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.<br /><br />Throughout Sunday officers carried out raids across Catalonia to prevent a banned independence referendum. <br /><br />Wherever the police went they were met with resistance from Catalan administrators over seeing the vote. <br /><br />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.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />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<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />The force used by riot police have beencondemned internationally but described by the government in Madrid as proportionate.<br /><br />Despite the police action hundreds-strong queues of people formed in cities and village throughout the region to cast their ballots.<br /><br />While the national Civil Guard went in hard on demonstrators the regional police reportedly made little attempt to remove people trying to vote.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Gender violence by Spanish police; the agent broke all the fingers of this woman pic.twitter.com/bcAg6zTh8W— Help Catalonia (@CataloniaHelp2) October 1, 2017<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />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.<br /><br />Polls show around 40 percent of the wealthy northeastern region want independence from Spain although a majority wanted a referendum on the issue.<br />
