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Spanish riot police deployed as chaotic vote in Catalan independence referendum gets underway
Photos from the scene in Spain ahead of the Catalonia independence referendum vote
View Photos
Catalonia's planned referendum on secession is due to be held Sunday by the pro-independence Catalan government, but Spain's government has called the vote illegal, saying it violates the constitution, and the country's Constitutional Court has ordered it suspended.
By William Booth October 1 at 7:30 AM
SABADELL, Spain — Just 10 minutes after the first boisterous voters entered the polling station at an elementary school here on Sunday, dozens of National Police in riot gear smashed through the front window and began searching for the ballot boxes.
But the activists who organized this controversial vote on independence for the Catalan region were two steps ahead. As the police forced their way through shouting crowds into the polling station, the activists spirited away the ballots — and hid them in the classrooms.
An hour later, after police had driven away in their big black vans, under a hail of insults, the ballot boxes reemerged and the voting began again.
The pattern was repeated across hundreds of polling stations Sunday in the Catalan region of northeast Spain, where a secessionist leadership is pushing ahead with a disputed independence referendum that the central government in Madrid, backed by the courts, has called illegitimate and illegal.
By midday, scores of people had suffered minor injuries in scuffles with National Police, who dragged protesters out of their way but did not wield batons.
There were reports that police fired rubber bullets at one crowd at a voting center in Barcelona. The optics could not have been worse for the central government. Although Madrid might have had the law on its side, the images being blasted out of Catalonia show ordinary men and women being dragged from the polls by helmeted police dressed all in black.
The vote in Catalonia was a mass act of civil disobedience, organized by the regional government but propelled by WhatsApp groups, encrypted messages and clandestine committees.
Thousands of parents and their children were deployed to occupy hundreds of polling stations before the vote to keep them from being locked down by National Police and Guardia Civil militia.
[With kids in tow, Catalonia’s pro-independence parents occupy polling stations in mass act of civil disobedience ]
As the central government shut down websites promoting the referendum, new apps popped up to guide voters.
The almost-surreal clash between the central state and its citizens saw mass demonstrations in the past two weeks and a high-risk game of cat-and-mouse, as the secessionists sought to bring off a vote that Madrid vowed it would stop. The Catalan government, dominated by breakaway leaders, said that despite police raids, more than 70 percent of the polling stations were open Sunday afternoon.
Long lines snaked around the blocks in Barcelona. In the countryside, farmers circled the polling stations with tractors to protect the ballot.
The region’s police force stood aside and did not raid the polling stations. Instead, firefighters sought to preserve calm and keep the crowds and National Police from setting upon each other.
The regional president, the pro-secession Carles Puigdemont, said Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy should be ashamed of himself, while Catalans should be remembered for acting with bravery and dignity.
In the former textile town of Sabadell, the fifth-largest city in Catalonia, hundreds of volunteers spent the night in the schools used as polling stations. As they awoke in sleeping bags sprawled in the hallways, men were bringing ballot boxes into auditoriums.
Francesc Condina had spent the past three weeks hiding the boxes in a wine cellar in the heart of the city. Later, the plastic tubs, with the seal of the Catalan government, were ferried around town, stashed in black plastic bags.
“They were disguised as bags of trash,” Condina said. “But this was democracy we carried in our hands.”
Codina said informers and intelligence officers were searching everywhere for the ballots and boxes.
He shrugged. “But there’s lots of hiding places, too.”
At a high school for industrial training, Teresa Macia was volunteering as an observer for the vote. Asked if she was afraid of violence or arrest, she answered, “No, they don’t scare us at all. And even if they scared me a little bit, it would be worth it.”
Just before the polls opened at 9 a.m., the Catalan regional government declared that any registered voter could vote anywhere — instead of having to visit their assigned polling station. The voting lists, the regional government said, would be digital and not printed as usual for the polling officers to check against identification cards.
But there were problems right away with registering the voters — and system was slow and balky. And this among all the other irregularities immediately raised questions about the legitimacy of the vote. The government announced that it knew about the technical problems and was urging patience.
Today's WorldView
What's most important from where the world meets Washington
Anna Fernandez was asked to visit the Escola Nostra Llar, Our Home School, just before the voting began to help get the glitchy digital lists to work.
“Then the police smashed the windows,” she said. “They came with big hammers. The old people locked their arms together and tried to stop them. They were shouting at us, ‘Where are the ballots? Where are the boxes?’ But by then, I don’t know what happened, but all the material and the computers, they had all disappeared.”
She smiled and said, “and then the ballots were found and the people are starting to vote again.”
As the National Police left without the ballots, the crowd hurled insults at them, calling them cowards, traitors and worse. An hour later, a long line of voters stretched down the block, laughing and sharing videos, under their umbrellas in the rain.
