As the former US president Bill Clinton once said: "It is economy, stupid" . As Josh correctly pointed out in his article: "Catalonia also happens to be the biggest economy in Spain and happens to provide a lot of tax revenue for the state". In other words, Catalonia is too rich to be allowed the independence. Further, from the European persepective, Spain is too big to fail. That's why the are no condemning reactions from other countries. The developements in Catalonia are also some kind of surprise, because we kept hearing a lot about Basque Country in the past. In my opinion, Catalonia is just a start. In the future, we will witness the increase of separatist retorics in wealthy reagions of various countries.