Jammu, Oct. 23 -- The demonstrations, some of them violent, are still going on in Catalonia a week after Spain's Supreme Court sentenced nine separatist leaders to between nine and thirteen years in prison for sedition. This was the last thing Spain's prime minister Pedro Sanchez needed three weeks before a national election in which his Socialist Party was already losing ground to right-wing nationalist parties.
Catalan separatists are convinced that the evil 'Spanish state' as a whole is conspiring to crush their movement, but the Court had little choice because those leaders deliberately broke the law. They held an illegal independence referendum two years ago in which few people except the separatists voted, and used that 'victory' to ...