The EU has not, in all it's years of existence, publicly displayed a road map of where and what it wants to be. There are just vague hints thrown out now and again - a pan european defence force, or a federal states of europe. Many are unhappy that the game plan is being hidden from the populace. They are also unhappy that un-elected bureaucrats
seem to have hijacked powers to themselves contained within a structure that allows no questions, accountability, or democracy.
Little wonder that regions with a strong identity and uniqueness wish to ensure their continuation. The present structures of the EU are hellbent on ironing out discrete political entities. Sadly ironing out the far more important regional economic disparities seems a task too far for them. They just threw Greece and Cyprus under the bus, but they cannot overlook the high rates of youth unemployment in southern europe for ever.

The British Miners Strike under The great Maggie has been mentioned ad nauseum in recent threads. Just imagine had those miners been facing a jackbooted, paramilitary, pan european gendarmerie. It would not have been just blood in the streets but corpses from a massacre. No Eu condemnation of the behaviour of Spain, quite the reverse. This is quite a contrast to the opinions of the International Observers watching the electoral process.
Their utter condemnation of the events reads more like the description of events in some backwater third world dorp, than proceedings in an advanced western country.
We have seen the future and it is not orange-it is red. I foresee many other independence movements brought to fruition by the tacit pat on the back given to Spain by the unaccountable EU monolith. I wish them all every success.