At the time of writing it is impossible to know how many people will finally vote in Catalonia's referendum. In an ill-judged and disproportionate police action, offering Dantesque images of Spain's National police and Civil Guard discharging their firearms, shooting rubber balls into the assembled crowds, using physical force and causing injury to ordinary citizens at different places around the country where the Catalan President, the Vice President and members of the government were due to vote, removing ballot boxes by force and with violence, the repression by the state has driven Spain in just a few hours back into that dark past that some of us believed, in good faith, had been left behind. Today, Spanish democracy has taken a leap into the void and the state has pushed Spaniards tumbling into global shame. The Spain of paella and bullfights has now gained a new symbol: a Spanish police officer removing material as dangerous as a ballot box and physically shaking Catalan voters. The Spain of chants of Let's go get 'em! is today, and has been for too long, the state's proposal to Catalonia. And that is the reason that Catalonia has left.
The dignity of a people who have stubbornly stood up in the face of repression and police violence will remain forever imprinted on Catalan retinas, whatever they think and whoever they vote for. During the first few hours of the voting period, I visited several polling stations and saw Dantesque images of violence which I never thought that I would see on an election day. But I also saw the spirit of hope and resistance, the old and the young, linking arms, barring police access, in the centre of Barcelona and also in the outer districts, from Pedralbes to Nou Barris, converted into small fortresses of democracy. Images from all over Catalonia with thousands, or tens of thousands, of citizens protecting polling stations; youngsters standing on a wall giving voting instructions and a crowd in the street applauding. Some people even crying. Ambulances taking away those injured by police aggressions and an elderly lady explaining with a strange sensation of rage and surprise that she never thought that she would once more have to run away from the Spanish police.
Let nobody be deceived: for what has happened this Sunday across many cities in Catalonia, there are not two parties responsible, not two culprits. There is only one. On one side there were ballot boxes, and on the other, weapons. And for all the post-truth that has been introduced into the Spanish language, the Spanish media will not be able to conceal what television networks around the world and digital media on all five continents have been broadcasting for the last few hours. There were those who wanted to sit down to negotiate a referendum and there were those others that only wanted to humiliate. From those September days of 2005 when the Catalan parliament approved the Autonomy Statute; from the time when the Spanish parliament then cut it to pieces with that terrible phrase of Socialist politician Alfonso Guerra saying "they have given the Statute a good cleaning up"; the Constitutional Court sentence in 2010 which both the Partido Popular and the Spanish socialists made possible and which today nobody seems prepared to take responsibility for; and seven years - yes, seven - of an absolute contempt towards what has been happening in Catalonia. Believing the line that everything was a "soufflé" that would soon deflate, organised at official level and promoted by the bourgeoisie. Oh, if they knew about the miseries and the influence of all those people that they listen to so much! Those people have brought them to where we are today.
A Spain in black and white, with revolving-door elite groups, and business deals that are often unmentionable, has for its own benefit artificially maintained the corpse of the regime of the '78 constitution. But, beyond the Spanish government, there are others responsible for the police violence in Catalonia. Those that went out of their way to support any measure that the government wished to carry through, from Socialist leaders Pedro Sánchez and Miquel Iceta to Albert Rivera and Inés Arrimadas of the Citizens party. From the whole of the Madrid press to the two most important newspapers in Catalonia. None of them can now quietly turn away from today's police actions. They have had time to do so and far from denouncing it, they have promoted, endorsed or accepted the repression.
Catalonia has not been crushed. The independence movement has not lost the battle. Today its objective has many more sympathizers than a few hours ago.