I’m moving out of my flat in Barcelona this week. It’s a place I’ve grown very fond of and so I’m a bit sad to be leaving.

My favourite part of the flat is probably the balcony. I’m English, so even after three years it still feels a bit exotic to stand out on the balcony with a coffee in the morning.

As I look out from there, I can see the cranes surrounding the Sagrada Familia to my left. To my right is my neighbourhood, Gràcia. And beyond it in the distance, planes disappear behind Montjuic on their way in to land.

In the foreground, as I look down, there are a sea of balconies from other buildings that surround mine. If you’ve ever seen the opening scene from the film Rear Window, you’ll be able to picture it. Lives play out on these balconies. Sounds drift upwards in the morning through my window. The weather report from someone’s TV or a familiar song. It’s normally full of noise. But yesterday afternoon after the Catalan referendum vote there was barely a sound. Just a dog barking and the faint sound of a police siren somewhere in the distance.

Preparing for the Catalan referendum

When I got back to the flat at around 4pm yesterday, I needed the view from the balcony as a distraction from the videos that were arriving to my phone. Videos of people being dragged, pushed, kicked and shot at with rubber bullets. People who were just waiting to vote.

My day had started about 12 hours earlier. On Saturday, a woman from the Pau Casals school across the road had told me that she wanted people to arrive there at 5am on Sunday. Voting wasn’t due to begin until around 9am but, she said, the more people there were demonstrating outside, the harder it would be for the police to gain access.

On Saturday the school (like lots of others across the city) was already celebrating an Autumn festival with activities for kids. Really this was just a kind of front to allow the parents and others to get inside and set things up.

So yesterday my alarm went off at 4am. At 4.45am I was stood outside the school with about five or six others; a bit blurry-eyed. By 5.30am there were hundreds of people there. Locals of all ages had come along and those who were already inside the school signalled their approval from the window by the front door.

“Votarem! Votarem!”

Occasionally someone from the school would come outside and explain the plan. The police would probably come, they said. We just had to be peaceful, while trying to dissuade them from forcing their way inside.

When the police did arrive at around 7am, it was the Mossos d’Esquadra – the Catalan police force – rather than the Guardia Civil that were later to attack people waiting to vote.

The Mossos seemed happy enough just to carry out their obligation of stating that the vote was illegal. They didn’t force the issue and were cheered away to the first of many thunderous renditions of the chant “Votarem, Votarem!” We will vote.

The atmosphere was peaceful. People offered their umbrellas as the pre-dawn rain continued to fall. I spoke for a while with a woman to my right called Teresa about the referendum in Scotland, as well as her love of the Peak District.

An hour or so later, the light finally fell upon those of us lined up on the street. Then the rain stopped.

Tension and pride

It was around this time that people began sharing the first of the videos emerging on Twitter of the Guardia Civil attacking people queuing to vote in other parts of the city.

At one point the huge crowd that had gathered along Carrer de la Providència tensed up as someone at the end of the street shouted that the same police force were on their way to our location.

There were several minutes of worried faces. But for whatever reason they didn’t arrive.

As the oldest people in the crowd began to enter the school to vote, some others who were waiting broke down and cried. The emotion of the day was just too much for them.

Back on my balcony as people patiently queued to vote across the road, I drank a much needed coffee and thought about the last three years I’d spent in the flat.

As I rested my elbows on the railings and looked out over the city I’d grown to love, I realised that this view that I had so admired had, in a way, also been like a view of Catalonia itself.

The Catalan independence movement from my balcony

From my balcony I’d seen the number of Catalan flags increase around me. Different banners had come and gone, not just in support of the Catalan referendum, but in favour of other votes and elections.

Then there were the Cassolada protests that took place there. This is when people take pots, pans and other kitchen utensils out onto their balcony and make as much noise as they possibly can to protest. I’d seen this when I first moved to the flat, in support of the November 2014 referendum. And there had been plenty of others between then and now.

Yesterday evening as thick black clouds smothered a normally sunny city, it was hard to tell what would happen next. But if I was sure of anything, it’s that the quiet wouldn’t last for long.

Sure enough, at 10pm last night, the same thing happened that had happened every night for the previous two weeks leading up to the Catalan referendum. My neighbours emerged onto their balconies with the biggest pans they had in their kitchen, and gave it hell.

My bet is that the banging is only going to get louder and louder from here on in.