Catalan Lawmakers Approve Plan for Secession from Spain

The chamber, based in the northeastern city of Barcelona, passed the motion by 72 votes to 63.

The proposal was made by pro-secession lawmakers from the "Together for Yes" alliance and the extreme left-wing Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP). The groups together obtained a parliamentary majority in regional elections in September.

The Spanish government reacted swiftly. In a nationally televised address, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said that his government will appeal against the decision at the Constitutional Court, which has in the past blocked moves toward independence.

"Catalonia is not going anywhere, nothing is going to break," Rajoy said, The Associated Press reported.

He added he would meet with the leader of the main opposition Socialist Party, Pedro Sanchez, to forge a common front against the separatists.

The motion passed by the parliament in its first post-election session declared "the start of a process toward the creation of an independent Catalan state in the form of a republic" and a "process of democratic disconnection not subject to the decisions by the institutions of the Spanish state."

While separatist lawmakers celebrated the result in the chamber, opponents held up Spanish and Catalan flags.

"There is a growing cry for Catalonia to not merely be a country, but to be a state with everything that means," Raul Romeva, head of the "Together for Yes" alliance, said at the start of the session. "Today we don't only open a new parliament, this marks a before and after."

Catalan branches of Spain's ruling conservative Popular Party and the Socialist and the Citizens opposition parties had filed appeals to halt the vote, but Spain's Constitutional Court ruled last Thursday that it could go ahead.

"You want to divide a country by raising a frontier within the European Union," Citizens regional leader Ines Arrimadas told separatist lawmakers.

The Constitutional Court is expected to rule the law illegal quickly, but the motion specifically orders the regional government not to heed the decision of Spain's highest court. The motion gives the incoming government 30 days to start working on a new Catalan constitution, which would later be voted on in a referendum, and begin establishing a new tax office and social security administration.

Pro-secessionist parties won their majority of 72 seats in September on the strength of just 48 percent of the votes. That was because of a twist in Spanish election law that over-represents rural areas — where separatists have more support.

Anti-independence lawmakers say that quirk denies separatists a legitimate democratic mandate to break away from Spain.