But the referendum is a joke. Both the way it was called, and how it has been conducted.
Furthermore, the result is impossible to believe given previous results in open elections.
A sad day for Spain and Catalonia.
A natural or man-made disaster during a vote filters out the less "passionate" portion of the electorate; if you don't care that much about an election's outcome, a thunderstorm or the threat of riot police cracking open your skull would probably convince you to stay home rather than visit your polling place.
I would imagine the bulk of the "passion" on this topic would reside with the separatists, so it stands to reason the police action ironically resulted in suppressing the "remain" vote.
It was a stupid approach from a very weak government.