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8 October 2017 0.00 h

Votes and violence

President Puigdemont calls for European intervention and wants a unilateral declaration of independence by Catalan Parliament

Rajoy made a speech of thinly veiled threats. More repression: this is all the State can propose, when what is needed is a civil response

Cat­alo­nia will never for­get Oc­to­ber 1, 2017. The bru­tal­ity of the Span­ish se­cu­rity forces in their at­tempts to pre­vent the Cata­lan ref­er­en­dum on in­de­pen­dence has forced most of the coun­try on to a path of no re­turn. In a mes­sage is­sued with the agree­ment of the other pro-in­de­pen­dence par­ties and groups, Cata­lan pres­i­dent Car­les Puigde­mont ap­pealed for Eu­ro­pean me­di­a­tion, in­sist­ing that the Cata­lan ques­tion could no longer be viewed as an in­ter­nal mat­ter, and that the Cata­lans had “won the right to an in­de­pen­dent state in the form a of a re­pub­lic,” quot­ing the word­ing of the ref­er­en­dum ques­tion and paving the way for a for­mal de­c­la­ra­tion of in­de­pen­dence in ac­cor­dance with the Ref­er­en­dum Act passed by the Cata­lan gov­ern­ment. It will be down to Par­lia­ment to de­cide.

With re­gard to the turnout for the ref­er­en­dum, more than 2.2 mil­lion were able to cast their vote, with the Cata­lan gov­ern­ment point­ing to the Span­ish state’s re­pres­sion of the ref­er­en­dum as the rea­son for the fig­ure not being even higher. It is un­known how many bal­lot boxes were seized by the Span­ish se­cu­rity forces.

Span­ish PM and PP leader Mar­i­ano Rajoy ap­peared be­fore the press on the evening of Oc­to­ber 1 to de­clare that he had done what he had to do, de­mand­ing the Cata­lan gov­ern­ment re­nounce its po­lit­i­cal stance and re­turn to “in­sti­tu­tional nor­mal­ity”, with­out spec­i­fy­ing what that might be. While the PSOE and C’s ex­plic­itly backed the Span­ish gov­ern­ment’s ac­tions, Rajoy claimed that he also had the full sup­port of the EU. Podemos, on the other hand, made its ab­hor­rence of the po­lice bru­tal­ity and the Span­ish gov­ern­ment’s role in in­sti­gat­ing it very clear.

De­spite the grow­ing num­ber of in­jured through­out the day –which reached 893– and the lo­gis­ti­cal dif­fi­cul­ties of vot­ing due to the ju­di­cial and po­lice siege on the ref­er­en­dum, end­less queues of Cata­lan cit­i­zens formed out­side polling sta­tions from dawn until dusk to ex­er­cise their right to vote. Many sta­tions had to be closed for pre­ven­tive rea­sons, while oth­ers saw crowds of cit­i­zens putting their safety at risk to guard the bal­lot boxes. The vote count was slow and ar­du­ous, but done under the pro­tec­tion of civil­ians in the streets

Fol­low­ing the ref­er­en­dum, the Cata­lan gov­ern­ment lodged an of­fi­cial com­plaint against the Span­ish se­cu­rity agen­cies for the “dis­pro­por­tion­ate” use of force and im­ped­ing cit­i­zens from ex­er­cis­ing their rights to ex­press them­selves, to pub­lic as­sem­bly, to demon­strate and to par­tic­i­pate in pub­lic af­fairs. Barcelona City Coun­cil is also con­sid­er­ing pre­sent­ing a crim­i­nal case for the vi­o­la­tion of human rights after dozens of vi­o­lent po­lice ac­tions took place in the cap­i­tal. Smaller towns were also under siege as civil­ian and jour­nal­ists were at­tacked in­dis­crim­i­nately. The bar­baric scenes were cov­ered by the in­ter­na­tional press, with CNN using the head­lines: “This didn’t hap­pen” and “The shame of Eu­rope”.

