BARCELONA: Catalan lawmakers defied Spain’s Constitutional Court on Wednesday and approved a text calling on the region to push ahead with its bid to forge a separate state with or without Madrid’s approval.

The text outlines the steps Catalonia — a northeastern region of 7.5 million people that is divided over splitting from Spain — needs to take to defend its right to auto-determination.

It argues the “only way possible” for Catalans to exercise their right to decide on their future is if the region “disconnects” from the Spanish state and disobeys Spanish institutions.

Pro-secession parties hold a slim majority in the 135-seat Catalan parliament and the text was approved with 72 votes in favour.

Spain’s Constitutional Court warned last week that approval of the text would be illegal and the central government has consistently dismissed any secession plans as “nonsense”.

Ines Arrimadas, the leader of the main opposition centrist party Ciudadanos, called the approval of the text a “strike against democracy”. Xavier Garcia Albiol, the head of the Catalan branch of the conservative Popular Party which governs at the national level, warned that disobeying Spanish institutions “would have a cost”.

Published in Dawn, July 28th, 2016