There is no doubt about it; the Catalan independence movement won the PR war yesterday, thanks to scenes of riot police laying into people trying to vote.

But the ineptitude of the Central Government in Madrid coupled with the intransigence of a hardline, minority-but-punching-above-its-weight independence movement in Cataluña has brought what could have been a solvable situation to a shambles.

There are many, many Catalanes that were far from being pro-independence supporters but who have now joined that camp, thanks to the Prime Minister’s complete lack of political strategy; a man who has limited himself to ‘applying the law’ instead of sitting down to work out how to change it with other political parties. And that is the problem you see: the 1978 Constitution needs to be overhauled and adapted to the 21st Century.

And the Guardia Civil, far from being ogres, were pawns sacrificed by the Central Government; put into an impossible situation and deserted by the Regional Police, the Mossos d’Esquadra, whose job the Guardia Civil ended up having to carry out; i.e., impose the existing law.

Don’t get me wrong; the real villains here were the anarchist CUP party that is leading its majority coalition partner around by the nose.

Sadly, we couldn’t have had a worse combination to tackle this crisis: a regional government that has manipulated the Catalan population into confronting Spain, which in turn is led by a totally corrupt and rancid conservative party, whose leader’s modus operandi had always been “sit back and wait until somebody else solves the problem.”

The only hope for Spain to heal its wounds is to get the opposing governing parties out of power and into opposition where they can do far less damage.

(News/Opinion: Cataluña – Photo: Arnau Bach)