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Barcelona (AFP) - Spanish riot police fired rubber bullets and forced their way into activist-held polling stations in Catalonia on Sunday as thousands flooded the streets to vote in an independence referendum banned by Madrid. Scuffles broke out as police moved in to seal off polling stations and seize ballot boxes to prevent people from voting across the wealthy northeastern region where more than 5.3 million people have been called upon to have their say on independence from Spain. In central Barcelona, riot police forced their way inside a school to seize ballot boxes, charging at demonstrators who were sitting...

Catalonia's independence referendum has begun in chaotic fashion, with clashes occurring as police attempt to prevent the vote from taking place. The Spanish government has pledged to stop a poll that was declared illegal by the country's constitutional court. Police officers are preventing people from voting, and seizing ballot papers and boxes at polling stations. In the regional capital Barcelona, witnesses said police had fired rubber bullets during pro-referendum protests. Thirty-eight people have been injured, most of them lightly, say Catalan emergency services.....

A potentially violent showdown looms in Spain on Sunday, where tens of thousands of Catalans intend to carry out an independence referendum deemed unconstitutional by the country’s courts. Hundreds of independence supporters slept overnight on Friday and Saturday in some 160 schools that are designated polling places, vowing to keep them open for voters. But local police planned to remove them on Sunday — by force if necessary, Spanish government sources told Reuters. Catalan officials have said polls will open at 9 a.m. The Madrid government has ordered separatists to vacate the schools by 6 a.m. And while both sides...

“It's no coincidence that so many of Spain's Muslims live in Catalonia. The region's booming economy is hungry for cheap labor, and the government opened a recruitment center in Casablanca in 2003, after some rather unsuccessful attempts to attract workers from Poland. Consequently, more and more Moroccans moved to Catalonia. In 2015, half a million Muslims were living in the autonomous community - around 7 percent of the entire population there.”

INTIMACY THE SUBSTANCE AND KEY TO THE KINGDOM OF GOD Here are The Keys to The Kingdom ,Seek me first in all you do ! Not just the big things but in every matter of the heart . Now if you do this , the other keys will reveal themselves to you . SUBSTANCE DESCRIBES THE UNDERSTANDING AND VISION of My Spirit for I AM in and through all creation , the very "Matter" of Eternity and it is when you step into agreement and oneness with Me alone that Heaven and Earth join AS ONE within you and we...

The autonomous region of Catalonia has once again called for a referendum for secession from Spain, and all hell is breaking loose. Although the vote is still two weeks away, this week has seen a marked increase in tension and conflict between the two sides thatÂ’s quickly reaching a boiling point. The government in Spain, which calls the planned vote illegal, has frozen CataloniaÂ’s access to public funds so that they canÂ’t be spent on organizing the referendum. It is also trying to shut down its access to ballot boxes, although the Catalan government says it has 6,000 of...

Spain's Guardia Civil police have detained a senior Catalan official and raided regional government ministries involved in organizing a banned independence vote. Tensions were already high before the arrest of Josep Maria Jove, secretary-general of the Catalan vice-presidency. Catalan leaders are defying a court order to halt the vote, condemned by the Madrid government as illegal. One official called for peaceful resistance to protect the buildings. "The time has come-let's resist peacefully, let's come out and defend our institutions," the president of the Catalan National Assembly, Jordi Sanchez tweeted. The economy, foreign affairs, and presidency buildings were all targeted early...

A Spanish company vying for a $30 billion Navy ship building contract is using a Youtube video to imply its landing craft can carry Australia’s heavy tanks despite the boat sinking too low in water when the armoured vehicle was put on board. Navantia, one of three contenders for Australia’s $30 billion Future Frigates contract, has a contract worth about $240 million to supply Australia with 12 landing craft supposedly capable of carrying the army’s 62 tonne M1A1 Abrams tanks. Defence has since confirmed trials of the boats had to be suspended after they sank to low in the water...

The video embedded below, less than a minute long, is circulating on Twitter and elsewhere on social media. It purports to show Spanish police battling antifa demonstrators, and appears to be taken exactly 3 years ago today, at Catalonia independence day in Barcelona, but I cannot confirm where or when the video was taken, nor can I vouch that the black-clad, stick and shield-carrying demonstrators are people that call themselves “antifa.”

The Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation says a paternity test has disproved a Spanish woman's claim that she is the surrealist artist's daughter. The foundation said on Wednesday that the Madrid court that ordered the DNA test informed it that Maria Pilar Abel, a 61-year-old tarot card reader, has no biological relationship with Dali. Abel has long alleged her mother had an affair with Dali while working as a domestic helper in Figueres and claimed she had the right to part of his vast estate. The foundation said the court supervising the tests had informed its lawyers that Abel was not Dali's...

