Barceona citizens came in at night to keep polling stations protected from the police, Oct.1,2017. Parrot Pascal/Press Association. All rights reserved.The battle presently being fought in the streets and polling stations in towns and cities throughout Catalonia before, during and after October 1, in which a diverse civil society has come together in huge numbers, putting their bodies and knowledge in the service of the shared goal of defending what is considered to be real democracy, has also created a crucial battleground in the case of the Internet.
September 7, 2017
On September 7, 2017, the Constitutional Court declared the referendum in Catalonia illegal. Thenceforth, the Spanish government embarked on legal, police, and administrative persecution of any “device or instrument that is to be used for preparing or holding the referendum”, including ballot boxes and papers which were now criminal objects. Websites, apps and tools related to the referendum were closed down on the Internet.
Independently of whether one agrees or disagrees with the decision of the Spanish courts to ban the referendum, the closing of many regular Internet spaces can only be viewed, in a great number of cases, as a grave violation of freedom of expression – and especially the freedom of political opinion – which is protected in international treaties and by Article 11 of the European Union’s Charter of Fundamental Rights on “Freedom of expression and information”.
