Catalunya, nou Estat d’Europa

I’m not sure how widely it’s been reported outside Catalonia (Catalunya), but today a huge march in favour of independence took place in Barcelona:

According to this article, the number of participants number was “un milió i mig de persones, segons la Guàrdia Urbana i 600.000 segons la Delegació del Govern central”, i.e. between 600,000 and 1,500,000 according to different sources.

It seems the recession has increased the support for Catalan independence dramatically, somewhat different from Scotland, where the numbers haven’t changed a lot over the past few years.

It will be interesting to see what happens. Different from the UK, where the Westminster government have said they’re willing to let Scotland go if we vote Yes to independence, the Spanish government is not nearly as happy, and I expect we might see some unpleasant situations unfold along the road to Catalan independence. For instance, the European Commission has already warned that Catalonia won’t automatically be a member of the EU (link in Catalan), which is interesting because they have studiously avoided saying anything similar about Scotland — this must be because of the different attitudes in London and Madrid.

I suspect Scottish and Catalan independence might be more strongly interconnected than many people expect, so I for one will be paying close attention to developments in Catalonia over the next couple of years.

There’s a story about the rally in English here.