page_title: 2017–2018 Spanish constitutional crisis
section_title: Referendum and subsequent events
hierarchical_section_title: 2017–2018 Spanish constitutional crisis / Development / Referendum and subsequent events
caption_attribution_description: English: Catalan general strike of October 3, 2017 against police brutality. Protesters walking along Passeig de Gràcia, Barcelona city.
context_page_description: The 2017–2018 Spanish constitutional crisis, also known as the Catalan crisis, was a political conflict between the Government of Spain and the Generalitat de Catalunya under former President Carles Puigdemont—the government of the autonomous community of Catalonia until 28 October 2017—over the issue of Catalan independence. It started after the law intending to allow the 2017 Catalan independence referendum was denounced by the Spanish government under Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and subsequently suspended by the Constitutional Court until it ruled on the issue. Some international media outlets have described the events as "one of the worst political crises in modern Spanish history".
  Puigdemont's government announced that neither central Spanish authorities nor the courts would halt their plans and that it intended to hold the vote anyway, sparking a legal backlash that quickly spread from the Spanish and Catalan governments to Catalan municipalities—as local mayors were urged by the Generalitat to provide logistical support and help for the electoral process to be carried out—as well as to the Constitutional Court, the High Court of Justice of Catalonia and state prosecutors.
context_section_description: Despite the suspension, the Catalan referendum was held on 1 October 2017, as scheduled by the Generalitat. Over 12,000 officers from the National Police Corps and the Civil Guard were deployed throughout Catalonia in an effort to close off polling stations and seize all election material to prevent the vote from taking place. The Spanish government was forced to call off police raids after clashes with protesters resulted in two people seriously injured, one for a gum ball shot against the eye and the other one due to a heart attack. 893 civilians and 111 agents of the Nacional Police and the Civil Guard were reported to have been injured. According to some Spanish media these previously reported figures may have been exaggerated. The Guardian's columnist, Peter Preston, said the number of injured "hadn't been independently checked" while he still described the police action as "violent and frightening".
  However, the Official College of Doctors of Barcelona (Col·legi de Metges de Barcelona) stated that "professionalism and independence of doctors can not be questioned because they act under a deontological code to attend and diagnose patients". The judge who is currently investigating the accusations of police violence had already identified 218 people injured on October 10, 20 of whom were police officers.
  The events of 1 October sparked a public outcry in Catalonia, with hundreds of thousands taking to the streets to protest Spanish police violence.
  On 3 October 2017, as huge protest rallies and a general strike took place in Catalonia, King Felipe VI delivered an unusually strongly worded televised address in which he condemned the referendum organizers for acting "outside the law", accusing them of "unacceptable disloyalty" and of "eroding the harmony and co-existence within Catalan society itself". He also warned the referendum could put the economy of the entire north-east region of Spain at risk. Reactions to the King's speech were mixed. Party officials from the PP and Ciudadanos praised the King's "commitment to legality", whereas leaders from Unidos Podemos and Catalunya en Comú criticised it as "unworthy and irresponsible", paving the way for a harsh intervention in Catalan autonomy. PSOE's leaders expressed support for the King's words in public, but were reported to be privately dissatisfied that the King had not made any call to encourage understanding or dialogue between the Spanish and Catalan governments. On 5 October the Constitutional Court of Spain suspended a future parliamentary session (scheduled for 9 October) that was planned in order to push for a Declaration of Independence.
  On 5 October, Banco Sabadell, the second-largest bank based in Catalonia, announced its decision to move its legal headquarters out of the region amid economic uncertainty over the future of Catalonia's political situation ahead of a projected unilateral declaration of independence the ensuing week, which had seen sharp falls in the group's share prices the previous day and rating agencies downgrading the region. Concurrently, CaixaBank, the biggest bank in the region and the third largest in Spain, also announced it was considering redomiciling outside Catalonia. This sparked a massive business exit in the ensuing hours, with companies such as Abertis, Gas Natural, Grifols, Fersa Energias Renovables, Agbar, Freixenet, Codorníu, Idilia Foods, San Miguel Beer and Planeta Group also announcing or considering their intention to move their HQs out of Catalonia. The Spanish government announced on Friday 6 October that it would issue a decree allowing companies based in Catalonia to move out of the region without holding a shareholders' meeting. On 11 October, Château de Montsoreau-Museum of Contemporary Art announced that it was repatriating its collection of Art & Language works on loan at Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA) since 2010. Within two weeks, more than 1,000 business and firms would move out of Catalonia.
  Simultaneously, far-right groups increasingly took to the streets throughout Spain in a quest to defe
caption: Demonstration in Barcelona during the general strike held in Catalonia on 3 October 2017.
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