Catalonia's crisis deepens further

The Catalan crisis deepens by the day. This afternoon, the region’s parliament backed a declaration of independence from Spain. Here is the moment Carme Forcadell, president of the Catalan parliament, announced the outcome of the vote:

The country’s senate did not take long to react by voting to impose direct rule in Catalonia. This triggering of Article 155 in the Spanish constitution, which allows the government to take charge in the Catalan region, has never been done before and it amounts to something of a nuclear option (the country’s former foreign secretary Jose Manuel Garcia once likened the Articl to ‘an atomic bomb’). Both sides, it is now clear, will not back down in this ongoing tussle and the tit-for-tat nature of the situation shows why a resolution remains so far off.