People in Catalonia voted in symbolic referendums on Sunday that organisers hope will be a step towards eventual independence from Spain for the wealthy north-eastern region.
Some 700,000 Catalan residents in 166 towns and villages, or almost 10 percent of the region's population, were called on to answer the question: "Do you agree that Catalonia become a social, democratic and independent state, and mmember of the European Union? The polls, of members of local associations and supported by some political parties and unions, are non-binding as Spain's constitution only allows referendums if they are mandated by the central government.
Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said in Brussels on Friday that the referendums "are not going anywhere." But organisers hope that a result in favour of independence, and with a turnout of at least 40 percent, will push the issue up the political agenda throughout Spain.
"The turnout has been good," Uriel Bertran, the spokesman for the organisers, said at around midday. "Tomorrow Catalonia will awake as if it is another country, with new hope."
A sizeable minority in Catalonia would already like to see the region, which accounts for 25 percent of Spain's gross domestic product and which has its own Catalan language, achieve independence from Spain. "Catalonia is dying, they are killing it and we must react," Joan Laporta, the chairman of Barcelona football club, told the newspaper El Pais on Sunday.
"No Catalan can accept the fiscal pillaging that we are suffering nor the attacks on the rights and freedoms of Catalonia." In a precursor to Sunday's vote, 96 percent of residents in the small town of Arenys de Munt voted in September in favour of Catalan independence. Turnout was 41 percent.