The vast majority of Catalonia’s almost 1,000 mayors on Saturday urged authorities in Madrid to grant the region the right to determine its own future, as crowds of separatists readied for a protest march in Barcelona later in the day, Reuters reports.

Mayors representing 814 of the region’s 947 local authorities gathered at the headquarters of the regional government to present its leader Quim Torra with a document whose core message - liberty for political prisoners, dialogue and self-determination - they had all endorsed.

The Catalan capital has been convulsed by almost two weeks of daily demonstrations since nine politicians and activists were jailed for between nine and 13 years for their role in an independence bid in 2017 that Spain’s courts had declared illegal.