2012 to elect a new parliament that would exercise the right of self-determination for Catalonia, a right not recognised under the Spanish Cortes Generales. The Parliament of Catalonia voted to hold a vote in the next four-year legislature on the question of self-determination. The parliamentary decision was approved by a large majority of MPs: 84 voted for, 21 voted against, and 25 abstained. The Catalan Parliament applied to the Spanish Parliament for the power to call a referendum to be devolved, but this was turned down. In December 2013 the President of the Generalitat Artur Mas and the governing coalition agreed to set the referendum for self-determination on 9 November 2014, and legislation specifically saying that the consultation would not be a "referendum" was enacted, only to be blocked by the Spanish Constitutional Court, at the request of the Spanish government. Given the block, the Government turned it into a simple "consultation to the people" instead. The question in the consultation was "Do you want Catalonia to be a State?" and, if the answer to this question was yes, "Do you want this State to be an independent State?". However, as the consultation was not a formal referendum, these (printed) answers were just suggestions and other answers were also accepted and catalogued as "other answers" instead as null votes. The turnout in this consultation was about 2·3m people out of 6·2m people that were called to vote (this figure does not coincide with the census figure of 5·3m for two main reasons: first, because organisers had no access to an official census due to the non-binding character of the consultation, and second, because the legal voting age was set to 16 rather than 18). Due to the lack of an official census, potential voters were assigned to electoral tables according to home address and first family name. Participants had to sign up first with their full name and national ID in a voter registry before casting their ballot, which prevented participants from potentially casting multiple ballots. The overall result was 80·76% in favor of both questions, 11% in favor of the first question but not of the second questions, 4·54% against both; the rest were classified as "other answers". The voter turnout was around 37% (most people against the consultation did not go to vote). Four top members of Catalonia's political leadership were barred from public office for having defied