They said they would vote, and vote they surely did

Votarém (we will vote) was a com­mon chant heard in the run-up to the in­de­pen­dence ref­er­en­dum. When Oc­to­ber 1 fi­nally came around, Cata­lan vot­ers made good on their promise. De­spite a vi­o­lent crack­down by Span­ish riot po­lice, more than two mil­lion peo­ple turned out at polling sta­tions all over the coun­try to cast their bal­lots and have a say over the po­lit­i­cal fu­ture of their coun­try.

The day began with riot po­lice armed with ba­tons and rub­ber bul­lets storm­ing polling sta­tions to pre­vent peo­ple from vot­ing. Sev­eral hun­dred peo­ple were in­jured in the clashes, and yet in the evening there were still long queues out­side polling sta­tions all over Cat­alo­nia. If the po­lice closed down one polling place, peo­ple just went else­where to vote, even if meant a long wait in the rain.

A lot hap­pened on Oc­to­ber 1, and it is still too soon to re­ally un­der­stand the full sig­nif­i­cance of it, where it might lead next, what it might or might not achieve, even whether it is the end or just the be­gin­ning. How­ever, one clear thing I took away from the day, and which is re­flected in our cov­er­age of the ref­er­en­dum on pages 17 to 21, is the stub­born de­ter­mi­na­tion of peo­ple in Cat­alo­nia to vote. We will vote, they said, and vote they did.

Cat­alo­nia Today is a monthly mag­a­zine and that makes it hard some­times to cover news as ef­fec­tively as it can be in a daily news­pa­per. Es­pe­cially in today’s world with its fast-mov­ing, never-end­ing news cycle. Yet, the mag­a­zine’s remit is to pre­sent Cat­alo­nia in all of its as­pects, from its tra­di­tional cul­ture to its land­scape, its peo­ple and its food, its busi­ness, its art, its sport, and, of course, its pol­i­tics.

We ded­i­cate a lot space in the mag­a­zine to show­ing off the best of Cat­alo­nia. We have in­ter­views with its most suc­cess­ful fig­ures, itin­er­aries of its beauty spots, we fea­ture its wine and food, and we cel­e­brate its cul­tural and sport­ing achieve­ments. This month, though, we thought it is im­por­tant to shine the spot­light on its peo­ple. The dead­line for this issue of the mag­a­zine was held back on pur­pose, as pub­lish­ing Cat­alo­nia Today with­out cov­er­ing what will no doubt be­come one of the most im­por­tant days in Cata­lan his­tory makes no sense. It would also be a chance missed to say, well done Cata­lans, you did a great job !