Those who write the rules of the game never lose. If you win an election like everyone in the world wins, they tell you that you have to have the majority of votes. If you had them, they would tell you that you need two-thirds, as you do to amend the Statute. If you had the two-thirds, they would tell you that it had to be two-thirds of all eligible voters, not just those who cast ballots. If you had that, they would tell you that it didn’t make a difference: you can’t put Spain’s unity to a vote ...
Spanish nationalism is accustomed to laying down the rules of the game and thus always winning, whatever the result. But there is a problem: their rules of the game are not the same ones that apply everywhere. Hence the differences between the front pages of yesterday’s newspapers. They are not the rules of the game for Catalan society. Nor are they those of the democratic world.
In the rules that apply in the rest of the world, when a pro-independence ticket wins an election, has an absolute majority in Parliament, wins in every county and in all the county capitals of the nation, you can’t just ignore it. With electoral results for pro-independence forces more modest than those in Catalonia last Sunday, Great Britain and Canada accepted self-determination referendums that were agreed to and binding. They are different rules of the game.
