Ousted Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont has called for a Brexit-style vote on whether Catalonia should leave the European Union, deepening the breach with Brussels over its support for Spain against the independence movement.

Speaking from his self-imposed exile in Belgium, Mr Puigdemont lashed out at the EU as a “club of decadent, obsolete countries” with power concentrated in the hands of a few and entwined with “ever more questionable” economic interests.

“Let’s see what the people of Catalonia say. Perhaps there are not many people who want to be part of this EU... so insensitive to the abuse of human rights, of the democratic right of a part of its territory only because a post-Franco Right wants it to be that way," he said.

Mr Puigdemont’s suggestion, to an Israeli TV station, was dismissed as “absurd” by Mariano Rajoy, the Spanish prime minister, while a spokesperson for the European Commission pointedly remarked that Europe was a "union of democracies, based on the rule of law".

It was a sharp departure from the avowedly pro-EU stance of the mainstream independence movement, which to date has insisted a Catalan Republic would remain at the heart of the bloc.