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Updated 5.15pm
SPANISH RIOT POLICE are firing rubber bullets and forcing their way into activist-held polling stations in Catalonia as thousands flood the streets to vote in an independence referendum banned by Madrid.
At least 91 people were confirmed injured in clashes out of more than 330 who went to hospital, emergency services said, as police cracked down on what the Spanish central government branded a “farce”.
But the Catalan government has claimed that the number of injured could be as high as 465, as videos and images show the extremity of the clashes between voters and law enforcement.
Scuffles broke out as police moved in to seal off polling stations and seize ballot boxes to prevent people from voting across the wealthy northeastern region where more than 5.3 million people have been called upon to have their say on independence from Spain.
In central Barcelona, riot police forced their way inside a school to seize ballot boxes, charging at demonstrators who were sitting on the ground blocking their way, witnesses said.
Witnesses said police in Barcelona also fired rubber bullets, with one demonstrator showing AFP a leg injury he suffered.
Spain’s foreign minister Alfonso Dastis told Sky News that the events of today were “not worthy of being called a referendum”.
He said that ballot papers weren’t certified and that the rules of the referendum was changed 15 minutes before the vote began today.
When asked why the Spanish government wouldn’t allow Catalans to vote for or against independence, he said that if a vote were to happen, it would have to include the whole of Spain – “a part cannot decide for the whole”, he said.
When asked how he justified the violence against those who wanted to vote, Dastis said that he had “not seen the violence you seem to have seen”.
He said that some of the images of protests he saw online that dated back to 2012.
Sky News then played footage captured earlier in the day of police charging at protesters, pushing them away from ballots and some protesters lying on the ground.
Their reporter told Dastis that there may be false images online, but that there were unprecedented violent scenes between citizens and riot police today, which was met by applause from the crowd that had gathered around him.
Irish reaction
A number of Sinn Féin members have travelled to Catalonia for the vote and called on the Irish government to condemn the violence by the Spanish state.
“There is a particular onus on Spain’s European neighbours,” he said “including the Irish government, and the European Union to take a stand against the use of violence against those seeking to use their vote and in support of the democratic rights of the Catalan people.”
The Green Party has also condemned the violence, and called on the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Charlie Flanagan, to raise his concerns with the Spanish government.
The Green’s Dublin city councillor Ciarán Cuffe said that “the scenes we are witnessing today are unacceptable in a democracy”.
Imagine if Greater Dublin held a referendum to secede from the Irish State and An Garda Siochána responded with the scenes of violence that we saw on our screens today?
‘We will vote!’
Riot police also stormed a polling station near Girona, smashing the glass doors of the sports centre where Puigdemont was due to vote, then cutting a chain to force their way in.
Inside, they bagged up ballot boxes in black bin liners, wrapping them in police tape before hauling them away.
But the regional government said Puigdemont had managed to vote anyway, tweeting pictures of him casting his ballot in Cornella del Terri, some 10 kilometres (six miles) away.
The drama unfolded after a night of tension in which thousands of people, both nervous and excited, had gathered outside polling stations before dawn.
In Barcelona, rows of police vans were in the streets, their blue lights flashing as officers in riot gear, some carrying heavy bolt cutters, walked through the street as crowds thronged the streets outside a polling station.
FC Barcelona condemned the events that prevented “citizens exercising their democratic rights to free expression”.
It was decided that their game against Las Palmas today would be played behind closed doors due to the violent clashes.
“Votarem, votarem!” – Catalan for “We will vote!” – they chanted, many with their hands in the air.
Peaceful resistance
As the rain poured down in Barcelona, students and activists who had spent the night in schools gathered outside with locals to “defend” these polling stations from police as cars drove by honking their horns in support.
Catalan television broadcast footage of crowds in towns and villages all over the region ahead of the referendum, which has triggered one of the worst political crises in Spain in decades.
Although the region is divided over independence, most people want to vote on the matter in legal, binding plebiscite.
“The government today is in a position to affirm that we can celebrate the referendum of self-determination – not as we wanted, but (it will have democratic) guarantees,” government spokesman Jordi Turull told reporters.
