Catalonia Independence Bid Pushes Spain Toward Crisis<br />This time, Catalonia’s government has promised that the referendum will be binding, even if it is declared illegal by Spain’s constitutional court<br />and even if Catalan opponents of independence boycott it.<br />In response, Carles Puigdemont, the leader of Catalonia, told Catalan television that no politician or court in Madrid could stop the referendum.<br />Josep Borrell said that Having better macroeconomic data doesn’t mean people have more to spend and feel better off,<br />Separatist leaders now face fines and suspension from office if they go ahead with the referendum, which<br />has been declared illegal by the central government in Madrid, with the support of Spanish courts.<br />The move only fueled the sense in Catalonia — Spain’s most economically powerful region — that Madrid was unfairly sucking away its wealth.<br />Monday’s Catalan national day commemorates a Catalan defeat at the hands of Madrid: the 1714<br />capture of Barcelona by the troops of Philip V, the first Bourbon monarch of Spain.
