No, links, just someone from Spain that wants to give a somewhat "objective" opinion. Catalonia has always had problems with the rest of Spain because of politi

No, links, just someone from Spain that wants to give a somewhat "objective" opinion. Catalonia has always had problems with the rest of Spain because of politicians. Around the 17th century (don't quote me on this, I'm not good at history), the Castillians had been oppressed in terms of taxes, because they had started a revolution the king and lost. As Spain was suffering an economical crisis (how strange), they decided to collect the same taxes from Aragon as they had been from Castilla, and also to recruit 5000 soldiers (peasants) to fight in France. Catalonia, which was under Aragon's crown government, decided to secede and form a republic. They tried to ally with France, but what happened was that instead of fighting in France, Spanish and French fought in Catalonia. It ended up with France retiring from Spain but with some Catalan territories under their belt. After that, the kings mantained the tax benefits in Catalonia, because they didn't want another war. It is important to remakr that the kings were Austrian in this period of time. Time after that, when Charles II, king of Spain in 1700 and with severe mental and physical problems, was about to die without descendants, he chose his grandnephew, Philip of Anjou as succesor. Philip was French, and the Austrians didn't want a French king (Austria had been part of the Spanish empire). So they proposed a candidate, Leopold I's son, Charles. No one wanted to accept the other candidate, and even the people were divided, leading to a war known as the succession war: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Spanish_Succession https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Spanish_Succession Philip, who had the Castillians support, won the war, and Aragon, which supported the Archduke Charles, lost its regional code of laws that every region (because Spain was composed of crowns and such) had. Jumping into this days, Catalan politicians have been using this last part (being oppressed without their jurisdiction) as an excuse to ask for benefits. The problem is, no party has said no to them, and they have always gotten more. Recently they tried another time, and they got denied (when Artur Mas was the president in the Generalitat), that is why they started again with the independence threats. As they didn't get what they wanted, they forced it and it has shifted into a big snowball, too large to be stop already. (Also, Catalonia had proclaimed independence before, but it got quickly shut down, and the president was taken to jail and after that executed, but bear in mind that this was while Franco was in the government. This is something they are using now to accuse the Spanish government of opression and other things.) Sorry if there are typos, I'm writing this from a phone.