Spain’s breakaway-minded Catalonia region upped the ante in its conflict with the central government Tuesday, saying that it intended to ignore a court ruling and allow a symbolic vote on independence to go ahead this weekend.

Catalonia’s threat sets the stage for a tense weekend in a region where pro-independence demonstrations have attracted hundreds of thousands of ardent supporters in recent years. The central government said it expects Catalonia to respect the court decision and hasn’t indicated how it might respond on Sunday if it doesn’t.

“It is a game of chicken” between Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and Catalan leader Artur Mas, said Joan Botella, a political scientist at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

Shortly after the Constitutional Court’s decision, which should have blocked the vote, the Catalan government said it wouldn’t comply, suggesting that it isn’t controlling what it calls the “citizen-participation process.”

The exercise, to be run by volunteers without the use of national voter rolls, was called to replace an official, albeit nonbinding, referendum in the wealthy region that the court had blocked in September.