Despite brutal police repression, hundreds of thousands fought with determination yesterday to vote in the referendum on Catalan independence. The real ugly face of the Spanish regime was clear to see. At the same time, Jorge Martin reports, the mass mobilisation and self-organisation of the Catalan people was also on display.

We publish here a statement by the International Marxist Tendency, along with a series of reports from Arturo Rodriguez in Barcelona about the rapidly developing mass movement for a Catalan independence referendum and against state repression.

A political earthquake is the best way we can describe the federal elections that took place in Germany on Sunday 24th September. For the first time ever in post-war history an extreme right-wing party has been elected to the Bundestag. At the same time, the parties that have formed the “Grand Coalition” – lead by Chancellor Angela Merkel since 2003 – have suffered historic defeats.