💰 10 thoughts on Catalan separatism, 5 years after Puigdemont's sham independence vote
Would they ever have a second go? Would they improve their strategies?
It was a gigantic waste of time for everybody. All of those years spent banging on about seceding from Spain, that this was it, that here was their big chance to do it, to redraw the actual map and create a new country, getting everybody excited, with all of those collective independence picnics and all of that energetic flag waving. Tens of millions of life hours collectively spent on saying they were trying to make it happen, trying to stop it or trying to explain it. Does an independent Catalonia republic exist five years later? No, it doesn’t. The plan failed.
It was an elitist con trick even for the separatist fanboys. They were all conned by Puigdemont, Junqueras and the rest after Artur Mas decided he would take up the separatist cause after the 15M and he had to get to the regional parliament in a helicopter that day. Protest was in the air, populism was the new trend, so they ran with the idea of Catalan separatism. It got lots of votes and media attention over the following six years. At the trial, the con became more evident as witnesses and documents recounted details.
In the end, Puigdemont ran away. There was no “Catalan Spring” in the end. Maybe, on that last weekend at the end of October 2017, after the declaration of independence and after Rajoy had suspended home rule in the region, there was one last chance waiting for the separatists but they didn’t take it. If, in response to Rajoy, instead of going for beers and not making any more fuss, they had physically surrounded Puigdemont at government HQ, a massive popular protest, like the Arab Spring, things would have gone differently over the following months because Europe would have stepped in somehow. But they didn’t. Puigdemont ran away.
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