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:



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