Catalonia Referendum: Spanish Police Target Catalan Gov’t

Local Editor

Spain's Guardia Civil police had detained a senior Catalan official and raided regional government ministries involved in organizing a banned independence vote.

Tensions were already high before the arrest of Josep Maria Jové, secretary-general of the Catalan vice presidency.

Catalan leaders are defying a court order to halt the vote, condemned by the Madrid government as illegal.
One official called for peaceful resistance to protect the buildings.

"The time has come - let's resist peacefully; let's come out and defend our institutions," the president of the Catalan National Assembly, Jordi Sánchez, tweeted.

The economy, foreign affairs and presidency buildings were all targeted early on Wednesday, 11 days before the referendum.

The detained official's boss, Catalan Vice-President Oriol Junqueras, accused Spanish police of attacking the region's institutions and therefore its citizens too. "We will not allow it," he said.

The night before, Spanish police discovered a mass of documents directly related to the banned vote.

Catalan police officers, on patrol outside the building in Terrassa, scuffled with pro-secession protesters trying to block the street outside.

The Catalan government is trying to organize the 1 October referendum, in the face of determined resistance by the national government to prevent it going ahead.

The Madrid government has been backed up by Spain's Constitutional Court, which suspended the referendum law passed by the Catalan parliament.

Some 7.5 million people live in Spain's well-off north-eastern region. Although opinion polls had been rare, one survey commissioned by the Catalan government in July suggested that 41% of voters backed independence while 49% were opposed.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team