This is untrue.
Despite the fact that separatist parties have been claiming that poor, lazy Spain has been thieving from industrious, oppressed Catalonians in a most amusing appeal to xenophobes, Spain had to bail out Catalonia after decades of misdeeds and its political class has shown the same grotesque propensities to corruption and mismanagement.
This is a map of provincial vulnerability in housing, economic and social terms.
And here are the unemployment rates.
While Catalonia is not among the worse off, it's certainly not doing fine and dandy. The region is reliant on the internal/European market and cannot cope with sharp drops like the ones experienced during the crisis.
Anyway, this is all sound and thunder, signifying nothing.
The Catalonian separatist parties have been pulling stunts for over a decade and nothing has come to pass. This is just a distraction. The major pro-independence political groups have found themselves in dire straits after a number of high profile political scandals eroded their old saintly image, so they just cranked up the volume of their demands to 11 in a bid to rally their troops.
CiU and their ilk know that Catalonia won't become independent. Because it is just not possible. It would be dropped from the EU and its already weakened economy would be ravaged by taxes. This is why the current, highly volatile discussion of independence is dampening the real question of what is
the meaning of that word. Because right now, "independence" seems to mean a federal state in which Catalonia would have some more powers, but wouldn't exist as a separate entity. I mean, the jokers at CiU have kindly asked Madrid to keep military facilities in Catalonia in the event of independence since their economic impact is too big.
This is all a farce to distract the local population from the real problems at hand. And so far it's working.
It should also be noted that Mas doesn't have a supermajority and that separatist parties don't have the majority of the votes, thus the popular support to do anything besides trying
to ask the population if they'd like to remain in Spain or become and independent state. The citizenry is at large receptive towards the posibility of being asked about their current status, but studies and polls keep showing again and again that separatists are not the majority. Pro and anti-separatist parties have been trying to equate both positions for electoral gains, but this couldn't be further from the truth.
Furthermore, people (specially foreigners unfamiliar with Spanish politics) looking at the newspapers may believe that nationalist foreces sweeped the floor, but in reality the current situation is not massively different from the one in 2012 when it comes to the independence issue.
So yeah, we are going to have another four years of huffing and puffing while Mas and his robber barons keep damning Spain for stealing the bread from Catalonian children and Rajoy (or whatever imbecile replaces him) warns Spain of the impeding apocalypse.
At the end of the day, the pro-independence Catalonian political parties don't have an end-game and they know it. Most of the population doesn't support an UDI and the market prevents it.
At best, all they can do is to push towards the reformation of Spain as a federation, which is fine by me and many other Spaniards, but completely hypocritical on their behalf. At the same time, anti-independence positions cannot progress from the current stalemate.
It would be ridiculous if after all these years of venom spit from all sides the final result were the largely the same regional and political situation with a different name.
Anyway, like many Spaniards, my views towards Catalonian independence have tempered over the years. The crisis has shown that the stereotypes pushed by pro and anti-independence political parties are nothing but a farce and that all this posturing and troop rallying is only happening so the old parties can keep the status quo. I won't enable them.
I'm in favour of allowing Catalonians to speak up their minds in a public poll, even if I'd like to remain together. And in the extremely implausible, one in a million lottery kind of chance of the region becoming independent, I happen to reside in part of Spain that would most probably pick a good chunk of their business and infrastructure investment, so there is that. I will still be able to jump on a train and visit my friends there.
Fake edit: I'm sure this thread will get filled with inflamed opinions from both sides, but I'm honestly too tired about this subject to entertain another stale debate. I feel like people are being played and turned against each other for no good reason and I'm more saddened than anything else about the current situation, so I don't think I will make another comment besides this post. Have fun.
Actual edit: That map at the OT is very misleading. It shows the evolution of the local languages, not Spain itself.
