Felip VI, king of Spain, and Pedro Sanchez, the country’s prime minister, visited Barcelona on Friday only to be met with loud protests and a boycott from high-ranking Catalan politicians.
The king and prime minister were in the capital city of the separatist Catalan region in order to award prizes for innovation as part of the Barcelona New Economy Week.
The region’s current acting pro-independence president, Pere Aragones, as well as the left-leaning, but nonseparatist mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau, refused to officially receive the monarch. Catalonia’s previous president, Quim Torra, was recently removed from office by the Spanish Supreme Court.