The night before the vote, those occuping the polling stations were told to hand out flowers as a sign of peaceful resistance if the police arrived.
“If someone wants to trouble you, you must remain very calm, smile, practice passive resistance – we have a lot of carnations to hand out – and try to delay them as much as possible from taking away our ballot box,” said Joan Font, a 37-year-old teacher.
Ballot boxes hidden
But the interior ministry said it had started seizing ballot boxes, adding police were “continuing to deploy in Catalonia” to stop the referendum.
Spain’s central government is staunchly against the vote, which has been ruled unconstitutional by the courts, and has vowed to stop it from taking place.
On orders of judges and prosecutors, police have seized ballot papers, detained key organisers and shut down websites promoting the vote.
The ballot boxes have been at the centre of attention during the crisis, with many wondering where they were hidden and how they would be delivered to polling stations.
Occupied schools
Whatever happens, today’s referendum result will not be recognised by Madrid, and almost certainly not by the international community.
Yesterday Spain’s interior ministry said police had closed most of the 2,315 polling stations across Catalonia.
But dozens of others were occupied by teachers, parents, students and activists determined to let people in anyway, with schools coming up with innovative ways to stay open over the weekend through by organising activities ranging from kids’ pyjama parties to volleyball games.
A regional government source said voting may also happen in other places like health centres and even retirement homes, with people able to cast their ballots at any voting station by using their passports or other identification documents.
Turull said there would be ballots papers at all polling stations but voters could also use home-printed versions downloaded from the internet.
Unity protests
Earlier this week, the Mossos d’Esquadra Catalan police warned about the risk of “disruption of public order” if people were prevented from casting ballots.
Madrid has sent thousands of extra police officers from other forces to Catalonia to stop the referendum from happening.
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s conservative government has come under fire for limiting its response to the crisis to repeating that the referendum is unconstitutional.
“The state needs to explain the benefits of remaining united, instead of repeating all the time that the referendum is illegal,” said Rafael Castillo, a 59-year-old engineer at a rally in Madrid, wearing a scarf with the Spanish flag around his neck.
© – AFP, 2017 with reporting from Gráinne Ní Aodha
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It’s affecting USA and Germany this time, so now we need to change the rules… Before it only affected smal countries like Ireland that owed to Germany…
@michal heba: your 100% right with that comment !
@michal heba: The thing is Last time as you put it our government was warned about the massive housing bubble and how it would all end in tears and continued the corrupt greed fest regardless all voted for by us….and you expect other countries to then foot the bill for that?….if it was the other way round trust me you would be saying why should we pay for a self inflicted wound of shocking governance?…this time there was nothing anyone could have done to stop this from happening….big difference.
@Peter Hughes: not really voted for by us….just the banks handing out money willy nilly to the masses (knowing that at the end of the day, they’d get their money back), who’d say no to money on a plate as it were. The only ones left high and dry were carpenters, sub contractors and taxpayers etc.
@michal heba: And the last one which started with sub prime mortgages in the USA, didn’t affect the USA?
@Peter Hughes: we have been told not to burn senior bond holders(Germany). they have invested in to Irish banks and risked their money. When everything collapsed they wanted money back and they got it.
@michal heba: boom there you go! Spot in
@Peter Hughes: the money Irish banks lent recklessly had been lent to them recklessly. Why were only the Irish people punished, why was the burden not shared by all involved in the recklessness.
@Thomas Harrington: I presume you mean “spot on”
@Peter Hughes: the cause of the crisis while not irrelevant is not the discussion, the discussion is that Policies of austerity were not helpful and had we borrowed to fund large infrastructural projects, to stimulate our economy as the parties of the left were ridiculed for suggesting we would have come out of recession in 5 years instead of the ten it took.
This was exactly the financial approach promoted by gerry addams and sinn fein at the time and they were told it was “shinnernomics”
@michal heba: No. These is an overall consensus that the people payd for the banking debth. Bailing out banks and big corporations won’t fly this time. The political class knows that they will have fascists governments in half of European countries by the end of the year with new austerity. People will not take it again. Politicians think only amount their buts.
