The Catalan government has made it clear that it has no intention of standing with its arms crossed in the fact of the offensive by the Spanish state to stop the 1st October independence referendum. This afternoon, minutes after the Civil Guard, on the orders of a judge, closed the referendum website, the Catalan president, Carles Puigdemont, and the vice-president, Oriol Junqueras, announced via Twitter the launch of a new page.
The website is the same, and has an English version, just at a different address: www.ref1oct.cat. It also has a duplicated with a .eu domain: www.ref1oct.eu
The government's answer has come after a day in which the pressure from Spain has continued growing. This morning, the Public Prosecutor gave the order to summon the 712 Catalan mayors who have signed decrees in support of the referendum to testify. This was immediately followed by authorising local police to act as judicial police to block the vote.
But it was this afternoon that the sights landed on the government itself. The Civil Guard arrived, with an order from Court of Instruction number 13, at hosting company CDmon in Malgrat de Mar, a seaside town some 65km north-east of Barcelona. They obliged them to close the page whose server they held. Since then, the original page referendum.cat has given an error message.