Rajoy said this morning that he, and any future Spanish government, would ensure that Scotland would never enter the EU.
He’s got nothing against Scotland per se, I assume, but he’s sending a clear message to Catalan nationalists that they mustn’t, God forbid, actually assume Spain is a democracy or anything similar.
“Independence of these small regions” he pontified in Congress, “brings only poverty, and these breakaway regions threaten to torpedo the European project”.
He added that there are profound differences in the basic legal and constitution rights between the UK and Spain, and that the Scotland case has nothing to do with Catalonia.
I understand the phrase “banana republic” was thrown around quite a bit during the discussion.