The Spanish government has announced that it will meet on Saturday to take the first step in suspending the autonomy of Catalonia, and the suspension will then be ratified by the Senate on Monday.
After discussing the matter in some depth with several Catalans, my impression is that they don’t really want independence, which explains why they would be quite happy to remain under EU rule even if they were able to become “independent”. A lot of this appears to be belated fallout from the scars of the Franco regime’s suppression of Catalan language and culture, and an expression of a feeling of a general lack of respect from the rest of Spain.
One American married to a Catalan woman talked about how, despite being warned to rent a car instead of taking their car with plates indicating its Barcelona registration, he drove it to Madrid. And, as she warned him would happen, the car got keyed. He cited this as a microcosm of the general disdain that the rest of Spain holds for the Catalans.
Whether that is true or not, it does seem to reflect the general sense of the population. The problem is that while Spain has attempted to legally grant the Catalans the sense of respect they crave, and then some, by giving them a great deal of political autonomy, it’s not simply possible to do so through the mechanism of government and politics.
It may be that what the Catalans really want is just impossible. You can’t be simultaneously equal and special. You just can’t.