Centres planned to be used as polling stations in Sunday's referendum have, at 5pm this afternoon, started holding all sorts of activities to keep the facilities open until voting starts.
The initiative, driven by the Escoles Obertes (Open Schools) platform, is being coordinated by parents' associations around Catalonia. The activities include workshops, outdoors cinema and brotherhood dinners, among others. The intention is to spend the nights camping at the schools too, to maintain the permanent presence called for until 1st October.
The call is supported by the Comitès de Defensa del Referèndum (the Committees for the Defence of the Referendum), organised to prevent the centres being sealed off by police, but from outside, without occupying the rooms. Those spaces are left to the families and pupils.
Police action in the Raval
The police forces, who have orders to seal off all voting centres that could be used for the vote, have started turning up at some of the centres. At Collaso i Gil school in the Raval district of Barcelona, the Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan police) left some of those gathered in the playground and others outside as they shut the gates. They've not allowed anyone else to enter. Locals have gathered outside, making human chains to provide food and drink to those inside.
La gent és riuada i les escoles no tancaran
— Thomas Sankara (@tsankaram) 29 de setembre de 2017
via @CDBRaval @CDBPobleSec @CDRGoticRaval pic.twitter.com/OlolWXY6Em
After some hours, around 9pm, the people inside managed to get keys to the school and have been able to enter the building to spend the weekend.
Oberta l'escola #Collaso i Gil al #Raval! Tot ple de premsa Nacional i internacional! @escolesobertes #obrirem #votarem pic.twitter.com/L2Jwjtnbgd
— Bàrbara Villalbí (@_BarbaraVC) 29 de setembre de 2017
Occupation without problems
Police officers have gone to other centres to check they are shut or would be shut over the weekend, taken notes and then left.
In the cases where events were scheduled, like at Escola Ítaca in Les Corts, Barcelona, the Mossos assured them that there is no problem in continuing with them, as long as they are not related to the referendum. The agents asked that the centres are evacuated before 6am Sunday.
Events in Gràcia
Meanwhile, dozens of residents of Gràcia, also in Barcelona, plan to sleep in shifts in the streets in front of the doors of a old persons' residence in Carrer Siracusa, to prevent it being shut. They will sleep in sleeping bags after a cinema session. Tomorrow, events will take place in front of the centre, which is normally open on Saturdays.
