following a judge's orders, on the morning of 20 september 2017 several units of the spanish civil guard raided 41 locations, including: the headquarters of the vice president of catalonia, the regional ministries of economy, foreign affairs, social affairs and family, the tax agency of catalonia, the consortium of open administration of catalonia, the catalan institute of finance, the dotcat foundation, private houses of catalan government officials and one printing company. spanish officers claimed to have seized 9.6 million ballot papers in the raids.