'We didn’t know they were letters for the referendum,' say postal service employees

“We didn’t know that they were letters for the referendum, only that they were ordered by the Catalan government,” a former employee of the Unipost postal service told the Supreme Court on Monday in the trial of independence leaders.

Albert Planas, the former head of production at Unipost, which was hired by the Catalan government to distribute referendum material ahead of the 2017 vote that was declared illegal by the courts, was the first of three employees to take the stand.

A number of the leaders on trial are accused of misuse of public funds in financing the referendum, but Planas told the court he knew nothing of the order's payment details: “Dealing with bills was not my responsibility in Unipost,” he said.