In a statement last night, the region’s president said Catalans had won the right to form a sovereign state in the landslide vote.
This comes after violent clashes between police and protestors left 850 injured during the referendum, which has been declared illegal by Madrid.
In a statement posted by Spain Report late last night, First Minister Carles Puigdemont said: “The Catalan government will transmit to the Catalan Parliament, the seat and expression of the sovereignty of our people, the results of the referendum, so that it can act according to that laid out in the referendum law.
“Catalonia has won sovereignty and respect and its institutions have the duty to implement that result.”
Mr Puigdemont said Spain has “written a shameful new page in its history with Catalonia” and attacks by police on voters amounted to an abuse of human rights.
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Appealing to European leaders, he said the issue was “no longer an internal Spanish matter”.
Catalan officials say 90 per cent of the 2.26 million votes cast were in favour of independence.
But Mr Puigdemont did not announce any official results in his statement.
Thousands of national police, the Guardia Civil, were deployed to the region by the Spanish government to close polling stations and prevent would-be voters from casting their ballot.
Hundreds of people were injured as police in riot gear used batons and reportedly fired rubber bullets in clashes with would-be voters and protestors.
Catalan government spokesman Jordi Turull announced shortly after midnight on Sunday that 2,262,424 ballot papers had been counted.
He said 2,020,144 of these were “yes” votes and just 176,565 were “no” votes.
The Catalan government said hundreds of polling stations – some 14 per cent of the total – had been closed by police yesterday.
The Spanish Home Office disputed this and said Guardia Civil officers had closed just four per cent.
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said: “There has not been an independence referendum in Catalonia today.”
He added Spain was “a mature democracy” and “a great nation”.