AKIPRESS.COM - A general strike called by pro-independence campaigners in Catalonia closed shops and severed transport links on Wednesday, as the region’s deposed leader lost political momentum after failing to seal an electoral pact with another party, Reuters reported.

Protesters closed roads, causing huge tailbacks into Barcelona, while some public transport ran minimum services and some smaller stores remained shuttered.

Reuters saw hundreds of strikers gathered in Barcelona’s main Sant Jaume square to protest the imprisonment of politicians, chanting the name of ex-leader Carles Puigdemont and referring to him as “our president”.

But he faces an uphill task to maintain influence after he missed a deadline of midnight on Tuesday to agree a pro-secessionist pact for a regional election with his former vice president Oriol Junqueras.

The central government in Madrid called the election for Dec. 21 after last month assuming control of Catalonia following its parliament’s unilateral independence declaration.

Spain’s Constitutional Court on Wednesday officially annulled the declaration, which it had suspended, a widely expected ruling.

Catalonia’s secessionist push has plunged Spain into its worst political crisis in four decades, leading to a business exodus and reopened old wounds from the civil war in the 1930s.

Junqueras is in custody on charges of sedition, rebellion and misuse of public funds.

But polls show his leftist ERC party will win three times as many seats next month in the regional assembly than the centre-right PDeCAT of Puigdemont, who is in self-imposed exile in Belgium and facing the same charges.

If that forecast proves correct “it represents a very uncomfortable position for Puigdemont,” said Jose Miguel de Elias, of political consultancy Sigma Dos. “If (the secessionists) get enough seats to form a government, he would be vice president, which ... would not suit him.”