@NotMyIreland: it was “sub prime” lending practices worldwide, the USA just popped first. I don’t know the breakdown of private mortgages vs developers here. But either way people borrowed what they couldn’t pay back with the infamous anglo being the worst. I believe their customers were mostly commercial
@Peter Hughes: You seem to have forgotten that a lot of that debt was unsecured bonds. The EU forced Ireland to guarantee these so German, Dutch and other major EU nations didn’t have to prop up their banks, insurance companies and pension funds.
@michal heba: We could have left some of the banks go to the wall until Brian Lenihan nationalised the debt. This turned it into a potential sovereign default and meant the taxpayers owed the money instead of the bank. Also inflation is low now and we aren’t really seeing risk of an overheated economy and runaway inflation so the rules are much looser.
Only when the last tree is cut down or when the last animal is killed for food only then will people release that we can’t eat money and it really is worth less than the paper it’s printed on
@Karllye kripton: that is so like the Cree Indian proverb. ‘Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realise we cannot eat money’.
@patrick boland: I probably got it form there I probably read it somewhere along the line and that’s what came to mind
Why do governments borrow? A sovereign state should print money. Sure the currency will initially devalue but over time the increased taxes placed on the citizens will replenish the pot. So surely governments should avoid borrowing from private Banks where the debt is loaded with interest.
@Arthur O’Neill: see Germany after ww1 for reference.
@Arthur O’Neill: Toure right of course, the EVB could creat 2 trillion in non repayable or payable on 100 years funds with no coupon and just let states spend it on infrastructure, energy housing. Also investing 20% of it in Africa, like Xhina was doing, would be strategically smart.
There is no risk here of inflation, never mind hyper inflation, the economy oils bog enough to absorb it.
The only issue is ideological politicians in Germany who have spent the last two decades telling their voters that debt is evil.
@King B: Thats an extreme example.
@Gerard Carthy: a ton of extra cash chasing the same limited resources. How can that not lead to inflation?
@Arthur O’Neill: Because ultimately you end up like Zimbabwe or Venezuela.
@Fintan O’flaois: if misused by dictatorships yes. Used correctly no different to borrowing. Printing by the state vs borrowing from private banks – both scenarios give a cash injection to the economy, which will be redacted over time.
@Arthur O’Neill: Irresponsible monitory policy is not exclusive to dictatorships, however, in democracies sane voices then to prevail before the “money printers” destroy the economy. The benefits of controlling money supply and maintaining modest inflationary targets are well established – countries that do it tend to prosper, countries that don’t tend to struggle.
Milton Friedman advocated what you’re suggesting on the proviso that the excess money supply would be retired at a time of fiscal surplus, so the net supply of money would remain in balance over time. Unfortunately, I just can’t imagine our government retiring money supply at a time of surplus, so we’d end up in an inflationary bubble, a la Zimbabwe and Venezuela.
@Arthur O’Neill: you don’t have to look to dictatorships for examples of governments placing too much emphasis on growing an economy in nominal terms and not enough on inflation. It was a curse in almost every advanced economy in the 70s and 80s. Germany in many ways showed the benefits of controlling inflation and how it could be done. Imagine the panic buying of toilet roll if we had hyperinflation :-)
@Arthur O’Neill: But only one increases the actual amount of money in the economy. Printing money in general leads to negative inflationary and devaluing effects. Hyperinflation is not just based on the responsibility of those in power but the world economic view of the value and stability of a currency, if you just keep printing your own it is of less value to people. So it devalues making everything purchased abroad more expensive. Putting you back in the same place as you began. That’s normal circumstances. But now is different. Money will need to be printed by everybody.
@Arthur O’Neill: I think this is a potential solution … but not with countries acting unilaterally. If all the major central banks agree to act simultaneously and print x amount per person in every country, then there will be no currency devaluation but there will be money across the world to resuscitate the worldwide economy.
@Arthur O’Neill: that is what the ECB are doing along with America and other major countries. This will sooner or later feed high inflation high interest rates major defaults by poorest countries and the collapse of the world’s financial system. Sorry to bring bad news but economically expanding money supply in a contracting economy is suicide unsustainable and for the sake of a short term illusion of dealing with a problem is ultimately going to compound an already bad situation
None of this is new. We simply ignored it in Europe last time at the behest of Germany and NL. The US, in contrast, spent their way out of the last crash and their economy soared. Europe’s never really recovered.
