Spanish riot police smashed their way into a polling station in Catalonia on Sunday as they sought to shut down a banned independence referendum that has thrown the country into its worst constitutional crisis for decades. They burst into a polling station, in a town in Girona province, minutes before Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont was due to vote there. They shattered glass panels to force open the door as voters, fists in the air, sang the Catalan anthem.
Police with riot shields also jostled with hundreds of voters outside one station at a school in Barcelona, the Catalan capital, as the crowd chanted, “We are people of peace!” Armoured vans and an ambulance were parked nearby.
The referendum, declared illegal by Spain’s central government, has raised fears of street violence as a test of will between Madrid and Barcelona plays out.
The Catalan government had scheduled voting to open at 9 a.m. at around 2,300 designated stations, but Madrid said on Saturday it had shut more than half of them.
Voting started at some sites in the region of 7.5 million people, which has its own language and culture and is an industrial hub with an economy larger than that of Portugal. Leader Puigdemont changed plans and voted at a different station after the police action, the regional government said.
People had occupied some stations with the aim of preventing police from locking them down. Organisers smuggled in ballot boxes before dawn and urged voters to use passive resistance against police.
In a school used in a voting station in Barcelona, police in riot gear carried out ballot boxes while would-be voters chanted “out with the occupying forces!” and “we will vote!”.
The Catalan government said voters could print out ballot papers at home and lodge them at any polling station not closed down by police.
“I have got up early because my country needs me,” said Eulalia Espinal, a 65-year-old pensioner who started queuing with around 100 others outside one polling station, a Barcelona school, in rain at about 5 a.m.
“We don’t know what’s going to happen but we have to be here,” she said.
