 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we have with us Marco Berlinguer who is joining us from Barcelona. We are going to discuss the recent, shall we say, crackdown on the Catalonian referendum and we'll discuss with Marco what his reading of the situation is. Marco, in India, people do not understand much about what's happening in Catalonia, what is this referendum all about. So, can you give us a little more background about what was this referendum about before we come to the crackdown itself? Well, the referendum was about deciding, let's say, by the Catalan people their independence from Spain, let's say. But the referendum was called by the Catalan government, which is within the Spanish constitution an autonomous region, not a sovereign state. And according to the Spanish government it's illegal, the organisation of the referendum, because it's not contemplated by the constitution, the possibility of a part of the nation to separate from the country. And so there was a very strange situation, let's say, because there was a sort of clash of claims of legality and legitimacy between the Spanish state and the Catalan government. And so this was the immediate background, let's say, of that situation. And so there was a struggle about the description of what was going on before the referendum. There were many actions on behalf of the Spanish government to repress and to prohibit and to make impossible the organisation of the referendum. And then the government also decided to intervene in that violent way to block the implementation, let's say, the participation of the people, the possibility of the people to go to the polls and to vote and so forth. And the people made the Pacific resistance. It does appear that the Spanish government did not think that they would crack down this form or they would need to crack down this form, because if so they could have done, or at least what appears to us from outside, they could have been much more aggressive beforehand. Was this an afterthought or was it really planned that they would stop the referendum on the day it was going to be held? The Spanish government promised many times that the referendum was not going to be held. And so there was a sort of, while the Catalan government always repeated that the referendum was going to be held. So there was a clash of wills and of an escalation in the previous weeks with already important interventions by the police, by the judge, and included arrests of representatives of the Catalan government and reaction from the people in the streets. So there was a tension that was growing, growing, growing. And the Catalan government, the Spanish government also brought something like 10,000 policemen from the other regions of Spain, because here there is a local autonomous police, but they wanted to rely on more forces and also they didn't trust so much with the autonomous police. So this was the background. So they promised to stop and to prohibit and not to allow the execution of the vote. What happened at the end is that they couldn't stop it because even when they intervened in that violent way, in reality they could stop in few places the possibility to vote, but the Catalan government at the last moment changed the rule and so allowed people to vote in any place. Marco, what explains the reaction this time when in 2014 with basically similar forces in power, both in the Catalan region and the central government, they did allow such a referendum to be held? Well, they did not allow in terms of legality. They also contested that referendum and they have been through the judge and the action of the courts. They have been persecuting the responsibles of that previous referendum. However, they did not intervene with the repression, with the police forces in that occasion. The difference probably depends on the different character of the two referendums because the first one was in reality just a participatory consultation of the people. It did not pretend to have a juridical effect. While this second was prepared by a law in the Catalan parliament, it was very contested in the way it was approved and in its own juridical foundations, however it was approved by majority in the parliament and it pretended to be a binding referendum with an effect in terms of consequences. So the Catalan parliament is supposed in this moment to declare the independence from Spain after the results of the referendum. So the situation is different. That doesn't explain the way the Spanish government decided to intervene because the violence has been unnecessary in a way and unuseful. One quick question. There have been three sides to the referendum. Those who support Catalan independence, those who oppose Catalan independence and the third set of forces who have said people have a right to the referendum but we do not necessarily support independence. Do you think after this intervention the independence side would have got strengthened and the other two would have weakened? In this moment in Catalonia there is a general strike that was organized by many organizations, social organizations apart trade unions and included the government is supporting the general strike so the region is almost blocked. And the football clubs as well? Yes, they also participate. Barcelona football club is as important to the rest of the world as Catalonia. It's true how you were describing that it's important to distinguish the orientation in the Catalan people because there are people that are clearly oriented towards the independence. There are people that are clearly against the independence and defending the actual state of the relationships between Catalonia and Spain. And there is a very large part of the population that is absolutely in favor of the possibility of the Catalan people to decide by itself about their own relationship with Spain but that is not necessarily in favor of the independence. It would be open to reconfigure the relationship under the possibility of deciding autonomously and negotiating with the Spanish state a new relationship. But this principle of allowing the people to express and to decide autonomously in Catalonia the principle is not accepted by the Spanish state and also by the large majority of the Spanish political forces. So this situation and the repressive reaction of the Spanish government is provoking a polarization and a radicalization and it's one of the reasons that explains the growth of the independence in Catalonia which was until a few years ago minoritarian in Catalonia. So we have to understand there are other reasons which are important but the reaction and the repressive and exclusively repressive answer that arrived from the Spanish government is one of the reasons of this quite impressive growth that the independentism has known in Catalonia in the last few years. There are calls to negotiate and bring the temperature down and try and mediate between the two sides by forces like for instance the Barcelona mayor who's been taking a position which is opposed to the Spanish government's repression but is not supported outright the independence campaign. No at the moment as I told you there is no space for mediation dramatically. Also the major of Barcelona has called for an international mediation which is from one side is understandable because it seems that it's really difficult to imagine within the Spanish political forces there are the conditions to open up a negotiation but at the same time it is extremely difficult to imagine that Europe is going to intervene. The situation is bad and worrying I would say. Thank you very much Marco to be with us. This is all the time we have for NewsClick today. We will be back with Marco and other observers of the situation or if not the participants of what's happening in Catalonia and will bring you that news.