[darkwater]

Being an Italian living in Catalonia for a few years now I absolutely say that it's not the same at all.

While money is an important factor (obviously) it's framed in completely different manner: former italian Lega Nord independentism is based on feeling/being superior on both the work & money side. And in fact Lega (Nord) was and it's still a right-wing, racist and xenophobic party. OTOH the independentist parties in Catalonia were basically left-wing (and now they cover almost all of the spectrum), and the economic side is more on the "we get +50% of our money out and what comes back cannot even cover the most basic needs". Having said that, there are obviously Catalans on the pro-independence side that can just be Lega Nord supporters. But the funny thing is that there are lots of Spaniards/Catalans against independence that can be Lega Nord supporters as well.

[ahbyb]

>and the economic side is more on the "we get +50% of our money out and what comes back cannot even cover the most basic needs"

Then imagine how it is for the poor regions of Spain.

[darkwater]

But Catalonia would still help them via European Union. And in general money is not that relevant on this topic, at least on the catalan side, as it was just a few years ago.

[throwaway8756]

Unfortunately I have to say it's not 100% true. The real independence movement was started from the right, look for "Artur Mas". The main slogan back then was "Spain steal from us". It's true though that Communists parties always wanted the independence, but the right parties have driven this process from the very beginning.

Lega Nord supports openly the independence of Catalunya because they are based on the same principles. Sure, there're differences, but the main idea is that they don't want to support poorer regions. Obviously they are not going to tell you that, but that's what originated the conflict.

In fact, some people in Catalunya (obviously a minority) were openly racist with other regions in Spain years ago (e.g., Extremadura, Andalucia), they even made ads in newspapers. Of course, this is not something that's really talked about.

[darkwater]

What? ERC predates Artur Mas by almost a century. And Artur Mas and his party became "independentists" because there were already lots of real people already pro independence, aiming at their votes. Not the other way round. I'd say that there's a huge number of independentists nowadays despite Artur Mas (and Jordi Pujol)