( A one minute read)

These days it seems that everything hear or read is an opinion, not a fact, everything we see is a perspective not a truth.

What is fueling the drive for independence?

Is it symbolic recognition or does it stem from divisions within Catalonia.

From outside it looks like the Urban population are pro Independence, while the country population is not.

Secession would cost Spain almost 20 per cent of its economic output, and trigger a row about how Catalonia would return 52.5 billion euros of debt it owes to the country’s central administration.

The truth, however, is far more nuanced.

In 2010, the constitutional court of Spain watered down the Catalan statue and other autonomous regions in Spain, such as the Basque Country, doesn’t have to pay the taxes it collects into central government.

Historical Catalonia was an independent region of the Iberian Peninsula – modern day Spain and Portugal – with its own language, laws and customs. Its and culture and autonomy were suppressed under the dictator Francisco Franco from 1939 to 1975.

In 1979 the Catalan statute of autonomy restored the Catalan parliament.

There may well be dark memories of repression under dictator Francisco Franco who brutally suppressed Catalonia’s culture and autonomy but as in many countries these memories though genuine are in the Past.

Spanish MPs and Catalonia’s parliament and people all gave the green light to a 2005 statute that would have granted the region more autonomy, improved its financial clout and protected its language.

Hopefully it will do so again by the General Election now called by Spain in December the only a true democratic way to resolve the present standoff.

Independence for the Catalan region is not a new idea and the region made a similar trip to the polls on November 9, 2014, and voted 80% in favor of becoming an independent state.

That vote was blocked by the Spanish government and was a sort of referendum to decide which direction Catalonia was headed instead of an all-out independence vote.

This time the Constitutional Court of Spain will have to accept the result.

‘There’s No Going Back’as it will destabilizing the whole of Spain.

All human comments appreciated all like clicks chucked in the bin.