The over­whelm­ing emo­tion felt by many vot­ers was in stark con­trast to the scenes of vi­o­lence being dis­sem­i­nated on tra­di­tional and so­cial media. After being at­tended to by med­ical staff, some of those in­jured re­turned to the polling sta­tion to vote. Mossos d’Es­quadra –Cata­lan po­lice of­fi­cers– could be seen in tears and the el­derly were as­sisted in vot­ing with­out hav­ing to wait in the long queues.

In the face of the po­lice re­pres­sion or­dered by the state, Cata­lans dis­played an un­prece­dented ca­pac­ity for or­gan­i­sa­tion, with fire­fight­ers and Mossos among those stand­ing up to the Na­tional Po­lice and Civil Guard in de­fence of cit­i­zens.

Politics from 19th century Spain

Some 893 people were injured in clashes with Spanish police on October 1. The Policía Nacional and Guàrdia Civil riot police used baton charges and rubber bullets to disrupt the voting at polling stations all over Catalonia. The day after the referendum four people were still in hospital, two of them in a serious condition. According to the Spanish interior ministry, some 33 police officers were hurt.

One of the two serious cases is a young man who was injured when a rubber bullet hit him in the eye, outside the Ramon Llull school in Barcelona. Surgeons in the Sant Pau hospital in Catalan capital operated on the man, hoping to save his eye. Meanwhile a 70-year old man in the Vall d’Hebron hospital in Barcelona suffered a heart attack when Spanish police were evicting people from polling station in Mariola, in Lleida.

Ten of the people injured were hurt by tear gas, which was used by Spanish police during a baton charge in Aiguaviva, in Gironès. The attack took place in the middle of the day while 200 local people were eating lunch together next to the town hall, which was being used as a polling station.

However, most of the people hurt were injured in Barcelona (355), with 249 hurt in the Girona region, 111 in Lleida, 55 in Terres de l’Ebre, 46 in Central Catalonia, 26 in the Camp de Tarragona region and 1 in the Pyrenees. Most of the injuries were caused by blows from police batons.

'They broke my fingers one by one'

The shameful image that Spain is giving Europe is not that of a “consolidated democracy”, as the Partit Popular and its fellow travellers repeat ad infinitum, but one of a territory where even now, in the 21st century, people who want to vote peacefully are repressed. To add insult to injury, Mariano Rajoy has passed off the responsibility for what took place with arguments almost too reminiscent of those used by the perpetrators of domestic violence in justifying their actions. On October 1, Rajoy made an ominous speech replete with thinly veiled threats. More repression: this is all that the State can propose, when what is needed is a civil response, especially in remembering that Catalonia is one of the powerhouses, if not the most important, in the wellbeing of the Spanish State.

Catalonia is where it is today because it has defended its rights peacefully, a value that we must conserve now more than ever; because peace is what gives us our essence and our strength. Catalonia is the 21st century, while there are many politicians, such as Rajoy, who seem more comfortable in making use of political practises that hark back to the 19th century. They are the biggest problem in Spain, which cannot consider itself to truly be part of the family of established democracies until they have gone away.

One of the cases of police aggression that got the most attention was the situation of 33-year-old Barcelona woman, Marta Torrecillas. She complained that some Spanish National Police officers threw her down stairs when they forcibly entered the Institut Pau Claris in Barcelona, which was being used as a polling place. According to Torrecillas, the officers threw her to the ground and dragged her down the stairs. “One officer, while he dragged me, broke each of my fingers one by one, on purpose,” she said on Twitter. After receiving medical attention, Marta returned to the polling station to vote. There was great sympathy and solidarity for Torrecillas online, with the identification number of the police officer who broke her fingers shared so that he can be reported. The treatment of the young woman caused great indignation, especially as there was also a sexual element, in that the officers ripped off part of her clothes and touched her inappropriately, she claims.

'You have already won, nothing can stop this now'

Among those who closely followed the events on October 1 were 200 elected representatives from various parts of the world, who were invited by the Association of Municipalities for Independence (AMI). Almost half were from the Basque Country, but others were from Quebec, Switzerland, France, Croatia, Greece, and Senegal, among other places. They watched the events unfold and admired the peaceful response of the people despite the violence and attacks. The mayor of Hernani, Luis Intxauspe, commented with a little envy: “You have already won, nothing can stop this now.”

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