Manufactured grievance

The Catalan 'independence vote' came around quite soon.  After the Scottish referendum in September, you think 'ah, November is a long way off' and suddenly it's happened.  Of course, coverage of this was more fulsome in Iberia than here in the UK but it is still important.  All the same, it could ultimately have as much effect as the Rochester and Strood by-election (billed by BBC Newsroom Southeast as the most important by-election in a generation; is a generation only two months now, after the Clacton result in September?).
I say this because, as in all by-elections the turnout will be substantially smaller than in the actual General Election - it will be impressive if it is more than 50%.  Mark Reckless might win in November but lose in May.  Dan Hodges called  him a UKIP kamikaze, ramming his explosive-packed plane into the aircraft carrier of the Conservative Party in a suicide run to deny the latter a national win in 2015 (though the Tories retake Rochester and make Reckless unemployed).
Likewise, out of a population of 7.5m and eligible electorate of 5.4m, a turnout around the 2m is in all actuality a humiliation for the Catalan nationalists, a far cry from the 85%-plus turnout in the Scottish referendum.  Pro-union candidates had advocated a boycott of the 'symbolic' ballot to deny it legitimacy and, unlike in Crimea, where anti-democratic forces don't give a fig about boycotts so long as a 'plebiscite' is signed, sealed and delivered, it was effective.  It wouldn't be as seismic as Scotland breaking away (with Scotland's strategic position in the North Atlantic), but Catalan independence would be welcomed in Moscow, both to weaken NATO and as validation of the dismemberment of the Ukraine, with Russian-backed militants holding votes whose results are only recognised by Russia.  80.7% voting to break up with the rest of Spain is an approval rating suspiciously close to that achieved in the Crimea and the Donbass.
Of course, that doesn't stop the crap spewing from those romance induces hatred of the 'other' and a disconnect with reality; artificial grievance manufactured to appear real, like a carnivore persuading himself or herself that tofu is really meat (or in other words that independence in an interdependent world isn't independence as they envisage it).  Just as 'Yes' supporters in Scotland bewailed remaining under the 'tyranny' of England - hasn't stopped the USA indulging in such easily rubbished myths - one pro-independence supporter in Catalonia, Felipe Alcalde Rodríguez, said after voting, “This is our attempt to be democratic in a state that doesn’t respect democracy.”  Stuff and nonsense of the kind once propounded by ETA to justify their bombing campaign.  Spain can be classified a 'new democracy', yes, but has been consistently so for nearly 40 years.  The last coup attempt (which failed) was in 1981 and though diktats from Germany - still scarred from the hyperinflation of the 1920s and '30s - have hampered growth, that is hardly the fault of the electoral system which puts in place the political establishment. 
And if we are talking about 'respect for democracy', let's look at the ballot paper.  Two questions were asked: (1) Should Catalonia be a state?; (2) Should Catalonia be an independent state?  Referendums that posit yes/no answers are always dubious (Scotland was transformed into one through David Cameron's cack-handedness in negotiating with Alex Salmond) as people, in general, want to be positive, not negative, to say yes and not no; such little nudges can be enough to swing a result.  There should have been two questions on the ballot paper, interlinked but situated without order of precedence side by side (rather than one on top of the other) - "Do you want Catalonia to separate from Spain? OR Do you want Catalonia to remain part of Spain?"  That would be truly democratic in an ancient Athenian sense, not the skewed questions that appeared on yesterday's voting papers.
Emilio Sáenz-Francés, a professor of history and international relations at Madrid’s Comillas Pontifical University, said it was also a wakeup call for Spain’s central government. Despite having no legal validity, the mere fact that the vote was held, he said, “weakened the image of the central government, after it repeatedly told Spaniards this vote would never happen”.  He went onto say that Spanish prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, had an interest in keeping Artur Mas, Catalonia's regional president, at the helm because Mas is "more moderate" than others.  It's like saying Alex Salmond is more moderate than Tommy Sheridan.  Extremists defeat themselves in the eyes of mature voters because they are extremist.  If the central government had to face off against the Catalan Republican Left party, Madrid might win.
This is not so say that the ruling Partido Popular are out of the woods.  Though Catalonia (as Aragon) was like Scotland a proud medieval state, the union with Castile was between two crowns rather than from representatives, like if England and Scotland never progressed beyond 1603, with the Scottish parliament not voting itself out of existence in 1707.  Also, with Spain's imperial glory, it was the centralised Habsburgs and Bourbons that drove it, unlike in Great Britain, where Scots were integral in raising the country to pre-eminence.  In seminal conflicts of the twentieth century, Spain tore itself apart, with nationalist Castilians imposing themselves on Catalonia; by contrast, democratic Britain fought against a totalitarian outside enemy to forge a spirit of unity - many older Scottish voters were therefore moved to vote in favour of the Union last September in memory of how the English and the Scottish fought alongside each other.  The ties that bind Scotland and England are stronger than those between Catalonia and the rest of Spain.