(Bloomberg) -- Spain's King Felipe VI waded into the country's constitutional crisis on Tuesday night to appeal for calm, even as he attacked Catalan separatist leaders for deliberately violating the constitution and their "unacceptable" disloyalty.
Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is fighting to maintain control after 2.3 million Catalans voted in Sunday's makeshift referendum and the regional police force ignored orders to prevent the ballot. Rajoy is mulling if, and when, to use Article 155 of the Spanish Constitution to take direct control from the administration in Barcelona.
“They have shown an unacceptable disloyalty toward the power of the state,” Felipe said. “Today Catalan society is fractured, set against itself.”
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Three years into his reign, Felipe is facing a defining moment that observers are comparing to the military coup which sought to topple his father's nascent democracy in 1981. The king promised to keep Spain together and told the secessionists they must obey the law.
Catalan President Carles Puigdemont vowed to notify the regional parliament that voters had opted for independence in Sunday's vote. That would trigger a process leading to a unilateral declaration of independence within 48 hours, but on Monday Puigdemont ducked the question of when he would set the clock ticking.
Some 700,000 demonstrators flooded the streets of Barcelona on Tuesday to express their outrage at the crackdown by Spanish police, according to local officials. Protesters surrounded police vehicles and blocked access to central-government buildings, but there was none of the violence that shocked observers around the world on Sunday.
“Officials have neglected the affections and feelings of solidarity that have united will unite all Spaniards,” Felipe said. “With their irresponsible conduct they could even put at risk the social and economic stability of Catalonia and all of Spain.”
Earlier, Spain's benchmark IBEX 35 stock fell as much as 1 percent before staging a late surge and erasing the losses on signs neither side was going to step off the precipice.
--With assistance from Todd White Thomas Gualtieri and Esteban Duarte
To contact the reporters on this story: Katie Linsell in Madrid at klinsell@bloomberg.net, Ben Sills in Madrid at bsills@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alan Crawford at acrawford6@bloomberg.net, Andrew J. Barden, Ben Sills
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