Catalonia

[Kagemusha]

Still against more balkanization. They can have some regional stuff in the EU superstate, but they cannot just leave their nation state until it is absorbed/replaced/turned into a larger province by the EU. Even if the Spanish government made a mistake in beating people, that does not give Catalonia the right to secede.

It might be helpful if the EU were to negotiate, as a neutral player, in order to find a way for them to be friends again without Catalonia getting to be greedy about its money. Wealth concentration is nothing to be proud of, it merely means you raised the cost of living to the point all poor people had to move out. To then say you want to secede because you don't want to pay for the poorer regions is just greedy and injust.
The whole "but they're killing our culture!" is quite funny when you have at least 23 Mc Donald's in your city...

I have to disagree with you on this. If Catalonians dont want to be part of Spain, why should they be? More i think about events such as Catalonia, Scotland and for example Kurdistan, more i start to ask myself, if people who hail from long standing federal states like US or Germany or in a bit different sense the United Kingdom, can they really value self determination of a smaller group of people that wants to self govern?

This same thing might be also issue with EU. Lets say a Catalonian in EU is represented by Spanish government that he does not relate to as his own representative. Would it be a big surprise if he might easily become anti EU as he lacks the empowerment even at National level. In my opinion Balkanisation is not about new countries emerging from people who do not identify themselves as part of their current countries, but from creating federal states from peoples that are reluctant at being part of a single entity. In matter of fact as EU´s main problem is that the level of democracy is not acceptable with European parliament only being an advisory body. It might be easier for it becoming an representative body, if the federal states among EU would be dismantled. Funny idea?