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Coinciding with the Golden Bear prize that the Berlin Film Festival has awarded to the movie Alcarràs by Carla Simón, social media has filled with images from another story that was also filmed in the small Catalan town. This one was non-fiction: the images of the action taken by Spanish police in the municipality on the day of the Catalan independence referendum of 1st October 2017. The images, shared on Twitter, have been accompanied by words of praise for the attitude of the people of Alcarràs. The small fruit-growing village in the Segrià county, a few kilometres from Catalonia's western border with Aragón, put up resistance for more than two hours against members of the Spanish Civil Guard who wanted to enter the building being used as a polling station for the referendum. Thanks to the unity and determination of the residents, the town finally emerged victorious. A Civil Guard helicopter flew over the town in the morning, and at 8:45am, a squad of 80 riot police officers arrived. They wanted to get to the municipal cultural centre, which had been occupied by young people over the previous two days and which was already being protected by hundreds of residents in the early hours of the morning. When the riot police arrived, they could not pass and the then-mayor, Miquel Serra, along with some of his councillors stood in their path. The police made charges and people were hurt, but the Alcarràs locals did not move. Until, at around 10:45am, the officers threw in the towel and left. In the afternoon, only a plainclothes patrol came to make a report, while the voting in the referendum over an independent Catalan state went on. There was no way to stop the referendum.

"Alcarras, always"— Jordi Perales i Gimenez

"It should be noted that Alcarràs was already a source of pride before the Berlinale. On October 1st, 2017, they did not pass" — Mireia Boya Busquet

"During the referendum of #1October2017, the people of #Alcarràs peacefully defended the right to democracy and freedom of expression. Shoulder to shoulder they stopped the violence of the Spanish state while chanting 'They shall not pass'. And they did not pass."— Roser Peramiquel Cols

"Thanks, Alcarràs"— Miquel Pérez 

Alcarràs City Council made a documentary the following year with statements from residents who explained their experience on 1-O.

The Golden Bear award won at the Berlin Film Festival yesterday by Catalan director Carla Simón for the film Alcarràs has made headlines in both international newspapers and specialist entertainment media - from Germany and France, all the way to Hollywood. The movie has taken the most important award ever won by a Catalan-language film. Hollywood's most influential publication, The Hollywood Reporter, dedicated a story to the Catalan movie's win, defining it as a "moving and bittersweet drama": "Alcarràs, Carla Simón’s moving drama about a family of Catalan peach farmers, has won the Golden Bear for best film at the 2022 Berlin International Film Festival. Simón, whose debut feature, Summer 1993, took Berlin’s best first feature award in 2017, made a triumphant return to the Berlinale with this bittersweet drama, which follows the last summer harvest before the family, who have been farmers for generations, will be evicted from the land to make way for urban developers," it added.