Justice
Catalonia Just Declared Independence
And that may not even be the most dramatic Spanish political event of the day.
After weeks of brinkmanship, it’s finally happened: On Friday the Catalan Parliament voted in favor of Catalonia declaring independence from the rest of Spain, with a view to breaking off as a sovereign republic.
The vote, which delivered 70 votes for independence against 10 against and two blank ballots, came after a predictably heated session when Catalonia’s Socialist Party (the PSC) walked out of the 135-seat chamber in protest before voting took place. While that boycott is a threat to the perceived validity of the parliament’s vote, pro-independence forces nonetheless received an outright majority, albeit a modest one.