Qin Feng wrote:Regardless, I'm here to tell from a first person perspective. It's the way I see it, and I have no intentions of changing anyone's mind.
That's fair, we are just giving a UK view.
Personally I think the future is three layers of governance: 1) powerful regions ala Catalonia (I fear doing more for getting them wrong) or in UK London with a lot of devolved power 2) country government ala Westminster and Madrid for things like foreign policy, law and order, 3) EU (apart from UK who have kindly agreed to be experiment to show how bad life will be outside EU

) to deal with issues too big for countries. I don't believe Catalonia should go independent so I'm surprised Madrid is working so hard to ensure they do leave in future
While Spain would have got a bit of a bad look for not allowing referendum, they could have got away with it with a bit of common sense so in that. So I was wrong, in short term, denying the referendum could have worked but not the way Madrid did it. The Scottish referendum provided an easy compare and contrast internationally so it was awkward sure and there would have been articles from supporters in media, but had Madrid left things alone: unionists were boycotting it means nobody would have taken the result seriously and entirely possible the separatists would have overused the result and just annoyed everyone. While as you say, few countries would have really cared as most won't want to encourage separatism and populace generally wouldn't care. This isn't a long term strategy though, if separatists keep winning in the polls then your going to have to deal with it properly.
However as soon as the images of the referendum across the world are police attacking voters and then the arrests of separatists political leaders, you lose global support. Whatever legal reasons Madrid has for arresting them, it is awful awful image to see elected leaders being pursued (it doesn't help that I know of no UK politician that has been arrested for referendums and most casual public won't see "having vote" as a jailable crime), particularly so soon after a referendum and where police had just been assaulting people. Now this image may all be part of extremely extremely effective Catalonia propaganda but whatever the truth or not: it worked, governments were not going to go against Spain but it turned people from mild interest/curiosity into angry.
Which is probably fine for Madrid as long as that is an image that only lives outside Spain. If the image within Catalonia becomes that Madrid 1) deny people a vote, 2) assault them when they vote, 3) arrest the leaders of an elected government, Spanish unity is long term screwed. That is the sort of narrative that turns apathy or mild support into anger that will fester.
“You, are a rebellious son who abandoned his father. You are a cruel brigand who murdered his lord. How can Heaven and Earth put up with you for long? And unless you die soon, how can you face the sight of men?”