Some say that the Spanish state, in the face of the proclamation in Parliament, as before the entire Catalan process, is doing what it must, what it has no choice but to do: to uphold the law.

Certainly, the role of the any state in history has always been to enforce the law (even when laws are unjust). But a democratic state cannot limit itself to enforcing the law. The Spanish state might be doing what it is meant to as a state, but not what it should do, in addition, as a democratic state: when it detects unrest in a significant part of the population, probably a majority, it must ask itself where this comes from, of what grievance it was born, what the causes are.

The purpose of laws is not to stop or to ignore, let alone suffocate the unrest (a very unfortunate term used by Minister Margallo). An authoritarian state suffocates and little else. What a democratic state must also do is listen, understand, try to find solutions, not suffocate. It must uphold the law, but also be capable of changing the law to resolve problems. And Spain is not doing this. They haven’t done it. Somebody might say that you can’t listen to someone who wants to leave. But perhaps they want to leave because nobody wanted to listen.