Catalonian Independence Movement

What most of these same people don’t know, however, is that in Catalonia, which straddles the same Spanish-French mountain border on its Mediterranean extreme, the population’s sense of belonging to a society that is quite distinct from that of the rest of Spain–in language, in culture and, yes, basic modes of social comportment—is probably just as widely subscribed as it is in the Basque Country.
The big difference in this game of perception is the role that strident rhetoric, and with it, carefully planned acts of violence, have played within each nation’s drive for greater political power.
Since the late 1950s, a small but important faction of the Basque nationalist movement has spoken openly about independence and how one is justified in using violence to achieve that end. Though most of these same groups have now renounced the use of force, their half-century record of bombings and assassinations are hard to overlook, especially for a media establishment that craves blood-soaked story lines. MORE