Google
© Arnd Wiegman/Reuters
The High Court in Catalonia has ordered US tech giant Google to remove an application which provided information on where and how to vote in Sunday's referendum on the region's independence from Spain.

The judge said that the "On Votar 1-Oct" application on the Google Play smartphone app store violated the ruling of Spain's Constitutional Court, which labelled the plebiscite illegal.

Google was also ordered to block any future applications developed by the gmail address "Onvotar1oct@gmail.com," which was behind the banned app.

The local authorities in Catalonia reiterated on Friday that the vote will go ahead as scheduled on Sunday, despite strong opposition from Madrid.

Spanish authorities have been actively working to prevent the vote as thousands of additional police were deployed to the region, with orders to take control of the voting booths.

Earlier this week, the organization managing the registration of domains ending in .cat was raided by the police.

The .cat Foundation was forced to block websites with information about the referendum in accordance to a court warrant issued serval days earlier.

According to the organization, the court order, which stipulated that four .cat domains related to vote be shut down, was "unprecedented and absolute [in] scope."