Police seal off over half of polling stations for banned referendum on Catalan independence

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A top Spanish security official in Catalonia says police have sealed off more than half of the 2,315 polling stations designated for a disputed referendum on the region’s independence from Spain.

Enric Millo, the Spanish government’s representative in Catalonia, said parents and students were found to be occupying 163 schools and holding activities when police were sealing off facilities on Saturday.

The regional police force has been ordered not to use force but to vacate the schools by 6am on Sunday, ahead of the scheduled opening of polls at 9am.

Mr Millo says anyone remaining in schools after 6am will need to be removed in line with a judge’s orders but predicts there won’t be significant problems.

He said: “I trust in the common sense of Catalans and that people will operate with prudence.”

Mr Millo says the government is ready to ensure people’s safety as significant numbers are expected to take their political views to the streets on Sunday.

Earlier, he said Civil Guard agents acting on a judge’s order searched the headquarters of CTTI, the Catalan regional centre in charge of technology and communications, on Saturday.

He said the agents disabled software designed to connect more than 2,300 polling stations and to share results, as well as applications, for voting online.

He ruled out any possibility of “an effective referendum, with legal guarantees and binding in the way that the Catalan regional government has promised”.

Spain’s foreign minister, Alfonso Dastis, said the Catalan regional government’s plan to hold an independence referendum was a mockery of democracy.

Mr Dastis said: ”What they are pushing is not democracy. It is a mockery of democracy, a travesty of democracy.”

He accused the Catalan government of trying to promote an exclusionary system which runs counter to the goals and ideals the European Union is trying to advance.

He said voter referendums cannot be equated with democracy and asserted that they are actually the “instrument of choice of dictators”.

The Spanish government maintains that the referendum is unconstitutional and the country’s Constitutional Court suspended the vote so it could consider the matter. Catalan officials said they planned to hold the referendum anyway.

Parents supporting the ballot across Catalan arranged to occupy schools throughout the weekend so they could be used as polling stations on Sunday.

Yoga sessions, film screenings and picnics were organised at some of the 2,315 voting facilities which referendum supporters were trying to stop police shutting down.

Catalan police told them they must vacate the premises so officers could carry out orders to empty the buildings by early on Sunday.

Officers were told to refrain from using violence to remove parents and students.

AP