MADRID: Spanish prosecutors said on Tuesday they would sue Catalan president Artur Mas for going ahead with a symbolic independence referendum in defiance of a court injunction.

“The public prosecutor’s office will take the appropriate legal actions in the High Court of Justice of Catalonia,” the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.

The Catalan government says 2.3 million took part in the vote on Nov 9 which Mas held following a legal block by the central government against his plans to hold an official, non-binding referendum on the issue that day.

Of the 5.4 million voters aged over 16 who were authorised to vote, 1.86 million favoured independence, or 80.7 per cent of those who took part, it said.

Mas has hailed the ballot, which was organised by over 41,000 volunteers, as a “total success”, but Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has dismissed it as a “deep failure” since “two out of three Catalans paid no attention”.

Catalonia’s nationalist government has said it will push for an official referendum similar to the one held in Scotland in September and in Canada’s French-speaking province of Quebec in 1980 and 1995. The “No” side won in Scotland and Quebec.

Rajoy has said that holding an official referendum would be impossible because under Spain’s constitution only the central government can call such votes.

Published in Dawn, November 20th , 2014