Catalonia referendum: 90% voted for independence, say officials – as it happened

We are restarting this blog after the Catalan government announced preliminary results for the independence referendum that showed a 90% “yes” vote. We will bring you the latest updates here.

1 Oct 201718.07 EDT

Evening summary

Nicola Slawson

We are going to close this blog now. Thanks so much for joining us today on what has been an extraordinary day in Spain’s history as Catalonia held a referendum on its independence in the face of a police crackdown.

Here’s a roundup of the evening’s events:

• Carles Puigdemont, Catalan’s leader, announced in a televised statement that the region had earned the right to become an independent state and that results of the contentious referendum were expected in a few days.
• In a press conference shortly before, a defiant Mariano Rajoy, the Spanish prime minister, said no referendum had been held today and blamed unrest on the Catalan government.
• Socialist leader Pedro Sánchez urged the Spanish government to negotiate with Catalonia and said Spanish and Catalan leaders had failed so far.
• Videos from earlier in the day show police hitting people in the crowd with batons while voters hold up their hands, police dragging voters from polling stations by their hair and Spanish police attacking Catalan firefighters.
• Rajoy praised the police and said they acted with “firmness and serenity”.
• According to the Catalan department of health, 761 people were injured in the unrest. Two were seriously injured and remain in hospitals in Barcelona.
• At least 10 police officers are said to have been injured.
• There have been several calls by Catalan politicians and opposition MPs for the Spanish prime minister to resign over the hardline police response.
• The Liberal Democrat leader, Vince Cable urged Boris Johnson to make clear that the violence against voters was unacceptable, while Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, called the foreign office’s statement “shamefully weak”. Earlier, the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, asked Theresa May to intervene “to find political solution to the crisis”.
• Barcelona’s La Liga match against Las Palmas was played at an empty Camp Nou after the Catalan club’s request for the match to be postponed due to unrest was rejected.
• More than 40 unions and associations in Catalonia have called a region-wide strike on Tuesday in protest against today’s “grave violation of rights”.

Here’s the full report:

Here’s more on the violence at polling stations:

More than 40 unions and associations in Catalonia have called a region-wide strike for Tuesday, after a major police crackdown on a banned independence referendum.

In a statement on Sunday, UGT and CCOO, Spain’s biggest unions, the Catalan national assembly (ANC), a powerful pro-independence civil association, and 41 other organisations called for a large-scale strike in protest against “the grave violation of rights and freedoms” today.

The statement continued:

We call all society, on employers’ organisations, business owners, unions, workers, self-employed workers, institutions and all the citizens of Catalonia to stop the ‘country’ on Tuesday, October 3.

Pro-independence Catalans often refer to the northeastern region as a “country.”

Catalonia’s Carles Puigdemont said the door had today been opened to a unilateral declaration of independence.

He said in a televised address:

With this day of hope and suffering, the citizens of Catalonia have won the right to an independent state in the form a republic.

He also said that the EU could no longer “continue to look the other way” from human rights violations around the referendum.

On the violence at polling stations, he said:

The Spanish government has today written a shameful page in its relationship with Catalonia.

His speech was welcomed by those watching on a big screen, ITN’s Dominic Reynolds reports.

Carles Puigdemont said that the “citizens of Catalonia have earned the right to have an independent state.”

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He said official results of the vote, which have not yet announced, will be sent to the parliament to proceed.

Making a direct appeal to the EU, he said: “We Catalans have earned the right to be heard in Europe.”

Carles Puigdemont, Catalan’s leader, has announced that the region has won the right to become an independent state with vote results expected in a few days.

More to follow.

Carles Puigdemont, the president of Catalonia, is due to speak soon we have been told. We’ll bring the key points from that press conference when we have it.

In the meantime, here’s an interesting thread from Fernando Rodriguez-Vila that is doing the rounds on Twitter and is worth a read.

Here’s a roundup of the reaction to today’s unrest in Catalonia. While some have expressed outrage at the level of violence, others perhaps mindful of separatist movements in their own nations, sounded a note of caution

Guy Verhofstadt, the European parliament’s Brexit chief, said:

I don’t want to interfere in the domestic issues of Spain but I absolutely condemn what happened today in Catalonia.

Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon said:

Regardless of views on independence, we should all condemn the scenes being witnessed and call on Spain to change course before someone is seriously hurt.

Britain’s foreign ministry said:

The referendum is a matter for the Spanish government and people. We want to see Spanish law and the Spanish constitution respected and the rule of law upheld.

Belgium prime minister Charles Michel said:

Violence can never be the answer! We condemn all forms of violence and reaffirm our call for political dialogue.

Serbian foreign minister Ivica Dacic said:

Our position is clear and principled, Spain is one of the greatest friends of Serbia.

“[Madrid] is in the same position on the issue of the territorial integrity of Serbia.

French economy minister Bruno Le Maire said:

Spain is a friendly nation, a proud people. Clearly I hope that civil peace will reign in Spain.

Here’s more from the press conference that Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy held a little earlier, via the AFP news agency.

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Rajoy said Sunday that the rule of law had prevailed in Catalonia because an independence referendum in the region prohibited by the courts had been blocked.

“Today there has not been a self-determination referendum in Catalonia. The rule of law remains in force with all its strength,” he said in a televised address.

Security forces “performed their duty” in Catalonia and respected a court order to prevent voting from taking place, he added in his first public comments Sunday on the referendum.

“It would have been easier for everyone to look the other way,” the conservative prime minister said.

The referendum was a “real attack on the rule of law... to which the state reacted with firmness and serenity”.

Socialist leader Pedro Sánchez spoke at a press conference shortly after Mariano Rajoy.

He urged the Spanish prime minister to negotiate with Catalonia and said: “Rest assured that we will overcome this situation. I want to send Catalans and all other Spaniards a message of security.”

Sánchez said his party would guarantee this stability by “betting on peaceful coexistence, not confrontation” and by “opening a political negotiation channel that is more urgent than ever”.