For those unfamiliar with the term, Marranos was the name given to Jews in medieval Spain, especially in the fifteenth century during the Spanish Inquisition, who secretly maintained their Judaism while living as Catholics in public. There is, of course, no Spanish Inquisition in America today – no one is being tortured into confessing what they really believe, and no one is being burned at the stake. But there are millions of Marrano-like Americans: Americans who hold conservative views – especially those who hold to conservative positions on social issues and those who voted for Donald Trump for president. Millions...

US security agencies warned Spain in May that the Islamic State group was planning an attack in Barcelona, where the jihadists claimed a deadly van rampage earlier this month, local media said Thursday. The daily El Periodico de Cataluna reported that the US National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) alerted Spanish intelligence officers to the threat weeks before a man ploughed his vehicle into crowds of tourists along Barcelona’s Las Ramblas boulevard on August 17, killing 14 people. “Unsubstantiated information of unknown veracity from late May 2017 indicted that the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (IS) was planning to conducted unspecified...

A trace of radioactive Iodine-131 of unknown origin was in January detected over large areas in Europe. Since the isotope has a half-life of only eight days, the detection is a proof of a rather recent release. Where the radioactivity is coming from is still a mystery. The air filter station at Svanhovd was the first to measure small amounts of the radioactive Ionide-131 in the second week of January. The station is located a few hundred metres from Norway’s border to Russia’s Kola Peninsula in the north. Soon, the same Iodine-131 isotope was measured in Rovaniemi in Finnish Lapland....

A radical Muslim cleric who masterminded two terror attacks in Spain last week narrowly dodged deportation following a drug-smuggling bust there — by crying that his removal would violate his rights. Imam Abdelbaki Es Satty radicalized the young men accused of killing 15 people and wounding more than 120 in two Spanish cities according to court testimony from one of the terror-cell’s four suspected surviving members in Madrid Tuesday. The 45-year-old Es Satty spent four years in Spanish prison for smuggling hashish between his native Morocco and Spain in 2010, according to the UK Telegraph. While there, he spent time...

A dark, narrow staircase leads up to the seventh-floor flat in the small Catalan town of Ripoll from where Abdelbaki Es Satty allegedly masterminded the terrorist cell that struck in Barcelona last Thursday. A bottle of the Moroccan imam’s scent sits on a sideboard, the miswak root he used to clean his teeth lies on a bedroom shelf, and his green Qur’an nestles behind the TV where he watched the daily news. “He didn’t talk much,” said Es Satty’s flatmate, Nordin. “He seemed normal. His face and words were normal. I didn’t know what problems he had in his head.”...

Barcelona, a world-renowned tourist destination, has also been an attraction for jihadists on a trail linking European countries such as France and Belgium to Moroccan criminal networks. Since the 2004 Madrid train bombings – the deadliest Islamist attack on European soil -- Spain had been spared the sort of jihadist violence that has struck France, Belgium, Germany and the UK over the past two years. That was until Thursday, August 17, when a van mowed into crowds on Barcelona’s busy Las Ramblas, killing 13 people, in an attack claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group. Hours later, a woman was...

LAST BASTARD 'SNARED' Barcelona terror suspect Younes Abouyaaqoub ‘shot and arrested by Spanish police while wearing suicide vest’ in outskirts of city POLICE in Catalonia have said a police operation is underway west of Barcelona amid reports that Barcelona terror suspect Younes Abouyaaqoub has been arrested. Cops suspect the 22-year-old was the driver of the van that killed 13 people on tourist hotpsot Las Ramblas. The detention is believed to be linked to an incident in Sant Sadurni d’Anoia, in which a man said to be wearing a suicide belt was shot at by police. Spanish paper La Vanguardia reported...

Speaking to the JTA news agency, Rabbi Meir Bar-Hen, the chief rabbi of Barcelona, is giving up on Europe as a safe home for Jews. "Jews are not here permanently," he said of the city and region. "I tell my congregants: Don't think we're here for good. And I encourage them to buy property in Israel. This place is lost. Don't repeat the mistake of Algerian Jews, of Venezuelan Jews. Better [get out] early than late." With North Africans, mostly Muslims, flooding into Spain daily, bringing with them deep, theologically based hatred of Jews, the situation for Jews there can...

THE last thing you want to see when you look out the window of your plane is an air force fighter jet on your tail. But that’s exactly what terrified passengers on board a flight from Spain to Britain spotted overnight, sparking panic on board the budget airline. Jet2 flight 1204, a Boeing 737-800, was part-way through its journey from the tourist hotspot of Malaga to Birmingham when it passed through French air space. That’s when two Mirage 2000 fighter jets suddenly appeared and shadowed the aircraft for more than 15 minutes, AirLive reported. Passengers on board the Jet2 flight...

Not only did they not know of the terror cell, but after the plan went awry when the bomb-maker blew himself up, they still couldn't stop the attacks.