News

Guardia Civil raid Valls weekly amid public jeers

A dozen Guardia Civil po­lice of­fi­cers raided the news­room of the weekly pub­li­ca­tion, El Val­lenc, in Valls yes­ter­day, while out­side some 300 peo­ple con­gre­gated to de­nounce what they con­sid­ered state per­se­cu­tion of com­pa­nies and media re­lated to the self-de­ter­mi­na­tion ref­er­en­dum.

The of­fi­cers, who left the build­ing amid taunts from the peo­ple out­side, took the com­puter of the ed­i­tor, Francesc Fàbre­gas, and made copies of doc­u­ments and emails, ac­cord­ing to Fàbre­gas. The ed­i­tor of the weekly then had to make a state­ment at the Guardia Civil po­lice sta­tion in Tar­rag­ona. It is be­lieved that the po­lice were look­ing for ev­i­dence link­ing the El Val­lenc pub­li­ca­tion with the print­ing of ma­te­r­ial to be used in the in­de­pen­dence ref­er­en­dum set for Oc­to­ber 1. Ac­cord­ing to dif­fer­ent sources, the weekly was the com­pany that com­mis­sioned the In­dugraf print­ing firm in Con­stantí to pro­duce vot­ing slips. Yet, the ed­i­tor de­nied it, say­ing “they didn’t find any pa­pers and we have com­mit­ted no of­fence.”

Other sources sug­gest that it is the Valls local coun­cil that might be be­hind the op­er­a­tion, using the weekly as a way of screen­ing the com­mis­sion. How­ever, mayor, Al­bert Batet, de­nied the ac­cu­sa­tion and called the whole po­lice op­er­a­tion “ab­surd and com­i­cal”.

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