More than 700 mayors from across Catalonia gathered in Barcelona yesterday to confirm their support for a planned independence referendum that Madrid has declared illegal.
The Catalan government plans to hold a referendum on self-rule for the wealthy northeastern region on October 1, despite strong opposition from government which has challenged the vote in the Constitutional Court.
The mayors met with Catalonia’s regional head Carles Puigdemont in a show of defiance, following Spanish prosecutors warning earlier this week that officials engaging in any preparations for the vote could be charged with civil disobedience, abuse of office and misuse of public funds.
On Wednesday, Spanish prosecutors summoned for questioning more than 700 mayors who had said they would allow municipal spaces to be used for voting.
If the mayors do not respond to the order, police should arrest them, the order said.
Meeting in downtown Barcelona in front of hundreds of flag-waving pro-independence protesters, the mayors gave speeches in which they promised continued support for the referendum amid chants of “we will vote” and “independence”.
Barcelona mayor Ada Colau, who has reached an agreement with the Catalan regional government to allow voting in the city, criticised Madrid’s response to the crisis in a short speech in the city hall.
“It’s a disgrace that we have a government that is incapable of dialogue and instead dedicates itself to pursuing and intimidating mayors and the media,” Colau said.
So far, 740 of 948 municipal leaders have said they would allow municipal spaces to be used for the referendum, according to the Association for Municipalities for Independence (AMI).
Yesterday Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy called for a return to “rationality and legality” and promised to block the vote.
“The only thing I ask of (Catalan) mayors is that they comply with the law, and as such don’t participate in an illegal referendum,” Rajoy said.
The Scottish government lent its support to the Catalan referendum.
Cabinet Secretary for External Affairs Fiona Hyslop said that Scotland’s 2014 referendum on self-rule, which was agreed to by both Westminster and Edinburgh, was a positive example of how to resolve such disputes.
“All peoples have the right to self-determination and to choose the form of government best suited to their needs, a principle which is enshrined in the UN Charter,” Hyslop said in a statement yesterday.
The “No” side won in the Scottish independence referendum.
Spanish police have raided several print shops and newspaper offices in recent days in a hunt for voting papers, ballot boxes and leaflets to be used for the referendum.
The searches are part of a concerted effort by the government to prevent the ballot from going ahead, amid fears that a vote to break away could trigger a political crisis even if Spain does not recognise the outcome.
On Friday, the government passed measures to tighten control over the region’s spending to stop it from using state cash to pay for the ballot, and earlier this week Madrid summoned over 700 Catalan mayors for questioning over their support for the vote.
“They’ve lost the plot,” said Albert Batet, mayor of the town of Valls and one of those summoned for questioning. “They are persecuting mayors, the press, printers. They are stretching the limits of democracy.”
Puigdemont, who faces criminal charges for organising the referendum, says that he has over 6,000 ballot boxes ready to deploy next month, but their whereabouts are a secret.
“Right now, we have no idea where they are,” said Toni Castejon, spokesman for the Catalan police force union.
A spokesman for the Catalan regional government declined to say where the ballot boxes were or how the government was going to get them out of hiding to voting stations on October 1.
On Friday, police confiscated 100,000 campaign leaflets in a raid in Catalonia, the interior ministry said, without saying where.
Catalonia’s top court issued a warning on Friday to seven newspapers, many of them online, not to publish campaign notices for the referendum, a court spokesman said yesterday.
At the offices of Catalan newspaper El Vallenc in Valls, some 50km west of Barcelona, six armed police knocked on the door last Saturday with a warrant to search the offices, said its editor, Francesc Fabregas.
The search lasted five-and-a-half hours.
“They didn’t say what they were looking for,” Fabregas told Reuters, adding that he had not printed any voting papers.
The raid led to an impromptu crowd gathering outside the building, with people singing the Catalan anthem and waving slips of paper chanting: “Where are the ballot papers?”
“When people saw that the streets had been cut off they started coming over with banners, they handed out roses to the police – the street turned into a party,” said Fabregas.
For some supporters of the independence movement, the search for the ballot boxes and voting papers has become a symbol of what they see as state repression.
Images of the Catalan police force – the Mossos d’Esquadra – seizing what for many are symbols of democracy would be highly inflammatory, police say.
The Mossos report to the Catalan regional government and are highly regarded by Catalans, particularly after their handling of the religious extremist attacks in the region in August that killed 16.
But Spanish state prosecutors have ordered all police – including the Catalan force – to act.
“What no one wants is the image of the Mossos taking away the ballot boxes,” said Castejon of the police union. “That would lead to a lot of anger and even civil unrest.”
Madrid has the constitutional power to take over a regional government or send in the police to force Catalonia to drop the vote, but either step would rock Spain’s decentralised model of government where power is devolved to 17 self-governed regions.
Although polls show less than half of Catalonia’s 5.5mn voters want self-rule, most in the wealthy northeastern region want the chance to vote on the issue, causing unease that is beginning to be felt in financial markets.
The budget ministry said that uncertainty created by the stand-off could damage the economy and push up sovereign borrowing costs.
Some investors sold Spanish government bonds and switched to Italian debt earlier this week.
Puigdemont has shown no signs of backing down.
“Does anyone think we’re not going to vote? What kind of people do they take us for?” he had said to cheering crowds from a stage in a bull-ring in Tarragona to launch the referendum campaign on Thursday.