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Following Catalonia's February 14 election, writes Dick Nichols, pro-independence parties will need to find an agreed path to force the Spanish government to meet the demands of Catalans for amnesty and an independence referendum.

Whenever supporters of Catalan sovereignty and independence have been asked to travel far from home to champion their country’s democratic rights, they have always rallied to the cause, writes Dick Nichols from Barcelona.

Spain’s April 28 general election will be “existential” for the Spanish state, according to outgoing Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) foreign minister Josep Borrell — the scourge of the Catalan sovereignty movement. It will be a “referendum on the secessionist menace”, according to People’s Party (PP) opposition leader Pablo Casado.

At the June 8 ceremonial handing over of portfolio briefcases from outgoing conservative People’s Party (PP) ministers to their incoming Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) replacements, the contrasts were dramatic.

A bunch of reactionary lifetime political operators and religious obscurantists were replaced by what new Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez boasted was the “progressive”, “feminist” and “Europeanist” alternative.

Catalonia’s regional government has declared it will hold a referendum on October 1 over whether it should become independent from Spain. In response, Spain’s conservative People’s Party (PP) Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has vowed that the “unconstitutional” referendum will not take place, setting the scene for the biggest crisis in the Spanish state since the 1978 transition from the Franco dictatorship.