That's completely true. Many people have voted thinking in their wallets rather than thinking about their flag(s).

But it's also that "we" are tired of being used by many spanish governments as a smokescreen to avoid facing criticism by some of their decisions. One ofthe last ones being the Minister of Education that said that his job was to make catalan kids more pro-Spain and less pro-catalonia.

@Troll_Whisperer: Since Bildu has become so important, if Catalonia ever leaves, so will Euskadi (mainly because if Catalonia leaves, the Spanich governments will try go get that money back from other places like Euskadi and Navarra).

That was the original idea eons ago but the european powers preferred a buffer state between the Netherlands and France. 

OT - I really doubt Spain will let anyone just split away like that. The rest of Europe knows the consequences too, as Mr. Khan put it.

Mr Khan is right. I agree that if Catalonia gets it's way, or Scotland maybe too, that it would trigger a chain-reaction across similar regions in Europe. And Belgium might as well do what you say.

Personally, as a Dutchman, I would be happy if Flanders would rejoin the Netherlands. They were part of the Netherlands just after the Napoleon era and before the Spanish era. It's economically a very strong region, not to mention it contains some beautiful cities.

However, I think most Flemish people would rather be independant. I think they fear having to deal with the same kind of crap that they are now.

Also, there is the issue of Brussels. Geographically, it is in Flanders. Politically it is seperate from the other two regions and linguistically it is French. What to do? Speaking of the French, I don't know how they'd feel about Wallonia joining them. Flanders could be independant, Wallonia likely can't.

Spain as a country never made sense to me. Theres far too many different people with their own language that are amalgamed in that. It would be best for everyone if whoever doesnt want to stay leaves. That way we definitly wont have any more bombing about it.

The problem with Spain is that if Cataluña and Euskadi leave that would be a disaster for the other regions
they are the 2 main forces alongside Madrid
I think is not viable the balkanization of Spain, it would be worst for every part involved, its more of a power demonstration

It's funny that the oldest country in modern Europe never made sense to you. Switzerland has 4 official languages, UK has how many, four? how many official languages have China or India? And I tell you, so what? In a political era of integration in supranational entities, there are small minded people wanting to fracture and create problems where there weren't, so they can completely control the society.

What we are seeing here is a political party trying to hide their incompetence and the corruption behind the independence, so this way almost no one talks about their mismanagement of the government.

The problem here has been that Mas, the actual president of Catalunya , was in a bad position politically speaking not only because its government has done many cuts to reduce debt, mainly in Education and Health, but also because they didn't have the majority in the Catalan Parlament (62 out of 135). They knew that their situation would become worse as time pass given that the economy isn't recovering so they thought that doing the elections now and focusing them on the indepence would be their better option to win.

The result has been that the people who really believe in the independence has voted ERC since they have always been pro-independence, while many haven't forgotten the cuts that they have done. So CIU has gone from 62 Members to 50 while ERC has gone from 10 to 21 becoming the 2nd force in the Parlament.

What has to be mentioned, is that the number of members in the Parlament that have clearly talked about doing the referendum have gone up to 101, with about 87 of those openly in favor of the independence.

Of course there is always the second option. Independence... as different states in the Europeon Union Super Nation!

It would be vetoed by other countries. I'm sure that France wouldn't like to have an independent Basque country or Catalonia inside the EU when they want to reclaim parts of France.

And what problem would that solve for Catalonia exactly? Getting rid of Spanish fiscal problems and trying to survive on their own? Not gonna help, unless they want out of eurozone.