The trials of keeping a country together

摘要

On September nth 1714, at the end of the War of the Spanish Succession, the victorious Bourbon monarchy suppressed Catalonia's medieval institutions of self-government. After home rule was restored in 1978 Catalonia's government, the Generalitat, chose the anniversary of that 18th-century defeat as its "national" day. This year Barcelona marked the day with a huge demonstration calling for Catalan independence. The surprising size of the demonstration-1.5m out of a Catalan population of 7.5m, say nationalists; just 600,000 say their opponents-threw Spanish politics into turmoil.