BARCELONA (Reuters) - More than 700 mayors from across Catalonia gathered in Barcelona on Saturday to confirm their support for a planned independence referendum that Madrid has declared illegal.
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On Wednesday, Spanish prosecutors summoned for questioning more than 700 mayors who had said they would allow municipal spaces to be used for voting. If the mayors do not respond to the order, police should arrest them, the order said.
They're going after printing shops, hunting for ballot boxes, shutting down access to websites (I don't have a news source on this, but I've been told), etc.. it's actually... bad. What could have been a mostly pointless nonbinding referendum (pointless in large part because it would have failed) has become a genuine conflict, with the Spanish state engaging in actions which we tend to condemn in other countries.