Sunday 1 October 2017

Catalan referendum Leads to Clashes as voters defy Central Authorities

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Catalonia's independence referendum has begun in chaotic fashion, with clashes occurring as police attempt to prevent the vote from taking place.

The Spanish government has pledged to stop a poll that was declared illegal by the country's constitutional court. The Catalan Government however have defiled every call to stop the voting.
Police officers are preventing people from voting, and seizing ballot papers and boxes at polling stations.

Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont has condemned the "unjustifiable violence" of the Spanish state.
The ballot papers contain just one question: "Do you want Catalonia to become an independent state in the form of a republic?" There are two boxes: Yes or No.
Ahead of the polls opening, the Catalan government said voters could print off their own ballot papers and use any polling station if their designated voting place was shut.
In the regional capital Barcelona, witnesses said police fired rubber bullets during pro-independence protests.
Reports say at least two people have been injured in clashes in the city.
In the town of Girona, riot police smashed their way into a polling station where Mr Puigdemont was due to vote.
Television footage showed them breaking the glass of the sports centre's entrance door and forcibly removing those attempting to vote.
However, Reuters news agency reports that Mr Puigdemont was still able to cast his ballot.Since Friday, thousands of separatist supporters had occupied schools and other buildings designated as polling stations in order to keep them open.
Many of those inside were parents and their children, who remained in the buildings after the end of lessons on Friday and bedded down in sleeping bags on gym mats.
In some areas, farmers positioned tractors on roads and in front of polling station doors, and school gates were taken away to make it harder for the authorities to seal buildings off.
Referendum organisers had called for peaceful resistance to any police action.

Did Madrid prepare for the vote?

Thousands of extra police officers have been sent to the region, many of them based on two ships in the port of Barcelona. The police presence did not however discourage voters as voters defiled the central authorities.
The Spanish government has put policing in Catalonia under central controland ordered the regional force, the Mossos d'Esquadra, to help enforce the ban on the illegal referendum.
In a show of force ahead of the poll, Spanish authorities seized voting materials, imposed fines on top Catalan officials and temporarily detained dozens of politicians.

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