By Rachel Blevins

Close to 1 million people took to the streets in Spain to call for the release of Catalan political prisoners—but this historic gathering has fallen in line with a series of unprecedented protests in Spain, which have been virtually ignored by the mainstream media.

“Look at all the people here! The independence movement is still going strong,” Pep Morales, a 63-year-old protester told reporters as he marched with Catalonia’s main grassroots independence groups and called for the release of their movement’s leaders from prison.

As a report from The Guardian noted in October, the Spanish government “took control of Catalonia, dissolved its parliament and announced new elections after secessionist Catalan MPs voted to establish an independent republic.” Then in November, a judge ordered eight members of the deposed Catalan government to be arrested pending charges for their involvement in the declaration of independence.

The blatant and ongoing corruption within Spain’s government has been both ignored and even justified by the mainstream media. As WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange noted, while the crowd of protesters reached nearly 1 million people, it was portrayed by the local media as an insignificant, regular protest.

“Watch this video of last night’s protest of around a million people calling for Spain to release Catalan political prisoners,” Assange wrote. “Then follow this link to see how this vast crowd was depicted on the front pages of Spain’s biggest ‘newspapers.’”