The senior public prosecutor of Catalonia, José Maria Romero de Tejada has ordered the head of the Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan police) that his officers should close off the centres to be used as polling stations for the referendum before 30th September until 9pm on 1st October. In other words, from Saturday until nighttime on Sunday, the day of the vote, according to an order El Nacional has had access to.

The order is strict and very clear. In four points, it orders the Mossos to block the vote whatever it takes. It instructs them to not let anyone open the centres; if anyone does so, they are to be evicted. They are also to confiscate all materials they find, identify everyone inside the centres helping make the vote possible and prevent voting points to be set up in the streets within 100 metres of the centre.

On the confiscations, Romero de Tejada asks the Mossos to seize anything they find related to the referendum, "especially ballot boxes, computing equipment, voting slips and election documentation or propaganda".

The order also explicitly says "evicting, if necessary, any people there are in the placed planned for the vote" and asking them to identify the leaders and participants of the occupation, and anyone involved in opening sealed-off centres.

He asks them to close off voting centres and, if they find any which have been opened anyway, they are to communicate this "as soon as the Mossos d'Esquadra learns of them" to the Public Prosecutor and to draft a formal report.

The order also asks the Mossos to not let the polling stations be set up at 7:30am on 1st October as planned. "With the objective of preventing the organisation of the vote, and as a means also to prevent later problems of public order, using a specific team at each voting place to be deployed before the designated time."

The Mossos are to pass detailed information, before 9am, on 1st October, of the state of the polling stations, both those that have been properly sealed off and those that have been occupied.

They even want to prevent voting taking place in the street. "When the centre planned to be a voting place is inside a larger building, the team deployed will have to avoid that the vote happens in another part of the same establishment, or in its immediate surroundings (including the public road) up to a security radius of 100m from the designated centre".

Finally, the chief public prosecutor of Catalonia tells the Mossos to ask local police for help if they don't have sufficient resources to cover the tasks. And if they then still don't have enough officers, especially on the 1st itself, they are to ask for help from the other security forces of the state. The prosecutor, however, does reserve the right to give any orders they believe appropriate on this matter.