MADRID (Reuters) - Spanish police have occupied the Catalan government’s communications hub on the eve of a banned independence referendum which Madrid is attempting to thwart, the regional authority said on Saturday.

Tens of thousands of Catalans are expected to vote in a ballot that will have no legal status as it has been blocked by Spain’s Constitutional Court and Madrid has sent thousands of police to the northeastern region to stop it taking place.

But Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont told Reuters on Friday that the referendum would go ahead regardless.

“Everything is prepared at the more than 2,000 voting points so they have ballot boxes and voting slips, and have everything people need to express their opinion,” Puigdemont said.

On Saturday a Catalan government spokesman said at least four police officers had entered the center in Barcelona which controls the regional government’s telecommunications and IT and were expected to stay there for two days.

This followed an order by Catalonia’s High Court on Friday for police to prevent electronic voting taking place. The court also instructed Google to delete an application it said was being used to spread information on the vote.

Police and Spain’s interior ministry did not confirm the action. The head of the Catalan regional police has ordered officers to evacuate and close polling stations by 6 a.m. on Sunday, before the voting is due to open at 9 a.m.

At a closing rally for the independence campaign in Barcelona on Friday, people formed the slogan “Referendum is democracy” in large white letters on a stage in front of a cheering crowd, many draped in the red-and-yellow Catalan flag.

Other Catalans camped out in polling stations in order to defy court orders to close them.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-spain-politics-catalonia-telecommunic/spanish-police-occupy-catalan-tech-hub-before-banned-vote-idUSKCN1C5095

ok

life2017:
This will not make front page because IPOB have paid Nairaland.com not to show forceful crack down in Spain.

Because this will favour and support operation python dance in the south east.

the crack-down is monumentally continue!

They shocked about kurdistan 95% yes but rejected world wide!
lets say it's happen in Nigeria, they will call heaven to fall!

The Latest:
Spain has Catalan voting technology dismantled
The Spanish government's appointee in Catalonia says the technology infrastructure for voting and counting ballots from the region's disputed secession vote has been dismantled, making the referendum "absolutely impossible."

Enric Millo, the highest-ranking Spanish central government official in the region, said Civil Guard agents acting on a judge's order searched on Saturday the headquarters of CTTI, the Catalan regional center in charge of technology and communications.
Millo says 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."

Catalan officials have vowed to go ahead with Sunday's vote even though Spain's Constitutional Court has put the referendum on hold.



Read more here: http://www.bnd.com/news/business/article176322036.html#storylink=cpy

This is an exercise in futility, but the Catalans just want to prove a point that the majority of the followership are in agreement with the Catalan leadership who are seeking a separation from Spain.

In Nigeria, the SouthEastern leadership is not asking for anything, but a terrorist group wants to usurp authority and is asking that it be given a date for a referendum the political and constitutional leadership has not requested.

Such noisemaking disguised as demands, are only fulfilled in a dream.

The most unfortunate aspect of the Nigerian episode is the separatists continue to give many examples of civilised and properly prosecuted campaigns in other continents which are led by the legitimate government of those separatists regions, helping to highlight how crude, barbaric and illegitimate their own unrecognized demands are.

Lol. The current president of Spain must be another dollard like Bubu albiet a refined one. For banning the votes and using police to muzzle opponents, he has just lost Catalonia. Many catalans who would have otherwise stayed in spain will now vote to leave.
This is just how Bubu dollard lost Igbos forever

update:
Spanish police move to enforce ban on Catalan independence referendum
BARCELONA (Reuters) - Spanish police monitored schools earmarked as polling stations and occupied the Catalan government’s communications hub on Saturday in an effort to prevent a banned independence referendum which has divided Spain.

Hundreds of supporters of the referendum spent the night in schools with their children and say they plan to remain there until Sunday to keep them open for voters.

A Spanish government source said more than half the schools had been closed off and police would remove people who attempted to vote on Sunday. Less than a tenth of schools were occupied by parents, the source said.