From my not so knowledgeable point of view we have:
It seems the Spanish government messed up massively here. Instead of embracing a referendum about independence they decided to flatly declare it illegal and attempt to ignore the problem.
If they initially embraced the referendum they could have won, I believe that a Yes vote to independence nearly always ends up failing. But instead what happened is, they blankly declared it illegal and hoped that would be the end of it. While parties who were against independence were telling people to boycott it and parties for it telling people to vote yes. It seems the only outcome there is a massive yes vote.
Once they had the massive yes vote, they have a democratic mandate for independence. Not only that, they get to say they have 90% mandate. The only way forward from that is for the Spanish government to back down and start negotiations or for indepence to be declared.
Here we are as Catalan declares independence, which it seems can either turn into a civil war, a flat-out failure with everyone arrested, Spain eating some humble pie to get them back to the table, or Spain just accepting Catalan is gone. It'll be interesting to see what happens.
It seems the Spanish government messed up massively here. Instead of embracing a referendum about independence they decided to flatly declare it illegal and attempt to ignore the problem.
If they initially embraced the referendum they could have won, I believe that a Yes vote to independence nearly always ends up failing. But instead what happened is, they blankly declared it illegal and hoped that would be the end of it. While parties who were against independence were telling people to boycott it and parties for it telling people to vote yes. It seems the only outcome there is a massive yes vote.
Once they had the massive yes vote, they have a democratic mandate for independence. Not only that, they get to say they have 90% mandate. The only way forward from that is for the Spanish government to back down and start negotiations or for indepence to be declared.
Here we are as Catalan declares independence, which it seems can either turn into a civil war, a flat-out failure with everyone arrested, Spain eating some humble pie to get them back to the table, or Spain just accepting Catalan is gone. It'll be interesting to see what happens.