Barcelona

What a mess Spain is in. 

All we can be certain of is that 90% of the 42% who voed were for independence from Spain. Assuming there were no double votes, and the stories of irregularities are legion, that's 37.8% of the of the electorate  - not in anyone's lexicon could that be claimed as a mandate.

Some were prevented from voting, some will not have voted due to the referendum's illegality and there are accounts of double voting. We cannot infer any numbers from this - they cancel each other out, probably not numerically, but as a cohort that can be extrapolated into something meaningful.

A country survives by recognition and the international community is certainly not tripping over itself to recognise a newly independent state of Catalonia. This is probably as a result of the way the referendum was conducted, and as a consequence Catalonia appears isolated, which means doomed.

This cartoon from today's Sunday Times just about sums it up.

How far can this penchant for nationalism go? Catalonians are not exactly oppressed - they have a high degree of autonomy. One of the main reasons cited is that it's funding the rest of Spain, which is not exactly  true - Catalonia's rating is tied for worst with between 1 and 5 other autonomous communities of Spain, depending on the rating agency, and is losing businesses to other autonomous areas of Spain (in 2014, for example, Catalonia lost 987 companies to other parts of Spain, mainly Madrid, gaining 602 new ones from the rest of the country). That seems to me the politics of greed. Will Barcelona now secede from Catalonia, citing that it doesn't want its hard-earned taxes being used on poorer areas of Catalonia? Populist madness. Should London secede from the UK. 

That's not to exonerate Madrid. The Spanish government's heavy-handed response to the situation has been an object lesson in how not to handle a critical situation. The only solution is a legal referendum within Catalonia, but Madrid has already played into the hands of the populist demagogues in Barcelona, who will have planned every aspect of this by portraying to themselves to the drones as victims. Inviting the separatist leader to stand in a new election seems calculated to mitigate some of the early response. I'm sure the leader of the independence movement was itching to be arrested, as it is the usual tactic of populists who want to be portrayed as martyrs.

If nationalists have their way, we're headed for a map of Europe that will look something like a larger version of 1871 map of pre-unification Germany, with minor princely states that were constantly at each others throats. Vladimir Putin must be rubbing his hands with glee - the nationalists are doing his job for him, and they don't even realise it.

Yes, people should be allowed self-determination; however, a state's first duty is to protect its citizens, and a small state cannot defend its citizens as well as a large state. That means alliances have to be sought, but alliances can produce unwanted consequences, as we discovered to our cost with WWI and WWII - and, in fact, every European war since time immemorial.

Independence movements are legitimate where oppression is evident, but not when scurrilous populists use emotion as their weapon for their own self-aggrandisement. That's the small-mindedness that the European project was intending to eliminate. Emotive nationalists are the enemy of peace, as many wars have taught us. In the words of George Santayana; "Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it." The expression lambs to the slaughter comes to mind. Neither Spain nor Catalonia will benefit from this.

It must be their Latin blood. What's our excuse?