POLL VIOLENCE TEARS SPAIN APART
850 injured after ‘police brutality’ as independence vote turns ugly in Barcelona
HUNDREDS were injured yesterday as an independence referendum in Spain erupted into bloody violence.
Police used batons and rubber bullets on crowds hoping to vote in the poll in the Catalonia region and officials claimed nearly 850 were hurt.
Officers were accused of brutality, breaking into polling stations, using axes to break down doors and forcibly removing would-be voters, including women and the elderly.
Catalan government spokesman Jordi Turull said the police actions had made Spain ‘the shame of Europe’.
He said: ‘What the police are doing is simply savage, it’s an international scandal.’ Mr Turull claimed millions had voted, despite police closing 319 of the region’s 2,300 polling stations.
Four thousand national police and Guardia Civil officers were sent to Catalonia, after regional leaders defied a Madrid decree that the vote was illegal and should not go ahead.
Ballot boxes and voting papers were confiscated but millions still attempted to cast their vote in the independence referendum.
In Barcelona, the regional capital, queues formed before dawn despite the massive police presence and voters waited for hours.
Riot police used batons against crowds of pro-independence supporters, who had raised their hands above their heads in an apparent display of non-aggression. Screams of terror could be heard as officers began beating people to the ground. At one point, a small group of firemen linked arms with demonstrators as they faced the police lines, and were also beaten back by batons.
As the reports of violence turned into a flood, the EU remained conspicuously silent on the police’s tactics. At one polling station in Barcelona, where police had tried to force their way in and push voters out one woman cried: ‘This is shameful, this is a dictatorship.’
Once the officers retreated, an elderly woman was left with blood pouring down her face. ‘We need the European Union to help us,’ she pleaded.
Footage showed police kicking, beating and pulling people by the hair in clashes inside a school in Sant Marti, in Barcelona. The video showed an officer kicking at civilians on the ground, and another person being pulled by the hair.
Elsewhere, Guardia Civil smashed glass doors to force their way inside a polling station in Girona where the Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont was expected to vote. He eventually cast his ballot in a different town.
There were angry confrontations between officers from the regional Catalan police force, Mossos, who attempted to intervene against their national counterparts.
Catalan officials claimed 844 people were injured, including a 70year-old man who suffered a cardiac arrest as police cleared a polling station at La Mariola in the province of Lleida, and another man who was hit in the eye with a police rubber bullet. Thirty-three police were reported injured.
The heavy-handed police tactics threatened to enflame resentment against Madrid in Catalonia, where a recent poll showed the majority of voters did not support independence. In Britain, Foreign Sec-
‘This is shameful, this is dictatorship’
retary Boris Johnson said: ‘Obviously we are very anxious about any violence. We hope that things will sort themselves out, though clearly you have to be sensitive to the constitutional proprieties. As I understand it, the referendum is not legal, so there are difficulties.’
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox contrasted Madrid’s approach with Westminster’s handling of the Scottish independence campaign. ‘In the UK we were willing to take on the argument of the separatists in Scotland and we were able to defeat those arguments by pointing out the benefits of the Union,’ he said.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn described the violence as ‘shocking’. He added: ‘I urge Theresa May to appeal directly to [Spanish prime minister Mariano] Rajoy to end police violence in Catalonia and find a political solution.’
His swift intervention contrasted sharply with his failure to condemn August’s crackdown by Nicolas Maduro, the Left-wing president of Venezuela, for whom he has been a loyal cheerleader. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon tweeted: ‘Some of the scenes in Catalonia are quite shocking and surely unnecessary. Just let people vote.’
Some EU leaders also voiced their disquiet over the degree of violence used, and called for dialogue. Belgian premier Charles Michel said: ‘Violence can never be the answer.
Mr Puigdemont condemned the ‘unjustified use of violence’ and appealed to the EU to look into human rights violations. There were calls for Mr Rajoy to resign over the decision to send police to the region. But last night he insisted there was no independence vote yesterday in Catalonia.
And he praised police for upholding the law and blamed the violence on the Catalan government, saying the majority of people in the region did not want independence and had ignored calls to vote.