Catalans mobilise to protect polling stations
Hundreds of tractors roll into Barcelona and sit-ins are held at schools in support of ‘right to vote’
SUPPORTERS of Catalonia’s independence vote held sit-ins at schools where polling is due to take place, as police began moving in for an operation to shut down Sunday’s banned referendum.
Amid anger at what many perceive to be a heavy-handed crackdown by Spanish authorities, numerous groups have rallied to the cause. Barcelona firefighters have promised to protect the vote, while a column of tractors rolled into the city yesterday to begin guarding polling centres.
More than 2,000 schools across the autonomous community are to operate as polling centres in defiance of threats of prosecution from the Spanish government, putting them on the front line of what many fear could be an ugly confrontation.
Police have been ordered to cordon off the precincts by 6am on Sunday morning, and yesterday began arriving at schools in Barcelona, with a standoff between officers and local residents already unfolding at one facility in the central Raval district.
The far Left CUP, the junior coalition partner in the Catalan government, called on independence supporters to flood to the schools for a “popular resistance” beginning from 5pm yesterday evening.
“The people are mobilising to defend a binding referendum,” insisted Anna Gabriel, a party spokeswoman and Catalan parliamentarian.
The involvement of the schools drew strong condemnation from opponents of independence and politicians in Madrid. Íñigo Méndez de Vigo, the Spanish education minister, described the use of children by secessionist groups as “despicable”.
Esteban Gonzalez Pons, the spokesman for the ruling Popular Party in Brussels, complained to the European Commission over what he called the use of minors by the Catalan government for “political ends”.
The sit-ins have been set up as weekend-long pyjama parties, with parents and students camping out, with programmes of activities such as games and film showings.
Anti-independence Catalans have also been incensed by the involvement of schools, accusing education facilities of “indoctrinating” their children.
The Societat Civil Catalana (Catalan Civil Society) said they were “extremely concerned and pained by the use of children and young people,” adding “let’s not poison them and make them grow up in hate”.
At the Escola Cal Maiol, a primary school in the Sants area of Barcelona, the headmistress rejected such accusations, insisting the school had not even spoken to the children about the question of independence. The initiative, Nanda Botinas told The Telegraph, was merely about facilitating the democratic process. “We are defending the right to vote, not Yes or No”.
Around 60 people – parents, children and local residents – were at the school when The Telegraph visited yesterday evening, though Ms Botinas said they expected more today.
She said if police forced them to leave the school they would. “We don’t want there to be any incidents of violence,” she added.
Battle lines have now been firmly drawn ahead of the vote, which Madrid continued to insist yesterday would not
‘ We ask for all the tractors in the land… to be ready to move against any potential sabotage’
take place and Catalan leaders vowed was unstoppable. The standoff also deepened in the courts, as the Supreme Court of Justice in Catalonia ordered Google to take down a Catalan government app showing voting centres.
A reported 700 tractors heeded the call of a small farmers’ union to drive their heavy vehicles into Catalonia’s capital yesterday.
“We ask for all the tractors in the land to be parked in the vicinity of polling stations without hindering traffic or the carrying out of the vote […] but ready to move against any potential sabotage of the ballot”, the farmers’ union Assemblea Pagesa said.
At midday yesterday hundreds of tractors flying pro-independence flags parked outside the Spanish government’s delegation in the Catalan capital, as farmers chanted “We will vote!”
What is not yet clear is just how far police are prepared to go to block the vote. Major Josep Lluis Trapero, the head of the Catalan police force, ordered agents to avoid “generating a greater evil than that which is trying to be avoided”, according to an internal memo published by several media outlets.