Catalonia
While Catalonia is not defending slavery, just like the South it wants to defend its economic and political dominance and will use the language of the oppressed to do so.
Carles Puigdemont’s father says, ‘Independence is in our blood.’ His uncle remembers he was always ‘stubborn as a mule,’ and says proudly he’ll probably be thrown in jail.
The Catalan government has systematically silenced more than half of Catalan society—the non-independentistas—and has imposed a unilateral path toward secession.
The region’s President Carles Puigdemont backed away from an outright declaration that Catalonia would become a breakaway state of its own. But the crisis is far from over.
After the stunning violence of Spanish police trying to stop an unconstitutional referendum on independence on Sunday, Catalan separatist politicians have seized the initiative.
The Catalan health ministry counts more than 800 people injured while trying to vote in the independence referendum that Spain's supreme court had declared illegal.
The roots of Catalonia's independence movement go way back, but the last few years—and weeks—have seen a rush toward the door.