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For months, I have been following with interest the judicial inquiries underway in Barcelona's court number seven, relating to the Spanish National Police's baton charges on October 1st, 2017, in the Catalan capital, an issue on which a curtain of evasiveness has made it impossible to know the details of who gave the orders to police and what those orders were. This is not a minor issue, since the violence of that referendum day was absolutely disproportionate: there were a thousand people injured among the voters who went to the polling stations, the image transmitted of a repressive state seriously damaged Spain and, worst of all, an official machine was then set in motion with the aim of presenting the peaceful Catalan independence movement as belonging to a violent ideological space. And all this was part of the institutional net used to jail, first, the Jordis - Cuixart and Sánchez, the pro-independence civil leaders - and later, the vast majority of the members of the Catalan government who did not go into exile.

The judge is still investigating around 40 Spanish police officers and, for October, has summonsed the eight National Police inspectors responsible for the different police operations in a total of 27 voting points in Barcelona. The question which the judge wants to answer is very simple: who ordered the police charges? It should be easy to find out, but the fact is that up till now nothing has emerged, since they all allege that they were following instructions. However, someone had to give them. Similar episodes have already been experienced during the Supreme Court trial of the 12 pro-independence leaders, where no-one knew anything about what had happened on October 1st or the police action that took place. Those lower down in the hierarchy didn't remember who it had been, and those further up were busy with other matters, not attending to those details.

For that reason, it is very interesting to know if the voyage that court number seven has undertaken will lead somewhere or will be barred from reaching the truth, which would make it much more difficult for those responsible to be actually punished. The key obviously lies in the specific orders formulated that day, since the judicial orders issued by the Catalan High Court to prevent the referendum did not give the police a free rein, but rather, set limits on the action to be taken. That is why it is so important to know if it was the political leaders, the police commanders or the officers themselves, who were behind the virulence employed on that dark day for Spanish democracy.

With just a few weeks until the second anniversary of the October 1st referendum, and as we also approach the Supreme Court verdict - which the public prosecutor Javier Zaragoza has already announced will be made public before October 12th, Spain's National Day - finding out how it ever came about that such extreme levels of police violence were used, would be of great interest and would dismantle the narratives of the propaganda machine that is Global Spain.