A slow and steady ‘yes’ rolls over region

People waited in long queues patiently to cast their vote at the independence referendum

Jorge Fernandez has thick hardened hands that speak to his 20 years working hard for a living. He’s one of several hundred voters who are waiting patiently in line to cast his ballot on Catalan independence. In about an hour, judging by the way the line is slowly but surely moving towards the ballot box, those mighty hands will pick up a pen and mark an X for ‘Si’ – ‘Yes’ on a vote.

“Everyone here is voting ‘Yes’,” he tells Gulf News.

Inside this large secondary school, set on a street of lowrise and low-income apartment buildings on the northeast suburbs of Barcelona, three volunteers are manning the polling booth.

One checks identities, another crosses names off a printout of the electorate, while a third hands out a white envelope containing a ballot paper. It’s slow going. And each of the three, looking ever so like middleaged librarians, faces a fine of €300,000 (Dh1.3 million) for doing what they now do. The school authorities, who allow the vote to happen, also risk criminal prosecution by Spanish authorities, who have declared the Catalan referendum to be illegal.

Earlier, the Madrid government ordered the federal police, the Guardia Civil, to confiscate ballot papers, and 10 million were seized.

Here, there are a ballot papers, the vast majority being marked for independence.

“Catalonia is Spain’s oldest colony,” Fernandez tells

Gulf News. “We have our own language and our own history. We were the first colony to be brought into the Spanish Empire. Then came the Americas and Philippines. But Catalonia was the first. All those nations have independence. And today we will gain our independence.”

Overhead, a Guardia Civil helicopter circles, while across the street, three members of the Mossos d’Esquadra, the Catalan regional police, stand quietly, observing the vote.

They make no effort to intervene to prevent the vote from taking place. Elsewhere, the Guardia Civil have stormed polling stations, fired rubber bullets, and there are reports emerging that scores have been hurt.

Here, at least, there’s a party atmosphere. “People are angry now with Madrid,” Fernandez explains. “They are angry at the way they have tried to stop us from voting. We live in a democracy. And this is democracy. The people of Catalonia will have their say.”

Chanting begins

A chant breaks out somewhere down the schoolyard and it quickly becomes a crescendo: “Votarem! Votarem!” (We will vote! We will vote!)

Across the street, the three Mossos smile, benignly showing where their loyalties lie despite their call of duty.

“There is so much corruption in Madrid now that we have to go our own way,” Fernandez says. “The way that Madrid is acting, it’s like [Francisco] Franco.” Is anyone voting No? No. Not a single person. The way this polling station — local election district 8, sections 104, 105, 106 and 107 — is voting, it’s going to a landslide victory for independence.

“It doesn’t matter if Madrid says the vote is illegal, here we are having our say, and the government will have to listen to us,” Fernandez says.