Catalonia

What will Madrid make of Sunday’s vote in Catalonia?

Out of the 5.4 million entitled to vote, over 2 million turned out and of those 80% voted for independence. They answered two questions; whether Catalonia should be a state and then if it should be independent.  Only 4.5% voted no to both questions.

The vote was purely symbolic because it had already been declared unconstitutional by the government in Madrid. Even still, it would be hard for the fact that it happened and the result to be ignored.

Whether a true referendum, like the one in Scotland, would have produced the same result is debatable. There is a big difference between voting for something symbolic and for something real. I guess we won’t know the answer to that unless there is a dramatic change in tactics by Rajoy.