Below you will find a poster from the event.  In the right hand corner it reads Som una nacio, Trans. We are a nation (Kcurie, please correct me if I get the translation wrong), the word on the bottom, autodeterminacio means self determination.  

Note that nacio is written in red.  The use of the term nation in the Catalan Estaut was the subject of debate between nationalists in the ERC (the Catalan Left nationalist party that entered as a junior partner in Zapatero's government in 2004) and the PP (the conservative opposition party.) In a recent poll commissioned by a Catalan newspaper, found that 76% of Spanish deny that Catalunya is a nation, nearly 50% feel that Catalans are unsupportive of Spain, and 47% believe that Catalunya wants leave Spain.

This graphic gives a breakdown by party voted for in the 2004 general election and region.

When asked whether they viewed Catlunya as a nation only 19.1% of all Spanish said Yes, while 76.3% said No.  Interestingly the only regions which even came close to supporting the idea of Catalunya as a nation where in Catlunya itself, with 46.8% seeing Catalunya as a nation while 49.4% said no. And in the Basque country the region was evenly divided with 47.2% supporting the idea of Cataluyna as a nation while the same percentage denied this. This would appear to be the end of the matter, with such a solid majority of the rest of Spain clearly rejecting the notion of Catalunya as a nation, therefore also presumably rejecting the Estatut and any rejection that Spain is a country with many nations.  Or perhaps not......

When asked whether they saw Spain as a multinational state or as sole nation, the results were less clear. 39.8% said they viewed Spain as a multinational state, while 54.8% stated that they vied Spain as being a sole nation, rejecting the notion of mutliple nations within Spain. Solid majorities topping 60% in both Catalunya and the Basque country supported the view that there are multiple nations in Spain.  This is more than just semantics.  While there is little suport in the rest of Spain for Catalunya or the Basque Country becoming independent states, there is a solid majority in Catalunya and the Basque Country, and a solid minority in the nation as a whole, for greater regional autonomy.

All this talk is more than semantics.  One of the more contraversial aspects of the Estatut would allow Catalunya to keep substantially more of the tax revenue raised in the region at home while sending less of the money to Madrid, where it is currently redistributed to other, less wealthy, regions like Andalucia. The political importance of this should not be underestimated, and as with the the growth of the Spanish autonomies in during the Transition, there's the sense that whatever agreement is reached with Catalunya should be transferable to the rest of the country's regions.  The autonomous communities of Navarra, and the Basque Country currently are unique in that they have much greater control over their finances than the other regions, however in the support of the Estatut, the Generalitat, the Catalan regional government, has asked that Navarra and the Basque Country be called on to abandon the unique financial arrangements (which are the result of historical agreements reaching back to Hapsburg Spain) that they have with Madrid, and join a general system of financation modeled on the Estatut.  There is a tremendous nexus between the economics and politics of self determination, much of the obejections to the
Estatut coming from the Socialist stronghold of Andalucia might have less to do with a grand sense of the unity of Spain, and more to do with the fear that in an environment where the regions retain their tax income, Catalunya's gain is Andalucia's loss.  And this leads to the charge that the Catalans are not showing solidarity with the far poorer inhabitants of Andalucia.  In fact the regions where there are strong regionalist movements that want to keep their tax income at home are by far wealthier on a per capita basis than those regions that favor a centralized finanacial model.

>GDP per capita at current prices (euros) 2004 *
Comunidad de Madrid        25,855
Com. Foral de Navarra        24,690
País Vasco            24,364
Cataluña            23,175
Illes Balears            22,888
La Rioja            21,941
Aragón                21,128
Cantabria            19,153
Comunidad Valenciana        18,374
Castilla y León            18,199
Canarias            17,687
Región de Murcia        16,793
Ceuta                16,744
Principado de Asturias        16,633
Melilla                16,475
Castilla-La Mancha        15,504
Galicia                15,482
Andalucía            14,876
Extremadura            12,886
*1st Estimate

One look at the results of the 2004 elections shows that Zapatero and the socialists have a serious problem in dealing with the Estatut, they have to court the support of voters in Catalunya and in Andalucia, but the on the issue of autonomy there's a wide divide between the people who voted for the Socialist in Badajoz and Barcelona.  The PP is aware of this, and they are starting to manipulate the issue if Catalan autonomy to evoke fear and loathing in ways that previously had been reserved for the Basques. Following a letter by 1981 coup leader Antonio Tejero suggesting that the issue of Catalan autonomy should be put to  national referendum, the PP oblidged, begining a campaign to collect enough signatures to force a referendum on the matter. The problem is that the PP just might unleash democratic irony onto the peoples of Spain, by proving that while most Spanish reject the Estatut a solid majority, in a free and democratic vote, of Catalans want the Estatut to pass.  In 1936, it was strife over the autonomy of Catalunya that forced the nation into civil war, while nothing so dramatic is likely in the short term, a referendum confirming that the Catalans want greater autonomy, while the rest of Spain is unwilling to grant it could lead to a polarization of the country, and the rise of ethnic tensions. Ever the drama queen, Aznar cautioned Mexican businessman against investing in Spain, saying that Spain is going to become a Yugoslavia.

This is overly dramatic, but as much as we in the West pride ourselves on our democratic principles and practices, self determination threatens to make fools of us all.  Can we truly call a nation democratic if it refuses to allow its constituent peoples self determination?  Because it's inconvenient there's a strain of thought that accepts the denial of self determination as legitimate so long as a nation otherwise adheres to democratic principles. Yet this runs in the face of the past hundred years of European history.  If self determination is only legitimate where both parties are willing to part ways of their own free will this raises an important question.

Which of the countries in this map.

But not this one.

Deserve to exist?

The sun never sets on the British Empire.  It did.

Spain. One, free, and grand.  Give it time, and I think you'll find in the long term two out of three ain't bad.

Life is not static nor are nations.

A new book, The Untied States of America:

...reminds us that, in 1950, the United Nations had 50 member countries. Today, the number has grown to 191.
And the trend seems to be toward more new countries. From 1900 to 1950 the world saw an average of 1.2 new countries a year; from 1950 to 1990 the rate grew to 2.2 new countries a year; and between 1990 and now, to 3.1 new nations a year.

We accept nations like Ireland, Poland, and Bosnia Herznegovina that were not independent at the turn of the last century now because they've become part of the map we've grown used to, and there's a sense that we are at an end point where the legitimate nationhood struggles have ceased, and all that remain are frivoulous or worse.  Yet I'm certain that the same attitude existed in 1900, 1919, and 1989. So long as there are peoples who want to have their own nation do the democratic nations of the West have any right to tell them that they can't?   Update [2006-2-14 23:10:10 by ManfromMiddletown]:Per Migeru's request here is a map of the 2004 Spanish election results by party and region. This map is the polar opposite of American maps. Red is for PSOE, the Socialists, while blue is for PP, the Conservatives.