AS Spanish police officers yesterday continued to blame voters for the violence that accompanied the Catalan independence referendum, a prosecutor has warned lawyers that they should not turn the trial of pro-indy leaders into a hearing against police action in October 2017.

Consuelo Madrigal intervened in the cross-examination of a National Police officer who had tried to stop people voting in Tarragona, by Marina Roig, one of Jordi Cuixart’s legal team.

She warned: “This is not a trial of the police. There are questions that seem to be in a trial against police action in compliance with judicial orders.”

Roig had asked the officer how he and others got into a school being used as a polling station while people were sitting on the ground in front of it: “Is not it more true that they could not enter because they tried by jumping on top of people, stepping on them?”

She was cut short by the prosecutor, along with the presiding judge Manuel Marchena.

He told the defence teams: “Questions do not start from the basis of what the lawyer considers already accredited and from there try to cross the version of the facts that the lawyer has with what the witness has seen.

“The question is to ask the agent what he saw. If you say, ‘there is someone who jumped a barrier’, and he answers for certain and we do not know if it is true or not … I’ve been seeing it for several sessions and I’m trying to see that the questions do not start from a version that is considered accredited.”

National Police witnesses yesterday continued to blame voters and Catalan police, Mossos d’Esquadra, for referendum-day violence.

One said he did not recall a Mossos presence at the polling stations he had been assigned to: “They didn’t act at all,” while another complained that he was injured by “a kick in the hand”.

That officer added: “I hurt myself even more removing people.

“My colleagues got hurt, but I didn’t see the attacks.”

Another agent spoke of a “very violent active resistance” at one polling station, before explaining: “People were more strongly intertwined and there was a lady with a baby carriage.

“When they were retired, I saw a flying umbrella.”

Yet another witness said he saw former education minister, Clara Ponsati at a school, accompanied by two men he claimed were Mossos officers.

He said there was a “very violent atmosphere”, adding: “Voters were very coordinated and organised … they all sat down at once.”

The prosecutor’s office, meanwhile, rejected a petition calling for temporary bail for Jordi Sanchez, Jordi Turull and Josep Rull to take part in interviews and press calls for the elections in which they are standing this month, because of the risk they could “promote violent public demonstrations” similar to those alleged in the trial.

Yesterday also marked 18 months to the day since Sanchez and Cuixart were jailed, ahead of their trial.

They led the two main pro-indy grassroots groups and were jailed on October 16, 2017 – two weeks after the referendum.

Both were accused of sedition, and later rebellion, for their part in organising a demonstration against Spanish police raids on public buildings to disrupt the logistics of the referendum.

Their detention could last for another three months, or to the end of the trial, with a subsequent delay in sentencing.

Under Spanish law, though, preventative prison cannot extend beyond two years.