What are the issues here?
Language, culture, borders - identity, plus history. Even before the last civil war there was a lot of animosity between spain and catalonia That animosity hasn’t gone away.
RE: What are the issues here?
I believe the main one is economic.
The Catalan region has long been the industrial heartland of Spain – first for its maritime power and trade in goods such as textiles, but recently for finance, services and hi-tech companies.
The Catalans pay a lot in taxes to Madrid and get less from the central government than they pay for.
The second is historical... Catalonia was an independent region of the Iberian Peninsula – modern day Spain and Portugal – with its own language, laws and customs.
In 1150, the marriage of Petronilia, Queen of Aragon and Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Barcelona formed a dynasty leaving their son to inherit all territories concerning the region of Aragon and Catalonia.
This lasted until the reign of King Philip V. The War of the Spanish Succession ended with the defeat of Valencia in 1707, of Catalonia in 1714, and finally with the last of the islands in 1715 – resulting in the birth of modern-day Spain.
Subsequent kings tried to impose the Spanish language and laws on the region, but they abandoned their attempts in 1931 and restored the Generalitat (the national Catalan government).
Gen. Franco, however, set out to destroy Catalan separatism and with his victory at the Battle of Ebro in 1938 he took control of the region, killing 3,500 people and forcing many more into exile.
The region was granted a degree of autonomy once more in 1977, when democracy returned to the country.
Calls for complete independence grew steadily until July 2010, when the Constitutional Court in Madrid overruled part of the 2006 autonomy statute, stating that there is no legal basis for recognizing Catalonia as a nation within Spain.
The economic crisis in Spain has only served to magnify calls for Catalan independence – as the wealthy Barcelona region is seen as propping up the poorer rest of Spain.