Has the Indyref ruling complicated Catalonian separatism?

Last week’s Supreme Court ruling on Scottish independence will offer scant encouragement to separatists in Catalonia. The crux of the judgment – that Holyrood’s devolved powers do not stretch as far as being able to hold an independence referendum without consent from Westminster – also highlights the problem for Catalan secessionists, who have yet to secure Madrid’s approval for a vote on divorcing Spain.

Nicola Sturgeon has said she will respect the judgment. Similar prohibitions, though, haven’t stopped Catalonia’s separatists, who are in many ways more rebellious than their Scottish counterparts. In 2017, Spain’s Constitutional Court ruled that an independence referendum planned by Catalonia’s then-president, Carles Puigdemont, would be illegal. Puigdemont blazed ahead anyway and in the resulting vote, held on 1 October, 92 per cent chose independence. The referendum’s orchestrators spent three and a half years in prison for disobeying the court’s ruling (a fate that Puigdemont avoided by fleeing to Belgium), before being pardoned and released by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez last summer.

By contrast, Catalonia’s methodical President, Pere Aragonès, is comparable with Sturgeon in his approach to secession Eschewing dramatic, unilateral tactics, Aragonès instead hopes to gain Madrid’s permission to hold a legal independence referendum.