Catalonia - Cymru

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Let me tell you something that I now know. Catalonia will be independent. It might not be directly following this weekend's referendum but it will happen because of the response of Madrid's Conservative administration. The Spanish police (you will note not the Catalan force) was prepared to hit people with batons and rubber bullets and leave them bleeding rather than allow them the right to bare a ballot. And it is that response that will lead to independence.

Indeed when you listen to the Spanish Conservative Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, or any members of the administration, you cannot help but get the clear tone in its attitudes to Catalonia that Madrid is Westminster in a warm climate.

Most nationalists look at the EU's attitude to this, with it's almost unequivocal support to Spain, with immense disappointment. But Brexiteers cannot gloat either. For the EU is commenting on the wish of a group of people to be independent, something that the majority of them don't want to happen either.

Nationalists movements around the world look at Catalonia with a certain amount of envy that we felt the same about Scotland during the referendum there. For we see a nation tantalisingly close to being free.

I am of course not saying that about Wales at present. If only because people might decide to vote for Jeremy Corbyn's resurgent Labour party rather than Plaid Cymru to get the current Tory administration out as a sort of lesser of two evils. But as I've said before politics is cyclical. And when (and it is when) UK Labour shows itself to be a betrayer of Wales in the same way Welsh Labour is currently doing, then Plaid Cymru will need to be ready for that moment to say to the people this....

Independence will not be perfect. Nothing is. But look across the sea at Ireland. Not even the most fervent nationalist will say that everything in the Republic is without fault. But, the people living there make their decisions and vote for their parties. They do not have a London which denies them new transport infrastructure in favour of the North of England or seek to make Wales the new New South Wales in the way they want to dump criminals from across the United Kingdom to "super prisons". In Ireland they see a country emerging from its financial crisis more confident than ever as it profits from Brexit.

Whilst the trigger moment to call for independence may be difficult to work out. I've said before that the consequences of Brexit might be that moment. And whilst no nationalist would actually want independence to happen as a result of this, because that would have meant families having suffered, nor should they ignore the opportunity to shout even more loudly that there is a better way. Because they will have voted for the better way that is independence, and it's a better way because the people living in Wales will consistently be using their right to bare a ballot.

So the situation in Catalonia needs to be monitored by all of us who believe in Welsh independence. The Catalan time has come. One day that time will be Cymraeg.

Until the next time.