Spain Pulls Police From Catalonia

The Spanish government on Tuesday announced that it had begun pulling out police reinforcements from Catalonia, almost three months after they were sent to halt an independence referendum that the Constitutional Court had declared illegal. Spain’s Interior Ministry and the Spanish police union said the withdrawal should be completed by Saturday, DW reported. Madrid deployed thousands of additional officers from Spain’s National Police and Guardia Civil to Catalonia in September, just as the northeastern region was preparing to vote in a contested independence referendum. Although Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s government never placed an exact figure on the number of additional officers sent to Catalonia, most media estimated it to be between 4,000 and 6,000. Spain’s top-selling daily, El Pais, put the figure at around 10,000.