Catalonia: Did voters face worst police violence ever seen in the EU?

Spain has announced it is preparing to suspend Catalonia's regional autonomy, after the Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont threatened to declare independence. Even before this move, separatists had condemned the actions of the Spanish government and police during an outlawed independence referendum on 1 October.

Some called those actions repressive - a sentiment expressed most clearly in a video produced by the Catalan cultural organisation Omnium Cultural. It's been viewed more than a million times.

One of the most striking claims in the video was that police subjected Catalan voters to "a degree of force never seen before in a European member state".

After Spain's constitutional court declared the poll illegal, police officers were authorised to stop it going ahead. They prevented some people from voting, and seized ballot papers and boxes at polling stations.

Speaking to the BBC on Sunday, Spain's foreign minister Alfonso Dastis, claimed images of police violence were "fake".

Who is correct?

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