{"id":6176,"date":"2012-10-11T22:48:45","date_gmt":"2012-10-11T21:48:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.widmann.org.uk\/?p=6176"},"modified":"2012-10-11T22:48:45","modified_gmt":"2012-10-11T21:48:45","slug":"facing-up-to-spain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/facing-up-to-spain\/","title":{"rendered":"Facing up to Spain"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n081110-F-6426S-354<\/a>
\nOriginally uploaded by isafmedia<\/a>
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I’m quite optimistic about Scottish independence — I think we have a realistic chance of winning the referendum, and I also believe the remainder of the UK will accept our decision.<\/p>\n

However, I must admit I’m worried about Catalonia. There’s no doubt Catalonia deserves independence as much as Scotland if the Catalans decide to go ahead, but I’m worried about Spain’s reaction.<\/p>\n

I’m reading both Spanish and Catalan newspapers every now and then (I can recommend El Peri\u00f3dico<\/a> — it publishes every story in both languages), and it’s clear that the Spanish government and the Spanish army aren’t happy about what’s happening in Catalonia.<\/p>\n

Hopefully they’re just pretending to be tough in the hope it’ll make Catalonia back down, but what do we do if the situation escalates over the next couple of years?<\/p>\n

What will we — the rest of the EU — do if the Spanish government sends in the army to suppress the independence movement?<\/p>\n

We need to send a very strong message to Spain now that we won’t accept the use of force. Hopefully they aren’t considering it anyway, but they need to know that their EU membership will get suspended and that all economic rescue packages will be terminated if they decide to play Serbia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

081110-F-6426S-354 Originally uploaded by isafmedia I’m quite optimistic about Scottish independence — I think we have a realistic chance of winning the referendum, and I also believe the remainder of the UK will accept our decision. However, I must admit I’m worried about Catalonia. There’s no doubt Catalonia deserves independence as much as Scotland if the Catalans decide to go ahead, but I’m worried about Spain’s reaction. I’m reading both Spanish and Catalan newspapers every now and then (I can recommend El Peri\u00f3dico — it publishes every […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[159,130],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-en","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6176\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}