July 4: Spain would lose the Catalan referendum
To try to win the referendum, Spain would have to make in-depth reforms that it is not willing to undertake
However you read them, polls on the Catalan referendum make one thing clear: Spain doesn't want a referendum in Catalonia because it would lose. And when you know that you'll lose a game, what you try to do is make sure there is no game. Certainly, the Spanish authorities wouldn't want a referendum even if they thought they could win: if you consider that the unity of Spain is sacred, divine, independent of any democratic decision, then it's absurd to vote on it.
But I'm convinced that when the international community reads the NY Times editorial to the Spanish government and tells it that what would be best for Spain would be to accept the October referendum and try to win it, the response would be: but we wouldn't win. To try to win it, they would have to make in-depth reforms that they are not willing to undertake. Now, I fear that they are hiding (and from themselves) another obvious point: Spain would lose this referendum by a wider margin today than it would have done two years ago. And by an even greater margin than ten years ago. And, most likely, it would lose the referendum two years from now even more clearly than it would today (unless they make the changes they are not willing to make). And even if they managed to prevent the October vote, in the end the referendum will happen.
