The move was announced after the bank held an extraordinary board meeting yesterday.
The country’s third biggest bank, Caixabank, also said it is considering moving its Catalan base to the Balearic Islands, although any final decision will have to be put to its shareholders.
Other companies including telecoms operator Eurona and biotech company Oryzon are also said to considering moving their operations out of the north east region.
Multinational companies such as Volkswagen and Nestle also have operations in the region.
Catalonia is financially important to Spain with an economy the size of Portugal, contributing a fifth to the country’s entire GDP.
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But uncertainty is mounting over the region as Catalonia pushes for independence from the rest of Spain after holding a referendum judged to be illegal by the Constitutional Court.
In the latest development the court ruled the regional government, led by Carles Puigdemont, should be suspended on Monday when it was likely it would debate the issue of formally declaring independence.
Shares in both Sabadell and Caixabank have been hit over the turmoil in the region with Sabadell’s share price dropping 10 per cent this week while Caixabank has seen its value fall by seven per cent since the referendum.
After Sabadell’s announcement its stock rose 3.2 per cent on Spain’s stock market Ibex 35.
Spanish finance minister Luis de Guindos told Bloomberg yesterday the banks were “quite solvent” and “strong”. However, he did not say whether they had suffered serious deposit outflows this week—a deposit run is what sunk Banco Popular earlier this year.
Spain’s stock market has seen share prices tumble as tensions between Madrid and Barcelona have escalated with the Ibex 35 suffering its worst performance in 15 months on Wednesday when shares fell 2.9 per cent to close at 9,964.90 – the first time the index dropped by the 10,000 mark since March this year.
Analysts have indicated that the stock market uncertainty will only fuel the push for independence.
David Madden, market analyst at CMC Markets UK, said: “The Spanish market is still losing ground on account of the uncertainty in relation to Catalonia. The king of Spain took Madrid’s side in the argument, and his failure to condemn the actions of the Spanish police on Sunday is likely to fuel further calls for Catalan independence.”
More than 850 people were injured when the voting on Sunday descended into chaos amid scenes of police violence.
About 90 per cent of the voters supported independence, but less than half of the people in the region cast a ballot in the controversial referendum, with those against independence said to have opted to stay at home.
King Felipe VI said in a televised statement on Tuesday that the vote “undermined harmony,” calling the situation “extremely serious”.
The king threw his support behind Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who has declared the Catalan vote illegal and vowed to block any attempt by Catalonia to break away from Spain.
Catalan officials, however, seem undeterred in their resolve for a split.
Catalonia’s President, Carles Puigdemont, told the BBC that the region will declare its independence in a matter of days, potentially triggering the country’s biggest political crises in decades.