Keynesian economics was followed in the US whereas austerity economics (a new and untested form) was followed in the EU. The results are clear. EU GPD in 2008 was 19.1Tr, US was 14.7. In 2018 EU was 18.7Tr and the US was 20.5Tr (stats from world bank).
The reason there is a rethink on this is because austerity economics didn’t work. This was widely called out at the time but ignored. Most European countries had austerity forced on them as part of getting access to Troika or EU money.
@lambda sensor: https://youtu.be/jsV_YXq-1×4
Very good I highly recommend watching
We all could have told these intellectuals that boosting the economy works better than strangling it if they had asked.
@Lisa Saputo: So you would have told the intellectuals not to cut costs when we’re bankrupt in the midst of a financial crisis where we couldn’t borrow our way out of trouble and had to go cap in hand to the IMF who imposed restrictions so we could afford to keep the lights on?
And once you were done with the intellectuals, what would you have told the civil servants when the wages aren’t lodged to their accounts?
It’s called Keynesianism after the famous economist. But unfortunately those who stand to make the most out of our current austerity driven system haven’t allowed this approach. And I include political power as well as wealth in this. It’s much easier to control the population if you kep a good proportion poor and frightened of fighting for their rights. Austerity has always been about political control not about economies.
I remember reading that when America went into recession in previous decades,the president of the day started massive infrastructure projects which were cheaper to do but kept the country ticking along.
Austerity was not the way as some countries were in trouble even before this pandemic.
What will EU countries debts look like after this and I wonder will some debt forgiveness happen or at the very least drop the interest payments?
Also, the real economic failing that becomes apparent at these times is the lack of preparedness of governments like ours did to their reluctance to adequately follow counter cyclical economic policies. We had a government boasting about the fastest growing economy in Europe for half a decade and we had virtually no surplus and very little rainy day fund available. The fiscal advisory council were largely ignored and it kind of shows that due to the desire to be re-elected politicians can really be trusted with fiscal policy as well as monetary policy.
Interesting that the article backs up the economic approach begged for by people like Paul Murphy, Gerry Addams and Yanis Varoufakis during the last fiscal crisis. All of whom promoted borrowing to fund large infrastructural projects instead of austerity.
Their suggestions were ridiculed by our government (still our government) at the time and a lot of posters on here now rubbing their chins in agreement to this article.
One of the greatest achievements in economics in the last five decades has been the intellectual and practical triumph of delegating monetary authority to independent and conservative central banks. It needs to be tweaked in a number of ways, most importantly increasing inflation targets in times of crisis and taking a longer term average measure of inflation. However, going back to the situation where governments print money would lead to the time inconsistency problem again and would be a disaster. As people have said, there’s a very good reason why Germans fear inflation. Also, during hyperinflation it is the poorest and most vulnerable in society that suffer the most so there’s a welfare benefit to low inflation that shouldn’t be taken for granted.
@Cormac O’ Keeffe:
The Thatcherite revolution has brought humanity to a precipice. Yet there was no other way for our ruling class to go. Ably assisted by the top 10%. Logical for them. Death and want for the other 90%.
shes a fine half..not meaning to be sexist or anything
Reading the arm chair economists on here is highly entertaining….especially the bit where everyone blames Germany.
Hard to believe she is 48 lads, she looks after herself
Since the last financial crash the wealth of the top 10% has increased, by no small amount. Repeat, increased.
That states have intervened in the pandemic to cover some costs of the working class, and the IMF is advocating a Keynesian investment policy, indicates nothing less than the mortal fear of the capitalist ruling class.
Think about it.
To all the people saying Germany, Venezuela, runaway inflation, blah blah etc. How can printing money in a deflationary environment cause runaway inflation? This has to be done in the short term to stimulate demand. The money supply can be reduced again in the future. Its like giving a patient adrenaline. Not ideal for your system but needs must n all that. It’s either this or borrowing and Austerity. And I don’t think the proletariat will take that again.
have your say