The Catalan officials "want to de-escalate the tensions" with Madrid and the Spanish people, Puigdemont said, adding that his parliament "will apply the forces of dialogue and empathy."
The Declaration of Independence has been suspended.
Catalonia has always strived for "transition and development," having for many years asked for separation from the central government. Instead, it has received "political humiliation" from Madrid, the Catalan leader said.
Hours before Puigdemont's address, the Spanish ruling party made threatening allusions to a previous independence bid.
"Perhaps the one who declares it [independence] will end up like the one who declared it 83 years ago," a spokesman for the People's Party (PP), Pablo Casado, said on Monday.
The politician was apparently referring to Lluis Companys, the president of Catalonia who proclaimed a 'Catalan State within the Spanish Federal Republic' in 1934. He then had to flee the country, and was tried for military rebellion and executed in 1940.
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