Hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets of Barcelona to protest against the Catalan government’s decision to push for independence, as Spain’s prime minister warned that he was prepared to suspend the region’s autonomy to stop it splitting from the rest of the country.
Sunday’s rally – organised by Societat Civil Catalana, the region’s main pro-unity organisation – comes a week after the independence referendum that has plunged Spain into its worst political crisis in four decades.
The march, whose slogan is “Let’s recover our common sense”, was intended to call for a new phase of dialogue with the rest of Spain and featured such luminaries as the Nobel-winning novelist Mario Vargas Llosa and Josep Borrell, former president of the European parliament.
Societat Civil Catalana said more than 1 million people had taken part, but Barcelona police put the turnout at 350,000.
The Catalan president, Carles Puigdemont, is under growing pressure to stop short of declaring independence. The political uncertainty has already led some businesses – including Spain’s third-largest bank – to move their bases from Catalonia.
According to the Catalan government, 90% of participants voted for independence in the referendum, 7.8% voted against and almost 2% of ballot papers were left blank.
Puigdemont is due to appear in the Catalan parliament on Tuesday to “report on the current political situation” and to put the referendum results to MPs.
The move – seen as an attempt to circumvent the Spanish constitutional court’s ban on a similar session scheduled for Monday – could potentially provide an opportunity for the region’s promised unilateral declaration of independence.
“I hope that nothing will happen,” Juliana Prats, a Barcelona resident taking part in the protest, told Associated Press.
“[Catalonia] is going to lose more than [Spain] because businesses are fleeing from here already. I hope it will remain like it has been up until now: 40 years of peace.”
Vargas Llosa, who was born in Peru but has Spanish citizenship, told the rally: “Besides Catalans, there are thousands of men and women from all corners of Spain who have come to tell their Catalan companions that they are not alone. We want Barcelona to once again be the capital of Spanish culture.”
Saturday saw marches and demonstrations all over the country, with tens of thousands gathering in Madrid’s Plaza Colón in favour of a united Spain. In dozens of towns and cities, including Barcelona, people joined the “white demonstrations” demanding dialogue. Dressed in white and without any flags, protesters marched under the single slogan in Spanish and Catalan: Hablemos/Parlem – “let’s talk”.
In an interview with El País on Sunday, Spain’s prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, insisted he would stop the Catalan government declaring independence over the coming days, warning that the Spanish authorities would assume control of the region from Madrid if necessary.
Rajoy said the thousands of Guardia Civil and national police officers deployed in Catalonia would remain there “until things return to normal” and repeated calls for the regional government to drop its independence demands.
“We’re going to stop independence from happening,” he told the paper. “I can say with absolute frankness that it’s not going to happen. Depending on how things develop, we’ll obviously take any of the decisions the law permits.
“I want to make one thing absolutely clear: as long as the threat of a declaration of independence remains on the political horizon, it’s going to be very difficult for the government not to take steps.”
Asked if he would invoke article 155 of the Spanish constitution, which would allow the Madrid government to step in and take control of Catalonia, he replied: “I am ruling out absolutely nothing when it comes to the law. I will do what I have to do when the time comes and that’s the most important thing at the moment.
“The ideal thing would be to not have to adopt drastic solutions, but to avoid that there would have to be some changes.”
Rajoy described the Catalan independence crisis as an issue for Europe as a whole.
“This is a European battle,” he said. “It’s a battle in which the values of Europe are at stake. I am convinced that all the governments will carry on supporting the constitution and obedience to the law.”
The Spanish prime minister once again stressed that there could be no negotiations whatsoever until Puigdemont’s government stepped back from the brink.
“I will not negotiate until there is a return to legality,” Rajoy told El País. “The prime minister of an advanced, democratic country can’t negotiate with someone who flouts the law. As soon as there are changes, we’ll be back to a different and normal situation – just as we have been over the past 40 years in which a lot of things have been negotiated.”
On Sunday, the Elders – an independent group of global political leaders – said recent events could jeopardise the democratic progress Spain had made since the death of Francisco Franco in 1975.
“The constitutional crisis that is unfolding in Spain calls for consultation and not confrontation,” said the former UN secretary general Kofi Annan, who is the chair of the Elders.
“I urge the Spanish government and the regional government of Catalonia to renew their commitment to a resolution through dialogue. They must find a peaceful path out of this crisis.”
Hundreds of people were reported to have been injured during last Sunday’s referendum, which saw police officers raiding polling stations, beating voters and firing rubber bullets at crowds. The vote had been declared illegal by both the Spanish authorities and the constitutional court.
Although he admitted that “things could have been done better or worse”, Rajoy defended the police’s actions and said the authorities had a duty to defend the constitution.
Despite the Spanish authorities’ efforts to stop the referendum, 2.3 million of Catalonia’s 5.3 million registered voters took part, although many Catalans who oppose independence boycotted the poll for fear of lending it legitimacy.
A full count of the votes has been complicated by the fact that police removed many ballot boxes from polling stations. The regional government said police had shut down polling stations where up to 770,000 people could have voted.