Spain’s Constitutional Court has overturned Catalonia’s declaration of independence, announced by the region’s government on Friday, the court spokeswoman said. The news came as deposed Catalan President Carles Puigdemont was giving a speech in Brussels, his first since Madrid filed charges against him and he fled to Belgium. Earlier the Spanish attorney general filed a lawsuit against the... 

Polls have closed in Catalonia where people have held a symbolic independence vote despite the Spanish government’s opposition. According to the regional Catalan government, almost two million people took part in the independence polls, which opened at 9 a.m. local time (0800 GMT) and closed at 8 p.m. (1900 GMT) on Sunday. The regional government had earlier said that 5.4 million Catalans and resident... 

Catalans are holding a massive, symbolic regional independence vote this weekend, in defiance of the Spanish government’s ban. The polls look set to draw upward of 1.5 million people, to whom the vote is now about freedom of expression. Artur Mas, the Catalan president, has remained defiant in the face of the exceedingly draconian bans by Madrid on any show of support for secession. The Catalan... 

The Spanish Council of State has ruled that a new planned symbolic referendum on independence in the Catalonia region is illegal, saying it backs a veto of the vote. A spokeswoman for the council said Thursday that the consultative body decided that the government should ask the Constitutional Court to declare the November 9 referendum as unlawful. The council made the ruling after receiving a request... 

The Catalan parliament has passed a law giving its regional president the power to carry out a non-binding consultation vote on secession from Spain. Catalan nationalists believe this law enables them to hold the long-awaited independence referendum. On Friday, the Catalan parliament voted in favor of the new law, with 106 MPs supporting it and 28 voting against. The MPs hope it will bring Catalan... 

Catalan President Artur Mas says a vote on the region’s independence from Spain will be “impossible” to stop even if Madrid is against the referendum. “If the Catalan population wants to vote on its future, it’s practically impossible to stop that forever,” Mas said in an interview on Wednesday. He said the Spanish government should realize that it cannot stand...