Defying orders, Catalan crowds hit polling sites
BARCELONA, Spain — Crowds grew Sunday morning in Barcelona and across Catalonia at dozens of sites designated as polling stations for a disputed referendum on the northeastern region’s secession from Spain.
People began arriving before dawn to join parents, children and activists who have occupied the buildings, defying a judge’s order to vacate before Sunday’s polling was supposed to begin.
The country’s Constitutional Court suspended the referendum, and the Spanish government says it’s illegal. Regional separatist leaders have pledged to hold it anyway and called on 5.3 million eligible voters to show up for casting a ballot.
Separatist groups also told people to hold activities in schools over the weekend to dodge the orders to vacate. Police had been ordered to avoid the use of force.
Catalans defying court orders to vote in the disputed referendum said they wanted to send a strong message of displeasure with central authorities.
Activist Augsti Gil said there were no ballots or ballot boxes in Barcelona’s Joan Fuster high school, where more than 100 people had joined dozens more who spent the night occupying the designated polling station.
Gil said they expected materials to arrive Sunday morning ahead of the 9 a.m. opening of polls.
Joaquim Bosch, a 73 year-old retiree at Princep de Viana high school, where a crowd of 20 people was growing, said he is uneasy about a possible police response to the crowds.
“I have come to vote to defend the rights of my country, which is Catalonia,” he said.
Spain’s foreign minister dismissed the planned vote as antidemocratic, saying it runs “counter to the goals and ideals” of the European Union.
“What they are pushing is not democracy. It is a mockery of democracy, a travesty of democracy,” Alfonso Dastis said.
Dastis accused some proindependence groups of “adopting Nazi-like attitudes by pointing at people that are against that referendum and encouraging others to harass them.”
Spain’s Interior Ministry said police had sealed off most of the region’s 2,315 polling stations and disabled software being used in the referendum. Enric Millo, the highest-ranking Spanish official in the northeastern region, said parents and students were occupying at least 163 schools by mid-Saturday, when about 1,000 more still needed to be checked. In a later update, the ministry didn’t provide a new figure but only said some schools remained occupied.
The regional police force has been ordered not to use force in vacating the schools but Millo said anyone remaining after 6 a.m. would need to be removed.
“I trust in the common sense of Catalans and that people will operate with prudence,” he said.
Authorities have already confiscated 10 million paper ballots in the last few days, which will make it much more difficult for Catalan officials to carry out an effective vote.
“They can always put a makeshift table in the street with some buckets and put papers in,” Millo said. “But what Catalan authorities have promised, an effective referendum with legal basis and binding, is something that won’t happen.”
At the Congres-Indians school in Barcelona, designated as a polling place, activist Quim Roy said he would be sending his two daughters home before the deadline out of concerns about possible violence. He said other parents planned to do the same.
“Who knows what will happen if the Guardia Civil comes?” Roy said, referring to the Spanish national guard.
He said he would not resort to violence but will not leave the building voluntarily.
“If they tell me I can’t be in a public school to exercise my democratic rights, they will have to take me out of here. I won’t resist, but they will have to carry me out,” he said.