‘I Feel Anger I Never Had Inside Me.’ On the Ground with Catalonians Fighting to Vote

For ninety minutes, the crowd surged outside the Industrial School of Barcelona, each of the 1,500 waiting to cast a simple yes-no vote for an independent Spanish Catalonia. The wait was long, but not when compared to the years it had taken to come to this moment. As they waited on Sunday morning they chanted “votarem!” or “we will vote!,” sang the region’s melancholy anthem, and cheered at every opportunity. Hundreds of these people had stayed the night to “protect” the voting station from police, and the surrounding cafes and pastisserias were full of people resting their eyes. At one moment a drone passed over, and the crowd waved and hooted in exaggerated cheeriness at its cameras. Only these and police choppers have been seen in the sky here since the government closed the airspace on Friday. And still, nothing happened. The Spanish government had cut Internet access to the school, leaving facilitators unable to sync data over the network. The tactic was just one part of a heavy-handed effort by the minority government of Spanish leader Mariano Rajoy to obstruct a vote ruled illegal by Spanish courts. Finally, organizers decided they had solved the problem: log the data and back up later. Voters were slowly allowed to enter the station, the elderly and disabled first. Some among them may have experienced the language and cultural institutions of Catalonia repressed under Spain’s dictator Franco, who ruled the country fro...
Source: TIME.com: Top Science and Health Stories - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Spain Source Type: news