Or to put it another way: Catalunya (Barcelona and surroundings) is one of 3 Spanish regions that want to break away from Spain, not counting overseas territories. And yes, the population really wants this: there was a referendum and the outcome was: 92% want out of Spain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Catalan_independence_refe...

(why? Let's be honest: Catalunya would benefit enormously from independence, but when the economy goes well, as it did from 2001-2007, they're fine. After that the situation worsened again. The situation is simple: Catalunya has a much better economy than Spain and could maintain government spending, whereas being part of Spain, they need to cut social spending)

The Spanish government has violently repressed this, attacked the people, arrested politicians, tried to threaten other EU nations with invasion (yes, seriously, the current government has a few "rough edges", even if I would agree if someone said that any other party would be worse) unless they arrest Catalunya politicians (then did nothing when they told them to go f themselves), and this mostly with the agreement of regular Spaniards.

Given what is happening in the EU (10+ years of slowly but unrelentingly worsening economy) the situation is slowly worsening again.