Barcelona’s mayor says at least 460 people have been injured as police have used force to try to prevent voting in Catalonia’s independence referendum.<\/p>\n
The Spanish government has pledged to stop a poll that was declared illegal by the country’s constitutional court.<\/p>\n
Police officers are preventing people from voting, and seizing ballot papers and boxes at polling stations.<\/p>\n
In the regional capital Barcelona, police used batons and fired rubber bullets during pro-referendum protests.<\/p>\n
Updating the injury toll to 460, Barcelona’s Mayor Ada Colau condemned police actions against what she said was the region’s “defenceless” population.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the Spanish interior ministry said 12 police officers had been hurt and three people arrested. It added that 92 polling stations had been closed.<\/p>\n
The national police and Guardia Civil – a paramilitary force charged with police duties – were sent into Catalonia in large numbers to prevent the vote from taking place.<\/p>\n
One voter, J\u00falia Graell, told the BBC that “police started to kick people, young and old”, adding: “Today, I have seen the worst actions that a government can do to the people of its own country.”<\/p>\n
In Girona, riot police smashed their way into a polling station where Mr Puigdemont was due to vote, and forcibly removed those looking to place their ballots. Mr Puigdemont was able to vote at another polling station.<\/p>\n
The BBC’s Tom Burridge, in Barcelona, witnessed police\u00a0being chased away\u00a0from one polling booth after they had raided it.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Barcelona’s mayor says at least 460 people have been injured as police have used force to try to prevent voting in Catalonia’s independence referendum. The Spanish government has pledged to stop a poll that was declared illegal by the country’s constitutional court. Police officers are preventing people from voting, and seizing ballot papers and boxes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[161],"class_list":["post-358285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international","tag-catalan-referendum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=358285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358285\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=358285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=358285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=358285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}