Homage to Catalonia: '465 injured by Spanish police violence'
The mayor of Barcelona said 460
people had been injured after Spanish police in riot gear stormed polling
stations to prevent Catalonia’s independence referendum from going ahead on
Sunday.
Although many Catalans
managed to cast their ballots in the poll, which the Spanish authorities have
declared illegal, others were forcibly stopped from voting as schools housing
ballot boxes were raided by the national police. The large Ramon Llull
school in Barcelona was the scene of a sustained operation, with witnesses
describing police using axes to smash their way in, charging the crowds and
firing rubber bullets.
Catalonia’s
pro-independence regional government, which has pressed ahead with the
referendum despite implacable opposition from the Spanish state, said hundreds
of people had been injured. Spain’s interior ministry said 11 police officers
had been hurt and three people arrested for disobedience and assaulting
officers. The Catalan health
ministry said 216 people were hurt in Barcelona, 80 in Girona, 64 in Lleida, 53
in Terres de l’Ebre, 27 in Catalunya central and 25 in Tarragona. The two most
seriously injured were in hospitals in Barcelona.
The Catalan president,
Carles Puigdemont, told crowds the “police brutality will shame the Spanish
state for ever”, while the mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau, demanded an end to
the police actions and called for the resignation of the Spanish prime minister,
Mariano Rajoy. Artur Mas, the former
Catalan president whose government staged a symbolic independence referendum
three years ago, also called for the “authoritarian” Rajoy to stand down,
adding that Catalonia could
not remain alongside “a state that uses batons and polic brutality”.
However, Enric Millo,
the most senior Spanish government official in the region, said the police had
behaved “professionally” in carrying out a judge’s orders. Soraya Sáenz de
Santamaría, the Spanish deputy prime minister, echoed the position, saying the
police had shown firmness, professionalism and proportionality in the face of
the “absolute irresponsibility” of the Catalan government. She called on
Puigdemont to drop the “farce” of the independence campaign, saying Spain had long since
emerged from the authoritarian shadow of the Franco dictatorship. “I don’t know what
world Puigdemont lives in, but Spanish democracy does not work like this,” said
Sáenz de Santamaría. “We have been free from a dictatorship for a long time and
of a man who told us his word in the law.”
By late on Sunday
afternoon, the Spanish interior ministry said police had closed 79 of the 2,315
polling stations set up for the referendum. Earlier in the day, the Catalan
government had reported that voting was taking place in 96% of polling
stations. Jesús López Rodríguez,
a 51-year-old administrator, had taken his family to vote at the Ramon Llull
school on Sunday morning. Like thousands of Catalans, they began queuing from
5am. Three hours later, he saw seven national police vans arrive full of
officers in riot gear. “They told us that the
Catalan high court had ordered them to take the ballot boxes and that we needed
to disperse,” he told the Guardian. “We chanted, ‘No! No! No!’, and then about
20 police officers charged us. It was short – only about two minutes – but we
stayed together.”.. read more:
