The Catalan leader has vowed to declare independence from Spain in a matter of days.

Carles Puigdemont was speaking less than an hour after a rare intervention from the Spanish King, Felipe VI, who had stated Catalan leaders had put themselves "outside the law".

Mr Puigdemont said in an interview with the BBC that his government would "act at the end of this week or the beginning of next".

He said that, were the Spanish government to intervene, it would be "an error which changes everything".

Felipe VI had earlier made a rare emergency address to demand Catalan leaders end their "inadmissible disloyalty" to the state and said they had put themselves "outside the law".

As thousands protested in Catalonia over Sunday's police crackdown, Felipe VI vowed that the country would survive this "situation of extreme gravity".