A ST Andrews-based academic who is in the front line of Catalonia’s independence battle has dismissed the Spanish government’s contention that Sunday’s referendum is illegal.

Clara Ponsati, a Barcelona-born professor of economics, has been seconded to the post of Catalan education minister and, as such, holds the ultimate responsibility for ensuring that schools used as polling stations are open on the day.

Speaking exclusively to The National, she shrugged off safety concerns following last week’s arrests of 15 government officers in a bid to halt the vote.

“There is a big number of schools that are polling stations and we need to take care of that,” she said.

“It’s a democratic referendum and we need to serve the people. There is a democratic mandate in parliament to do it so it’s our obligation to obey this mandate.”

Spain’s central government in Madrid has branded the poll illegal, but Ponsati dismissed that claim.

“Madrid is calling it illegal but it isn’t,” she said. “It was resolved by the Catalan parliament and we are obeying that law.

“So it’s true we are in a conflict of legitimacies – at this point the Spanish government does not accept Catalans’ right to self-determination, and therefore there is a conflict.

“The main problem is that usually conflicts in democratic communities are solved by people talking and making deals, and parliaments voting and people voting in referenda – what we’re seeing is one party to the conflict refusing to talk and organising an occupation by the police force.

“We have to find another way to resolve the problem.”

The academic said Catalans were determined to vote, as demonstrated by the mass protests following police raids that resulted in the arrests. And, they were hopeful: “People want to get this done and are organising.

“There’s a lot of popular activity to make sure everybody is at the polling stations early in the morning, peaceably.

“They’re organising the capacity of people to take a vote ... there is police force that wants to prevent that. We’re being very active to make sure people behave civically and peacefully.

“It’s a civic movement, very popular, widespread and very peaceful.”

She added that Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy was doing all he could to provoke a response from the Catalans: “They are trying to provoke some incidents so they can argue it is not a peaceful movement, but so far they haven’t succeeded and we hope they won’t.

“But bringing thousands of police on boats into the harbour is not the way to resolve this political confrontation.

“We’ll see what happens on Sunday – they might be able to prevent voting at some stations because they have the force, but that will certainly not prevent all the people from voting. We don’t know to what extent they’re ready to use violence against peaceful people who want to vote. We hope they won’t but we’re not sure.”

Ponsati went on to recall Francisco Franco’s dictatorship, and rounded on Europe for its silence on the referendum: “I’m old enough to remember the dictatorship and it’s as if this has been under the rug waiting, and the authoritarian giant wants to come back, but Catalans won’t let it. There might be some incidents, it might be difficult and tough, but Catalans are deeply democratic people and we won’t tolerate violence on us.

“And we hope that democrats in Europe and elsewhere in civilised democratic countries will express their outrage at how the Spanish government is dealing with it, the way Brussels is ignoring what’s going on.

“We call on democrats everywhere to help us to vote.”