It's becoming even more difficult for Spanish government ministers to deny the extent of the violent police repression of Catalonia's independence referendum on October 1st last year. On Friday the television channel SkyAtlantic broadcast a ten-minute "behind the scenes" report in which its journalists told the story of how they covered the referendum. The video includes powerful, previously-unseen images of the actions of Spain's National Police and Civil Guard in Barcelona on October 1st, and the network's news crew offer some devastating conclusions on the Spanish government's handling of the issue: "It was completely unjustifiable. The fact that police were ordered to do this was insanity," says producer Ben Gordon. "The central government were worried about a constitutional crisis. In the end they created a crisis on their own," sums up news correspondent Mark Stone.
The report is a part of the series Hotspots: On The Frontline which shows viewers the background to the work done by journalists, while highlighting the risks they run and the devastating scenes that they are witness to. Most of the series focuses on locations devastated by war, such as Afghanistan and Syria. SkyAtlantic is one of the television channels in the British SkyNews network, a news leader in the United Kingdom.
This is the report: