The situation is indeed more complex and politically loaded than a couple of glib quotes from pundits can summarize.
What I will say is that language like "nationalist insurgency", "highly radicalised and mobilised crowds", "fanatics", "the divine Catalan Republic" hardly make me consider it worthwhile spending much more time debating this with you, any more than I would with our more ardent and blinkered unionists in the UK.
In years to come, if Scotland pursues its own independence, then I imagine we'll be portrayed in much the same light as you're painting the independentist Catalans, and with as much understanding and an equally broad brush. We and our elected representatives are readily demonized in the UK's yellow press even now, using many of the same arguments and same arrogant tone you offer, simply for suggesting we may again seek to exercise our right to self-determination if a clear majority of our population support it. We don't know what the true support for independence in Catalonia is because Rajoy won't allow a vote. I suspect it's higher now than it was before he unleashed the Guardia and renewed his drive to suppress the media and suspend democracy in Catalonia.
What has been an unfortunate side effect of Rajoy's violent hamfistedness is a decline in support for the EU among those who support Scottish independence. They look at Catalonia and wonder who's standing up for the smaller sub-state polities in the EU.
This thread started because interest in Catalonia is nothing new in Scotland. Its predicament and fate has some superficial similarities to ours, and there have long been cultural exchanges and expressions of solidarity, including some of our elected representatives forming part of the international mission to monitor the recent referendum, where a number of them witnessed shocking scenes that should shame any country that claims the label of democracy and the high ground of constitutionality and legality.
You decry nationalism while vehemently embracing Spanish nationalism, you dismiss counter-narratives as propaganda while apparently failing to see the propaganda under your own nose and conveying the impression you think your resulting perspective is the only correct one.
That's a poor basis for dialogue. Sadly, Rajoy's regime is no more mature or far-sighted, and appears only too glad to have a convenient whipping boy to distract from its own corruption and mismanagement.
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