Now you tell me that 300 years for the most of which we have been exploited as the last colony of the Spanish Empire, in which for long periods of time our language has been forbidden and our institutions persecuted, those 300 years were not 300 years of oppression. Which we can easily extend another century, taking into account the Spanish Army's misdoings in Catalonia during the 17th Century.
I don't know if the the comparation of Catalonia with
actual Spanish colonies is more egregious to Spain or its former colonies of Mexico, Panama and the likes. Catalonia benefitted INMENSELY from the trading policies and protectionism that the Spanish empire brought.
You seem to have already made up your mind, JoanK, so I doubt that anything that I can say could convince you otherwise, but from a historical POV, Catalonia has about the same reasons for independence that the French Normandy or the German Bavarian region. Almost every single modern European country (and many more in Asia and Africa) were born out of the union either by dynastic marriage or by force of previously smaller kingdoms. It is really little to no particularity on this regarding the case of Spain and its many regions.
The economic debate could be replicated ad aeternam into an ever shrinking scale: why should the more wealthy Barcelona support the poorer regions of Alt Empordà? Why should the wealthy Barcelona districts of Las Ramblas support the poorer ones like El Raval? Same goes with the whole cultural identity argument: should the Val d'Aran seek for independence from Catalonia since they talk another language and have a different culture from the rest of Catalonia? (which btw, many people there feel that they are being neglected in the pursuit of a "one nation, one language" type of Catalan nationalism). Should the multilingual Switzerland explode into independent states due to speaking religonal languages too?
The whole argument for Independence inside Spain is just an easy scapegoat of blaming "the others" for the shortcomings of your ruling elite and appeasement of your ego, verging on xenophobia at times and well, turning into
actual xenophobia in the form of extreme right wing parties like the PxC. You are not a special snowflake just by being born in one particular region of the Earth. You are not better (or worse) by that, either. But manipulating the ago and foistering division and playing with identity politics is unfortunately inbreeded into the DNA of the Spanish politics, I fear.
That being said, I wholly support a referendum in Catalonia and the Vasque country: stay united, or stay out, but our current model of de-centralized state is inefficient and is leading us to hell (well, poverty) on a handbasket. So either get independence already, or stop poisoning the convinvence in our country so we can all live in peace.
