Breakups and Separations .... Country-style

How many will achieve independence?  Right now, there are more than a dozen areas of the world desiring to become "countries" in their own right. Four of those are in the EU.



Two centuries after Napoleonic forces   snuffed out the 1,000-year Venetian Republic, Venetians are once again aspiring to become an independent state.

A country is in big trouble   when cities or states it thought prosperous start clamoring for bailouts. Think back to the New York headlines of the 1970s (“Ford to City: Drop Dead”) or consider the states now careening towards bankruptcy (Illinois and California tops among them). But Spain has a bigger problem. It is a complicated constitutional federation that relies on the semi-autonomous region of Catalonia to pay a lot of its bills, and Catalonia is now saying to Madrid what Ford said to New York. The Catalan president, Artur Mas, has called elections for November 25, promising to interpret a big victory as a green light for a referendum on full independence. Spain’s government has declared, Spain’s Supreme Court has opined, and Spain’s national assembly has voted that such a referendum would be illegal.....
....The movement has much in common with other breakaway movements gaining steam in Europe now. Scottish nationalists will hold a referendum on independence in 2014, and the new Flemish nationalists have just captured the mayoralty of Antwerp.....
....This kind of nationalism is not as unsettling as its predecessors. For much the same reason, it is not as logical, either. Catalans, like Scots and Flemings, do not seek a country for “ourselves alone.” They explicitly seek to submit themselves to the European Union’s system of “shared sovereignty.”......