in the days previous to the referendum, more than 140 websites were shut down by the spanish justice and police, including the official one from the catalan government with information about the referendum and dozens of clones made after the first one was blocked. the main site of the biggest civil organization which supports independence, assemblea nacional catalana, was also blocked. in some cases, only a judiciary request was sent but in some others guardia civil was sent to major spanish telecom operators offices, domain providers, the dotcat foundation and google, in this particular case to remove an app from google play which included information about the polling stations. this situation was defined as "censorship" by many and was denounced by internet-related organizations from around the world including internet society, apc, eff, the tor project and xnet.