MADRID, (Reuters) – Inhabitants of a small Spanish  town voted yesterday for the region of Catalonia to secede from  Spain in a poll which, though symbolic, adds to pressure on the  minority Spanish government as it struggles to combat recession.

The referendum in Arenys de Munt came as Spain’s socialist  government braces for a court ruling by Spain’s Constitutional  Court to overturn a special statute setting out the boundaries  of Catalan autonomy within the Spanish state.

Many Catalans, including Catalan members of Spain’s ruling  Socialist Party, feel that such a ruling would ignore legitimate  aspirations of a people with hundreds of years of separate  identity and which retains its own language.