Legendary Irish rock band U2 have removed the images of Catalan independence marches and flags from their concert visuals before their two shows in Madrid. Having announced that their current European tour would be based on standing up for "democratic European values", the group's concerts on the tours have opened with a powerful video collage of historical images on the theme of people power, accompanied by Charlie Chaplin's famous pro-democracy speech from the film "The Great Dictator".
However, the images of a huge Catalan crowd waving pro-independence estelada flags that appeared in the first concerts on the tour had been chopped out before Thursday night's show in Madrid, being substituted by an LGTBI rights rally (2:25 in the video).
At the Berlin concert at the start of the tour, Chaplin's words - "You the people have the power to make this life free and beautiful" - had been accompanied by images of a massive Catalan independence rally, waving estelades, while another part of the split-screen showed a statue of Lenin being toppled after the overthrow of communism. For some reason, the Irish supergroup decided to cut the Catalan marchers out of the sequence by the time of Thursday's Madrid concert. Below, part of the original video that opened the U2 show in Berlin: