This paper presents the first results obtained with the Jodrell Bank-IAC two-element 33-GHz interferometer. The instrument was designed to measure the level of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) fluctuations at angular scales of 1 deg-2 deg. The observations analysed here were taken in a strip of the sky at Dec.=+41 deg with an element separation of 16.7λ, which gives a maximum sensitivity to ~1.6° structures on the sky. The data processing and calibration of the instrument are described. The sensitivity achieved in each of the two channels is 7μK per resolution element. A reconstruction of the sky at Dec.=+41 deg using a maximum entropy method shows the presence of structure at a high level of significance. A likelihood analysis, assuming a flat CMB spatial power spectrum, gives a best estimate of the level of CMB fluctuations of ΔTl43-12+13μK for the range l=109+/-19 the main uncertainty in this result arises from sample variance. We consider that the contamination from the Galaxy is small. These results represent a new determination of the CMB power spectrum on angular scales at which previous results show a large scatter; our new results are in agreement with the theoretical predictions of the standard inflationary cold dark matter models.