More than 1.5 million Catalans demand independence

Some one million five hundred thousand people have marched today through Barcelona under the slogan Catalonia: new state of Europe, according to the local police count (source: La Vanguardia[es]). Spanish nationalist sources have tried to water down the figure but an independent Madrid source as is Kaos en la Red, considers the urban police figure rather the minimal one and has as headline: More than a million and half people collapse Barcelona's center for independence[es].

Similarly in the international media, the BBC gives the 1.5 million figure as valid, while the Washington Post waters it down to just some tens of thousands, even less than the 600 thousands admitted by the Spanish Government itself, while the Putinist Voice of Russia would like to make the flood become a trickle and pretends that only thousands marched today through the Rose of Fire - let not the Chechens notice. The Guardian is coincident with Kaos and says more than 1.5 million, a figure that I adopted myself for the header of this entry.

Maybe two million? I can imagine so and so do the organizers of the National Catalan Assembly (source: Vilaweb[cat])but, of course, even 1.5 million in a country of just six million citizens is a brutally massive figure: it means that one of each four Catalans was out there today demanding independence. At least!

In the event of an official referendum on the independence of Catalonia,
what would you vote?
46.4% in favor
22% against
25.7% blank vote / would not vote
5.9% does not know / does not answer

A recent opinion poll found that more than half Catalans would vote for independence in a hypothetical referendum, while only 21% would oppose (the rest would abstain or doubt). An even more recent one by the unionist newspaper El Periódico[es] got similar results but the smartasses admittedly cooked it to make the abstentionist become undecided (and vice versa) and then make them vote against (just because)... so they could title Catalonia divided[es]. 

It would be funny wouldn't be such a sad and dangerous manipulation of reality. Journalism should be about informing not manipulating, much less so grossly.

It is clear that Catalans want independence or at the very least a much greater self-rule than they have now. And they won't settle for less. 

On the other hand the Spanish state won't even discuss independence and this, in the context of deep economic and social crisis is recipe for the violent disintegration of the state. Surely not yet but soon, sooner than you may think: this is not exactly Yugoslavia but it's not too different either.