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A large deployment of Civil Guard agents arrived at 7am this morning at the Unipost courier firm in Terrassa, Catalonia's fourth largest city, looking for material related to the 1st October independence referendum. According to workers, during the search the police found a so far undetermined number of notifications informing people they had been chosen to work at polling stations on 1st October.

Translation: Large crowd at the headquarters of Unipost in Terrassa

Six Civil Guard vans guarded the company's headquarters in view of around a hundred people. These gatherings at each police operation against companies that might be carrying out work linked to the referendum are already becoming a habit. Such crowds have already been seen outside newsrooms and printers. Among the protesters, who were shouting slogans in favour of the right to decide, were the Catalan parliament deputy and secretary of Municipal Policy for ERC (Catalan Republican Left), Marc Sanglas and the spokesperson of PDeCAT (Catalan European Democratic Party) in Terrassa and deputy mayor, Miquel Sàmper.

The Civil Guard searching the headquarters of Unipost in Terrassa. Shame. On 1st October we will vote.

They're also searching the headquarters of Unipost of Terrassa.

According to Sàmper, the Civil Guard entered Unipost's headquarters early this morning, started their search without showing an official warrant and were waiting for the judicial secretary to arrive with it. "Any search has to have certain guarantees, specifically the intervention of the judicial secretary of [Barcelona's] Court number 13, and the company's representative has to be attended by a lawyer," he said.

This was repeated by the vice-dean of the College of Lawyers of Terrassa, Jaume Sales, who said "they were looking at envelopes against the light". For this he believes they weren't acting correctly during the wait for the corresponding warrant.

Some hundred people gathered at the office doors and placed carnations on the Civil Guard's vans, whilst chanting in favour of the right to decide. They also sang Els Segadors, the Catalan anthem and l'Estaca, a song about fighting for freedom by famous Catalan artist Lluís Llach and applauded Unipost's workers as they went in and out to make deliveries.

Hospitalet de Llobregat

Also this morning, at 5am, a dozen Civil Guard agents went to Unipost in l'Hospitalet de Llobregat next to Barcelona and searched all the offices. The company was foreseeably contracted to send out ballot cards.

A dozen Civil Guard agents have been searching the offices of Unipost in L'Hospitalet since 5 this morning.

Unipost is a private courier company and could be an alternative to the national Correos postal service for deliveries related to the referendum, given that Correos staff were instructed by management last week to avoid making such deliveries.

According to Spanish newspaper ABC, Unipost was to have started sending out today the notifications to those chosen to work at polling stations on 1st October on behalf of the Catalan government. The newspaper says that the notifications were to be sent in C6/C5 size windowed envelopes without any form of identification on the outside.

The Civil Guard is leaving the firm Unipost in l'Hospitalet. The agents, in civilian clothes, got into their cars without boxes.

The Civil Guard left the company at around 9am without taking anything with them.

Confiscated material

The Civil Guard yesterday morning confiscated material relating to the referendum from an industrial unit in Sabadell, next to Terrassa. This followed another confiscation the day before in Montcada i Reixac, just north of Barcelona, where agents seized more than 1.3 million posters and leaflets advertising the independence vote on 1st October.

The actions come in the wake of an order from the Catalan Public Prosecutor's Office that the different security forces work to avoid the referendum taking place.