Catalonia’s Independence Referendum on 1st October has opened up a major crisis of the regime in Spain. Hundreds of thousands occupied and defended polling stations in order to vote on the day. Those sights are now burnt into the consciousness of the Catalan people. On 3rd October, a national shutdown paralysed Catalonia with huge demonstrations against police repression.

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.