Spanish riot police deployed as chaotic vote in Catalan independence referendum gets underway
Photos from the scene in Spain ahead of the Catalonia independence referendum vote
View Photos
Catalonia's planned referendum on secession is due to be held Sunday by the pro-independence Catalan government, but Spain's government has called the vote illegal, saying it violates the constitution, and the country's Constitutional Court has ordered it suspended.
By William Booth October 1 at 7:30 AM
SABADELL, Spain — Just 10 minutes after the first boisterous voters entered the polling station at an elementary school here on Sunday, dozens of National Police in riot gear smashed through the front window and began searching for the ballot boxes.
But the activists who organized this controversial vote on independence for the Catalan region were two steps ahead. As the police forced their way through shouting crowds into the polling station, the activists spirited away the ballots — and hid them in the classrooms.
An hour later, after police had driven away in their big black vans, under a hail of insults, the ballot boxes reemerged and the voting began again.
The pattern was repeated across hundreds of polling stations Sunday in the Catalan region of northeast Spain, where a secessionist leadership is pushing ahead with a disputed independence referendum that the central government in Madrid, backed by the courts, has called illegitimate and illegal.
By midday, scores of people had suffered minor injuries in scuffles with National Police, who dragged protesters out of their way but did not wield batons.
There were reports that police fired rubber bullets at one crowd at a voting center in Barcelona. The optics could not have been worse for the central government. Although Madrid might have had the law on its side, the images being blasted out of Catalonia show ordinary men and women being dragged from the polls by helmeted police dressed all in black.
The vote in Catalonia was a mass act of civil disobedience, organized by the regional government but propelled by WhatsApp groups, encrypted messages and clandestine committees.
Thousands of parents and their children were deployed to occupy hundreds of polling stations before the vote to keep them from being locked down by National Police and Guardia Civil militia.
[With kids in tow, Catalonia’s pro-independence parents occupy polling stations in mass act of civil disobedience ]
As the central government shut down websites promoting the referendum, new apps popped up to guide voters.
The almost-surreal clash between the central state and its citizens saw mass demonstrations in the past two weeks and a high-risk game of cat-and-mouse, as the secessionists sought to bring off a vote that Madrid vowed it would stop. The Catalan government, dominated by breakaway leaders, said that despite police raids, more than 70 percent of the polling stations were open Sunday afternoon.
Long lines snaked around the blocks in Barcelona. In the countryside, farmers circled the polling stations with tractors to protect the ballot.
The region’s police force stood aside and did not raid the polling stations. Instead, firefighters sought to preserve calm and keep the crowds and National Police from setting upon each other.
The regional president, the pro-secession Carles Puigdemont, said Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy should be ashamed of himself, while Catalans should be remembered for acting with bravery and dignity.
In the former textile town of Sabadell, the fifth-largest city in Catalonia, hundreds of volunteers spent the night in the schools used as polling stations. As they awoke in sleeping bags sprawled in the hallways, men were bringing ballot boxes into auditoriums.
Francesc Condina had spent the past three weeks hiding the boxes in a wine cellar in the heart of the city. Later, the plastic tubs, with the seal of the Catalan government, were ferried around town, stashed in black plastic bags.
“They were disguised as bags of trash,” Condina said. “But this was democracy we carried in our hands.”
Codina said informers and intelligence officers were searching everywhere for the ballots and boxes.
He shrugged. “But there’s lots of hiding places, too.”
At a high school for industrial training, Teresa Macia was volunteering as an observer for the vote. Asked if she was afraid of violence or arrest, she answered, “No, they don’t scare us at all. And even if they scared me a little bit, it would be worth it.”
Just before the polls opened at 9 a.m., the Catalan regional government declared that any registered voter could vote anywhere — instead of having to visit their assigned polling station. The voting lists, the regional government said, would be digital and not printed as usual for the polling officers to check against identification cards.
But there were problems right away with registering the voters — and system was slow and balky. And this among all the other irregularities immediately raised questions about the legitimacy of the vote. The government announced that it knew about the technical problems and was urging patience.
Today's WorldView
What's most important from where the world meets Washington
Anna Fernandez was asked to visit the Escola Nostra Llar, Our Home School, just before the voting began to help get the glitchy digital lists to work.
“Then the police smashed the windows,” she said. “They came with big hammers. The old people locked their arms together and tried to stop them. They were shouting at us, ‘Where are the ballots? Where are the boxes?’ But by then, I don’t know what happened, but all the material and the computers, they had all disappeared.”
She smiled and said, “and then the ballots were found and the people are starting to vote again.”
As the National Police left without the ballots, the crowd hurled insults at them, calling them cowards, traitors and worse. An hour later, a long line of voters stretched down the block, laughing and sharing videos, under their umbrellas in the rain.
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