Comment by spwa4
7 hours ago
Or to put it another way: Catalunya (Barcelona and surroundings) is one of 3 Spanish regions that want to break away from Spain, not counting overseas territories. And yes, the population really wants this: there was a referendum and the outcome was: 92% want out of Spain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Catalan_independence_refe...
(why? Let's be honest: Catalunya would benefit enormously from independence, but when the economy goes well, as it did from 2001-2007, they're fine. After that the situation worsened again. The situation is simple: Catalunya has a much better economy than Spain and could maintain government spending, whereas being part of Spain, they need to cut social spending)
The Spanish government has violently repressed this, attacked the people, arrested politicians, tried to threaten other EU nations with invasion (yes, seriously, the current government has a few "rough edges", even if I would agree if someone said that any other party would be worse) unless they arrest Catalunya politicians (then did nothing when they told them to go f themselves), and this mostly with the agreement of regular Spaniards.
Given what is happening in the EU (10+ years of slowly but unrelentingly worsening economy) the situation is slowly worsening again.
That referendum result is quite debatable, since the legal situation meant most people against it simply didn't vote. While in the past it was close, nowadays polls strongly suggest a comfortable majority against independence: https://www.democrata.es/politica/39-catalanes-apoya-indepen...
I agree the Rajoy government's handling of this was very problematic, but the rest of this isn't really accurate. And the morals of the economy argument is terrible - the rest of the country needs us, so we should cut them off? The same argument would apply for Barcelona cutting off the rest of Catalunya. It's not a good direction.
You forgot to mention that some of the people behind the catalonian independence movement met with Russians who even offered military support if they went ahead with a proclamation of independency. I think we should all move on from that bizarre situation.
... and the currently in power party in Spain, while they have publicly condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine, also argues passionately against EU sanctions against Russia, and has consistently increased LNG imports from Russia (meaning already years ago, it's not a reaction to the Hormuz situation)
Oh and both are pro-China too. I guess they're trying to open the next huge can of worms preemptively. Why wait?
So, yeah, I doubt Ukraine is happy with either side in this conflict, and Catalunya separatists are a somewhat more desperate than Madrid. Doesn't really change anything about the conflict.
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