Alwaght- Senior European Union official has warned that "more cracks" were emerging in the bloc on Friday after the Catalan parliament declared independence from Spain.
Madrid swiftly responded to the vote by dissolving the Catalan parliament and dismissing Carles Puigdemont as president of Catalonia and his entire government.
Mariano Rajoy, the Spanish prime minister, announced that regional elections would be held in December and said the unprecedented act of imposing direct rule on the region was needed to "recover normality".
The national police may be deployed to bring Catalonia under Madrid's control.
The shock decision to declare independence poses potentially the greatest threat to the EU's unity since Brexit, and is likely to fuel support for separatist movements in Ireland, Scotland and the Basque Country.
"[The EU] doesn't need any more cracks, more splits ... we shouldn't insert ourselves into what is an internal debate for Spain, but I wouldn't want the European Union to consist of 95 member states in the future," warned Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission president, on Friday evening.
The crisis marks the first time that a region within an EU member state has broken away from the bloc, though movements demanding more independence exist in several countries.
