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A few days ago, the Parliament of Catalonia voted in favour of holding a unilateral referedum asking its citizens if they wanted Catalonia to be an independent state. This was without the consent of the central government, which is basically repressing freedom of speech in the region.
Several people have been identified by the police when they were doing public acts in favour of the referendum, and the police has seized all the posters that support voting “Yes” to independence. The national post service has stopped delivering magazines that support the referendum. The police also entered the headquarters of newspapers, threatening them if they publish anything in support of the referendum (it seems that in a democracy journalists cannot talk about what’s going on)
Today, things got worse. 14 people have been arrested, which has led to a spontaneous protest (video). The headquarters of la CUP, one of the pro-independence parties, has been surrounded by the police (there have been protests and the protestos have literally thrown the police away). The police has also registered some offices of la Generalitat, the government of Catalonia.
The university deans of all the public universities of Catalonia have condemned these acts for attacking freedom of speech, and even el Barça, the football team, has condemned what has happened today. The central government has taken control (financially) of all the public institutions and the police claim to have seized around 10 million ballots for the referendum.
The president of the Balearic Islands, from the Socialist Party (anti-independence) has condemned these acts, while some other socialist politicians, like Susana Díaz, have asked the government to take control of the region ( = no autonomy for Catalonia).
The president of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, says that the central government has declared the state of emergency “de facto” in the region.
The referendum is planned for tomorrow, October 1st. Over the past weeks the contral government has gathered thousand of paramilitary police in the area. Today (Sat 30 Sept) they occupied thousands of buildings that were designated to be voting locations and issued eviction noticed for tomorrow morning to the locations currently occupied by crews dedicated to holding the referendum. It is difficult at this time to say just how much force they will use to stop people from voting tomorrow.
Update: Voting started this morning and riot police have started using force to evict voting stations and ceizing voting boxes and other materials that might be used to vote in the referendum. Warning shots have been fired by riot police as crowds refuse to disband. National radio is completely silent on the topic.
Spanish National Police prevent people from entering a voting site at a school assigned to be a polling station by the Catalan government in Barcelona. (CNN)
Capitalism is fascism in nicer clothing. The financial elite own the governments, and the governments have come to believe that they own the people.
“If voting changed anything they’d make it illegal”
is not a hypothetical.
When people try to use a vote to create any change that the government does not want, that vote is declared illegal and they’ll try to stop it through state violence.
A huge general strike has been called across Catalonia in response to violence.
Pro-independence groups and trade unions have called for everyone in the state – more than three million people – to stay home from work on Tuesday, October 3. At least 844 people were injured after the authorities clashed with people trying to cast their votes in an independence referendum. Police officers fired rubber bullets at the crowds, hit them with batons, and were pictured dragging people away from polling booths – even elderly people and young children.
The Catalan regional government is holding an emergency meeting to discuss the next steps towards declaring independence from Spain a day after millions of Catalans voted. Preliminary results from Sunday’s vote showed that 90% of people cast their ballots in favour of independence, according to the Catalan government.
A spokesman said that 2.26 million Catalans – 43% of the region’s 5.3 million eligible voters – had taken part in the referendum, which was staged in defiance of the Spanish government, the country’s constitutional court and the Catalan high court. The Catalan government had not set a threshold for minimum turnout in the election, arguing the vote would be binding regardless of the level of participation.
