Written by two Catalan journalists, this is a good story – a true story. Most people around the world who have either televisions or internet access saw the Spanish police bludgeoning, dragging, and shooting (with rubber bullets) Catalans who were unarmed and simply trying to cast ballots. Most of the international reports were based on background information provided by the Madrid government or the Madrid media which informed everyone that this vote was illegal – that the referendum was illegal. But this wasn’t true.

There is nothing in the Spanish constitution that says that any referendum is illegal. In fact it clearly provides for referendums. What the constitution does say is that secession is illegal. But that’s another matter. In any case, any democratic person would have to stop and wonder how a democratic country could prohibit voting on a referendum, given that voting is the basis of how democracy works. Voting is the organized way that citizens tell their political leaders what they want.

A couple of weeks before the scheduled voting, the Spanish government sent 10,000 paramilitary police to Catalonia to ensure that the voting wouldn’t happen. Their first and most important task was to find the ballot boxes and confiscate them. Without ballot boxes, there could be no voting. They were there to search for ballots and use scare tactics to prevent people from going to the polls.

The 10,000 Guardia Civil and National Police had only minor success. They found many ballots and confiscated them. But ballots can easily be printed quickly and replaced. They patrolled the street in their dark uniforms in large numbers and constantly flew helicopters over cities and towns. But this didn’t prevent 2,286,217 from voting. Ten thousand ballot boxes were made and the 10,000 Spanish police never found any of them before voting day. However, the local police of one town did (a town whose mayor was against the referendum). A total of four boxes were confiscated.

The Catalan government had set up a public competition for the manufacture of the boxes, as is usual for a project paid for with government money. However, the Spanish government went after the two companies that had entered the bidding and threatened them with criminal charges. Left without those possible suppliers, private citizens set to work. And this book is the story of those private citizens.

The manufacture of 10,000 voting boxes and their final distribution to 2,243 polling stations throughout Catalonia is a story of the clandestine operation of hundreds of people that resembles the workings of a clandestine group of partisans from World War II. There were three organizers at the top: Lluis, the brain and the head of the operation, Guti, a trusted friend, and Marc, a Frenchman who lives in the South of France, the Roussillon, the area around Perpignan, once part of Catalonia, where some people still speak Catalan, and now called North Catalonia by the Catalans.

The Catalan president said, repeatedly and calmly, that there would be ballot boxes, and the police were frantically searching for them. While they searched one warehouse after another (sometimes without warrants) they didn’t find them because they were made in China and stored in France.

Besides being the head of the operation, Lluis also paid for the boxes. The Spanish were paying close attention to every penny the Catalan government spent so it was not possible for the government to buy them outright. Lluis found the company that would make them (in China), and paid the 100,000 euros to have them manufactured and sent to France. They were brought by ship to Marseille from where they were taken to and stored in a warehouse arranged by Marc. Close to the day of the voting they would be taken to eight warehouses spread throughout Catalonia, then distributed to smaller warehouses and garages, until the last part of the operation where they were taken to private houses and garages and delivered to the polling stations the next day – 1 October 2017 – the day of the referendum, in the back of small vans, and the trunks and backseats of private cars.

In this partisan organization, people did not know who else was involved and asked no questions. Only those higher up had any idea of what the organization was. The organization was very detailed and the safety of the private citizens involved was of upmost importance. Communication and cell phones were controlled so that nothing could be traced. All this is described in this fascinating story of a real-life, clandestine operation that brought illegal voting boxes to 2,243 polling stations so that over 2 million citizens could vote. You wouldn’t think this would be necessary in the middle of Europe in the year 2017. But this was Spain.

The book is in Catalan. I hope that soon it will be translated into English and other languages so that more people can read it.
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Crònica periodística de l'operatiu clandestí que va permetre que l'1 d'octubre de 2017 a Catalunya hi hagués urnes als col·legis electorals i es pogués celebrar el referèndum d'autodeterminació. ( )