There is another element you have not considered. Catalonia's population is ageing fast as it is in the rest of Spain. Catalonia's population has been shooting up in the last 20 years but only thanks to immigration. It was 6.1m in 2000. Now it is 8m and 1.19m are foreigners without citizenship. If you add those with citizenship, plus immigrants from the rest of Spain who are voters of course, that is a lot of people. A lot (most?) of those people (adults anyway,) don't speak Catalan. A lot are from South America so Spanish is their first language already. They are not interested or moved by the cause of Catalan independence and they are growing proportion of the population thus diluting the pro-independence bloc.
I did consider! Just didn't include. It's absolutely true that the place is full of LatAm immigrants, and you really feel their presence. But of course, the majority are not citizens and could not vote, and how long they stay (in Spain or in this region) is an open question in many cases.
Last I looked, self-determination doesn't need to be approved by an outside party mansplaining it to the locals. "Depends on how culturally distinct" being an example of us thinking about them. You wouldn't like it if did that to you, I expect.
Honestly, I wouldn't care. The world is interconnected and everyone has a right to comment on everyone else, and simply does. I wouldn't view is as 'mansplaining' and I would take no offense if done to me -- though I could certainly quibble if I felt they got it wrong. From my several trips to Barcelona I actually conclude most people there would not dispute my ultimate (yet rather nuanced) conclusions. And the bottom line is that not every group that considers itself distinct has some automatic right to a nation-state. That seems indisputable, unless you really want thousands of states, which would be a very fractured and ungovernable world. With all due respect to principles about self-determination.
There is another element you have not considered. Catalonia's population is ageing fast as it is in the rest of Spain. Catalonia's population has been shooting up in the last 20 years but only thanks to immigration. It was 6.1m in 2000. Now it is 8m and 1.19m are foreigners without citizenship. If you add those with citizenship, plus immigrants from the rest of Spain who are voters of course, that is a lot of people. A lot (most?) of those people (adults anyway,) don't speak Catalan. A lot are from South America so Spanish is their first language already. They are not interested or moved by the cause of Catalan independence and they are growing proportion of the population thus diluting the pro-independence bloc.
I did consider! Just didn't include. It's absolutely true that the place is full of LatAm immigrants, and you really feel their presence. But of course, the majority are not citizens and could not vote, and how long they stay (in Spain or in this region) is an open question in many cases.
Love the pictures!
Last I looked, self-determination doesn't need to be approved by an outside party mansplaining it to the locals. "Depends on how culturally distinct" being an example of us thinking about them. You wouldn't like it if did that to you, I expect.
Honestly, I wouldn't care. The world is interconnected and everyone has a right to comment on everyone else, and simply does. I wouldn't view is as 'mansplaining' and I would take no offense if done to me -- though I could certainly quibble if I felt they got it wrong. From my several trips to Barcelona I actually conclude most people there would not dispute my ultimate (yet rather nuanced) conclusions. And the bottom line is that not every group that considers itself distinct has some automatic right to a nation-state. That seems indisputable, unless you really want thousands of states, which would be a very fractured and ungovernable world. With all due respect to principles about self-determination.