Catalan officials say that 90 per cent of voters backed independence in Sunday’s referendum which the Spanish government said was illegal.
More than 900 protesters were injured during violent clashes with the police who tried to seize ballot boxes and stop the referendum from happening.
Catalan President Carles Puigdemont has said Catalonia will declare independence from Spain “at the end of this week or the beginning of next”.
Mr Puigdemont has long argued that Catalonia had a moral, cultural, economic and cultural right to self-determination.
The northeastern region already has its own distinct language, culture and customs as well as a regional parliament and a strong political movement for secession.
Catalonia is one of Spain’s wealthiest and most productive regions and is home to the proud city of Barcelona and a population of 7.5 million people.
Pro-separatists are fighting for independence to escape Spain’s economic woes and to stop paying billions of euros in taxes to Madrid.
Mr Puigdemont’s personal commitment to independence goes back to his travels to across Europe to regions with different district identities in the 1990s.
He came to believe that the EU must do more to reduce the role of nation states in the hope that those “national realities might eventually emerge with a little more personality”.
He has said: “We contemplate the Catalan state as an instrument to better serve our citizens, not as a goal in itself.”
With Catalonia’s rich history dating back almost 1,000 years, Mr Puigdemont has helped to revive Catalan nationalism in recent years.
Catalonia used to be an independent region of the Iberian Peninsula, which makes up modern day Spain and Portugal.
Before the Spanish Civil War, Catalonia enjoyed broad autonomy. But its and culture and autonomy were suppressed under the dictator Francisco Franco from 1939 to 1975.
After Franco’s death in 1975, Catalonia recovered and flourished once again. In 1979 the Catalan statute of autonomy restored the Catalan parliament.
The support for independence has grown in the past few years, especially as Spain has endured an economic crisis.
Many Catalans are also bitter about the Spanish constitutional court’s decision to annul or reinterpret parts of the 2006 Catalan statute of autonomy.
Without this, the region would have had greater independence.
Catalans in favour of independence from Spain argue that they contribute more then they receive from the central government.
But this is by no means the first time Catalonia has voted for independence.
In 2014 Catalonia held a symbolic independence vote, where more than 80 per cent of voters chose independence.
The non-binding vote took place after Spain’s constitutional court ruled out holding a formal referendum.