The Spanish government was reluctantly forced to send in national police to stop a referendum on Catalan independence that had descended into farce, the top Spanish official in the northeastern region said on Sunday.
The aim of the National Police and Civil Guard police who descended on polling stations in Catalonia was to seize election materials and they were not targeting people wanting to vote, Enric Millo, the Madrid government’s representative in Catalonia, told a news conference.
“We have been made to do something we didn’t want to do,” he said.
Referring to the Catalan government’s announcement on Sunday that people would be allowed to vote at any polling station they found open in the region, Millo said: “It’s all a sham, a farce. It is the first time in history that the rules of the game are changed 45 minutes before the start of voting.”
Catalan leader accuses Spain of 'unjustified violence'
Meanwhile, Catalan regional leader Carles Puigdemont accused Spanish authorities of using “unjustified, disproportionate and irresponsible” violence in a crackdown on a Catalan independence referendum on Sunday.
The batons, rubber bullets and violence used by Spanish police to prevent voting in what Spanish authorities have said was an illegal referendum had shown a “dreadful external image of Spain,” he told reporters.
“The unjustified, disproportionate and irresponsible violence of the Spanish state today has not only failed to stop Catalans’ desire to vote ... but has helped to clarify all the doubts we had to resolve today,” he said.
Earlier in the day, the Catalan leader cast his ballot in the banned referendum on independence from Spain.
He voted in the village of Cornella del Terri in the province of Girona, the regional government said, not in the village originally planned where police broke down the door of the voting station.
