The Catalan Parliament voted to declare independence from Spain on Friday, October 27th, 2017. The vote for independence was passed 70 to 10. In response to this, the Spanish government gave Madrid, the Spanish capital, the power to sack the Catalan President and his ministers.

The Spanish Prime Minister said, “In this moment, we need to be serene and careful, but we also need to have confidence that the state has the tools, backed by the law and reason, [to] peacefully and reasonably go back to legality and take away threats to democracy.”