airbus A340 slowly taxis across the runway, forcing the still-airborne pilot to respond to the emergency by pulling back into the air. The quick-thinking pilot of the UTair jet landed the plane safely after circling around. Plane enthusiast Miguel Angel caught the moment on film, describing it as "one of the worst experiences I have ever had".

The below clip has 2.7M views.

Catalonia Rallies For Independence

Hundreds of thousands of independence activists today attempted to create a 250-mile human chain across Spain's Catalonia region.

The human chain was planned on a traditional regional holiday that last year saw more than one million people come out in protest in Barcelona, the largest show of separatist sentiment since the 1970s. The chain, named the Catalan Way, was due to link 86 towns and villages along the coast to push for a referendum on political self-determination for Catalonia in 2014. Catalonia is a wealthy industrial region in northeastern Spain that accounts for a fifth of the country's economic output. The protest aims to generate international media coverage of the referendum drive, which is resisted by the central government in Madrid. Artur Mas, Catalonia's regional leader, has promised to hold an independence referendum in 2014, but has been unable to get the Spanish government's approval.

VIDEO: Ex-pats and supporters in San Francisco created their own human chain too.

Catalonia Votes Today On Secession

Spain's Catalonia region is voting today on secession. If the pro-secession party wins a majority, a referendum on independence would likely follow within two years.

More than 8,000 polling stations opened across the northeastern region at 9 a.m. local time today to select 135 lawmakers who will decide whether to press on with regional President Artur Mas’s plan for a referendum on independence. Voting ends at 8 p.m. with exit polls expected soon afterward. The first results may be announced as early as 8:30 p.m. Catalans are set to hand nationalist parties a majority in the regional parliament, putting them on a collision course with Rajoy’s national government in Madrid, which has held that a referendum on secession would be unconstitutional. Mas was on track to claim 62 seats and the separatist Catalan Republican Left another 18, according to a Metroscopia poll published Nov. 18 before the pre-election blackout period.

In September more than 1.5 million Catalans demonstrated for independence in Barcelona.

SPAIN: Catalonia Rallies For Secession

Spain's faltering economy brought out the largest crowd yet seen for Catalonia's annual independence march.

A million and a half people took to the streets of Barcelona, according to police estimates, to demand independence for the autonomous Spanish region of Catalonia as the country as a whole faces crippling debt. ­At least one train and more than 1,000 coaches were chartered to bring supporters from all over the region to the march. The mob filled the streets with red and yellow Catalan flags, rallying under the slogan "Catalonia, a new European state," chanting “what do the crowds want? A new European state! What do the people want? An independent Catalonia!" A swelling unemployment rate combined with financial instability have fueled the secessionist spirit. Polls published on Tuesday show that 46.4% support the independence bid – twice as many as in 2008, when the financial crisis began, writes The Guardian. The autonomous Spanish community, whose economy is bigger than the entirety of neighboring Portugal's, accounts for a fifth of Spanish output.