Spanish riot police burst into a school in Girona in northern Spain seizing ballot boxes and voting papers. It was just one of around 92 polling stations shut down by National Guard officers.

Throughout Sunday officers carried out raids across Catalonia to prevent a banned independence referendum.

Wherever the police went they were met with resistance from Catalan administrators over seeing the vote.

Outside polling stations at least 750 people are believed to have been injured as police hit would-be-voters with batons and fired rubber bullets.




Spanish government requesting that Twitter deletes this photo, so don’t retweet it. #CatalanReferendum #Catalonia pic.twitter.com/C4iy6Q1gsk— Revolution (@Revolution_IRL) October 1, 2017





The force used by riot police have beencondemned internationally but described by the government in Madrid as proportionate.

Despite the police action hundreds-strong queues of people formed in cities and village throughout the region to cast their ballots.

While the national Civil Guard went in hard on demonstrators the regional police reportedly made little attempt to remove people trying to vote.




Gender violence by Spanish police; the agent broke all the fingers of this woman pic.twitter.com/bcAg6zTh8W— Help Catalonia (@CataloniaHelp2) October 1, 2017





The violence was not all one sided. Amateur video captured officers coming under attack . The Spanish interior ministry have said 12 officers had been hurt in the unrest.

Polls show around 40 percent of the wealthy northeastern region want independence from Spain although a majority wanted a referendum on the issue.