MOSCOW (Sputnik) – The website for the upcoming referendum on the independence of Catalonia, an autonomous region of Spain, has been visited 708,000 times since the link to it was made public, despite government authorities' blocking attempts, the organizers said Sunday on the referendum's official Twitter account.
"Despite all the obstacles set by the state, the website has had an estimated 708,000 visits since it was made public," the message read.
Tot i les traves de l'Estat, des que vam fer públic el web del referèndum hem tingut 708.000 visites. A cada porta tancada, una d'oberta pic.twitter.com/lCmOxZD16t
— ref1oct (@ref1oct) 17 сентября 2017 г.
Earlier in the day, an instruction on how to circumvent the block using a proxy server was posted on the Twitter account.
Earlier in September, Catalonia’s Parliament passed a bill giving the referendum, scheduled for October 1, a go-ahead, but the Spanish government called the bill illegal and challenged it in the Constitutional Court. The next day, Spain's Constitutional Court accepted the lawsuit for review, thus suspending the Catalan law.
