Quote Originally Posted by HoreTore View Post
What you're describing is still the symptoms of one root cause, that of, you guessed it, not being heard. The Irish had gone several centuries without being heard at all.
The point is that it doesn't matter whether or not Basques are heard in Madrid, since the votes from all the other regions overrule theirs. The only way you could make the Basque voice effective is to make their vote worth more than that of other Spaniards, which would be undemocratic.

Norway works as a country because its people are united by historical factors. For Spain, that is true to a far lesser extent. The different regions feel they have different needs because of their different histories. They are just too different to work together effectively (or so they say).