Catalonia on the brink

There has been significant push-back on several fronts against Catalonia’s moves towards independence. Yesterday hundreds of thousands of demonstrators descended on Barcelona. Today more businesses announced that they would shift their headquarters outside Catalonia if the region broke away, and France declared that it would move to expel an independent Catalonia from the EU. All this on the eve of an announcement scheduled for tomorrow in the Catalan parliament that will recognise the result of last week’s flawed referendum on independence and could go as far as a unilateral declaration of independence.