Catalan

Ljubljana – The Slovenian Book Fair will get under way on Monday, this time moving online for the first time in history. The week-long event will feature a virtual fair presenting 97 publishers, while the schedule also includes over 100 online events. Spain is the honorary guest country this year.

Parties backing the breakaway of Catalonia from Spain have secured a majority in the province's regional Parliament at the elections held Sunday, results show.

A clear majority of 72 seats (in a regional parliament of 135 seats) will be controlled by parties backing a move by Catalonia to break away from Spain by the beginning of 2017.

Catalan separatists hold a mass rally on Sept.11 for independence that will kick off campaigning for a regional election billed as a de facto referendum on breaking away from Spain.

Catalonia is poised to call on August 3 an early regional election that will serve as a proxy vote on independence from the rest of Spain, raising tensions with the central government in Madrid.

About 81 percent of Catalonia's voters have supported independence form Spain in a non-binding vote held in Spain's wealthiest region Sunday.

The event was however also marked by a low turnout, with nearly a third (32.8% or about 2.04 million) of those eligible to vote having cast a ballot.

Catalonia's nationalist government vowed to step up its secession drive after over two million people voted Nov. 9 in a symbolic independence referendum which Spain's central government dismissed it as "useless."

Catalan government head Artur Mas called the vote, not sanctioned by Madrid, "a total success" after a large majority of those who took part supported independence.

The Constitutional Court of Spain has stopped the referendum on independence the province of Catalonia is planning to hold November 9.

Twelve magistrates made their ruling unanimously, during a session that lasted just about an hour, daily El Pais reports.

Their decision nullifies resolutions of Catalonia's Parliament which set the referendum date earlier in mid-September.

Catalonia does not have the right to call a referendum on independence, Spain's Constitutional Court said.

The Spanish autonomous region has declared it would hold a referendum on November 9 regardless of what the government in Madrid thinks of the vote.