October 1st — Catalonia Freedom Referendum

This article was originally published at medium.com ⬈

I almost spent almost the all-night awake. I wanted to spend the night in the referendum polling station, like nearly all my close neighbors, but it was not possible. My little girl was sick. A kindergarten sickness, a hard one, If you are a parent, you know what it means.

I had the TV turned on all the night. One image was repeated once and once again: two cruisers in the Barcelona port filled with policemen and tens or hundreds of police vehicles. All of them sleeping. Those policemen that came to Barcelona under the song of “A por ellos” (Go for them). Many people told me that they could not imagine what happened that day. I do not know how but I had a clear picture of what they would do. Those policemen came to Barcelona singing “A por ellos”, just like a gang. Even worst, they friends and families in Spain said goodbye with the same song. They did not expect less from them. While I was watching those images, I hoped, and hoped to someone place a truck, a container, whatever, to cut their pass. Just leave the “Porta de Barcelona” bridge opened, they could not pass. It did not happen; hundreds or thousands of Spanish policemen entered the city.

The TV was not the only thing that you could follow that night. You had the street. After 5 am people started moving down here. People talking, people singing, people playing with its children. All of them going to the polling station just turning the corner. It was inspiring, it was the opposite feeling that was coming from the TV. People with one objective, people with one voice, people wanting to be heard. It was like mermaid songs for me, I felt that I should be there, I could not stay at home.

Around 8 o’clock I arrived at the polling station. My duties with my family were the health of my childhood, but also their future. I was wearing a raincoat. It was raining, and I was planning to spend all the day in front of the polling station door. It is difficult to explain, the ambient had mixed feelings. There were hundreds of people, all of them full of illusion, but also full of fear. We talked, we sang, and we organize ourselves to protect the polling station.

And what we feared that could happen, happen. People start to shout to move children and old people to the inside of the building. They moved quickly. People got nervous. The silence fell.

At least four vans of the Catalan police stopped just by our police station. We all suddenly started to intertwine all arms creating many layers between police and the polling station. No words, no sounds, no songs, just our breath, and the rain. Two policemen walk towards the door and ask: “Who is the responsible here?”, we all responded at unison: “We are.” They ask us to shut down the polling station and return home, we said no. After waiting a few minutes, probably after they report the situation and got instructions, they left.

We felt a relief, we thought that it was all. That it was finished and we could resume with our ordinary lives. The sound of a helicopter approaching remembered us that someone else was watching us: the Spanish police. For some reason, the Spanish Government forbade all flights above Barcelona, and for some reason, they also decided to rule the Spanish police troops directly, although that the law said that all police forces in Catalonia are coordinated from Catalan police. We had another police force to worry about. The helicopter from the Spanish police spotted us, it began to fly in circles around us.

Everyone got quiet again, we return to our positions and stay. In just a few minutes people start to scream. Eight Spanish police vans were approaching through the next street. We tried to keep our positions and quiet. The eight Spanish police vans began to advance to our polling station. They started to slow down. Somehow, and we all felt lucky, they pass. They resumed their travel and went to some other place. We breathed again and relaxed.

I live near a hospital, it is just 5~10 minutes walking. In fact, some of the people that were with me that day were nurses, doctors, and surgeons. We were all just getting comfortable when we start to see ambulances passing by our polling station. Inside each ambulance, driver and physician were wearing helmets. At that moment we began to be very scared. I have never seen something like that before. And worst, all of us were capable of reading the face of the hospital workers.

The referendum organizers announced the same day something called: “Universal Census,” in other words: you can vote at any polling station. An online application checked if you can vote and if you have already voted. Of course, using the internet. And of course, the Internet was shut down in all polling stations by the Spanish Government. Polling stations ask volunteers, they were looking for mobile phones able to share a connection to the Internet. I do not know If you have been ever in a big demonstration, but mobile data is the first thing that you lose. To help to proceed, the rest of us put their mobile phones in airplane mode. We cut down our channel of communication with the rest of the world.

It took more than one hour, but we finally got somehow relaxed. People start voting. The Spanish police helicopter circled us some more times, it was scary, but we proceed. New people coming started to told us terror stories about other polling stations. There was a moment of tension we saw arriving two Catalan officers, but they just stop crossing the street and watched. More and more people were coming and lining up. The queue got so long that it surrounded the all the block.

At 12am it was full of people. I decided to take a break and go home to lunch. I ate, I went to the town where I raised, and I voted. And I saw the TV. I could not believe what I was seeing. I remembered something that I heard about the US Independence: it is not the privilege of the people but the obligation to cut with oppressive governments. I hoped the Catalan government to show up and declare the independence immediately to remove the Spanish police and protect their people. Just dreams, soon I realized that no government will ever do what we, the people must do. I returned to the polling station, there was, at least, more than 5 thousand votes to protect, more than 5 thousand votes that the Spanish police wanted to steal.

The afternoon was long. Really long. And quiet. The queue shrunk but it did not disappear. We all continued afraid. It was difficult, but we stayed. We started to talk between us, and for the first time, first videos from Spanish police make us laugh instead of a scare.

It was scheduled to close polling stations at 8pm. But most of us wanted to close it earlier, count the votes, and leave. At 7pm we just start thinking in the Spanish police, coming and stealing all our votes. We were counting minutes. People still arriving to vote, and the queue did not shrink. The sunset arrived, the night came, but street lamps did not light up.

The 8pm arrived. It was dark. The polling station closed. And votes were still pending to count. We suddenly realized that closing the voting poll did not solve the problem. At any moment the Spanish police could come and steal all the votes. And worst, it was dark, really dark. There was no light on the streets. We hardly saw one each other. Minutes became seconds. Each minute without the police coming felt a victory. Everyone was quiet. And suddenly, the door of the polling station opened.

A really long day seemed to arrive at its end. Hours and hours, minutes and minutes, of anxiety, alarm, fear finished. We heard the results of the polling station, We sang, we celebrated “We have voted.” And we started to return home.

We felt finally safe. But we were not. The polling station was crowded, so crowded that we were in the sidewalk, in the top of the green area, and even on the street. And abruptly a car appeared, start to show out “Viva España” and press the accelerator to the bottom. We were lucky, really lucky, just at the beginning of the trajectory of the car were the two Catalan police officers. One of them instantaneously jump towards the driver’s window, got the steering wheel, and took control of the vehicle. I know that nobody got hurt. The Catalan policeman got the car through the window and drove it out. I do not know what happened with the driver. But I am glad that we resisted, and we achieved our objective.

We voted on the 1st of October for our freedom.