Meanwhile, back in Barcelona, Catalunya

[DFW]

9. I wasn't down there much at all during the 1980s

My "frequent (maybe 6 or 7 times a year)" visits didn't resume until about 20 years ago.

Ever since Franco died, autonomy was restored to the regions most clamoring for it. Euzkadi, the Basque country, and Catalunya both got pretty much everything they lost when the Fascists won the civil war in 1939. I haven't been back to Euzkadi since the 1960s, but in Catalunya, the language is now again publicly dominant. Among the people, of course, it always was. Street signs, newspapers, TV stations, radio stations, schools, all are now again in Catalan. The major boulevards, all renamed after Franco and his fascist generals when they won the civil war, now have their original names back (the locals never stopped using them anyway).

So, the separatist movement is no longer about cultural identity, but money. My personal view is that the money should be negotiable, and the cultural identity should not. I think this is why Turkey is still at war with itself and Spain is not. Even the extremist Basques have stopped blowing up stuff. I think of tiny Switzerland with its diverse ethnic make-up, and how it wouldn't even occur to ANY Swiss to want to separate their regions from the rest. My only full-time guy down there is from Geneva, and so is French-speaking. He speaks a little Italian, maybe three words of German, and zero of the Swiss version. Ask him if he thinks any of Switzerland should want to leave the Confederation, and he'd look at you as if you'd lost that last of your marbles.