Jailing the Catalan separatist leaders was disproportionate and wrong

Patriotism, the love of one's own country, is a healthy and natural thing.

Nationalism, however, is another matter.

Some nationalists are much more unpleasant about it than others but in my experience anyone who calls themselves a nationalist, and some who don't but are, is at least one step along the road which descends first to defining yourself not by positive statements about your own country but against those who you see as "other" and ultimately to a dislike of other people's countries. 

This is a destructive attitude, which belongs in the dustbin of history and for which I have no time, regardless of which country the people who peddle it regard themselves as supporting.

I have no doubt that if I were Spanish I would be as sceptical about Catalan nationalists as I am about any of the forms of nationalism which exist within the UK.

But disagreeing with a political creed is one thing. Locking up its leaders is another.

There is a very good piece by Stephen Daisley in the Spectator,

"Spain was wrong to jail the Catalan separatists,

which sums up perfectly why the Spanish government should have exercised clemency rather than allow the courts to send the former members of the Catalan Nationalists to jail for up to 13 years.

Daisley makes the amusing point

"There is a muckle of hypocrisy on the go right now. Many who would be giddy at the prospect of Boris Johnson doing porridge for ignoring the Benn Act see an ominous authoritarianism in the Spanish sentences. "

"The Venn diagram of those who believe that neither Johnson nor Carles Puigdemont should be above the law would be quite the sight. "

I don't believe that either is above the law. But sending people to jail for political differences - including where someone does something they thought and were advised they had the power to do but where a court subsequently rules they had not - would not be a sensible way forward here, and it is not a sensible way forward in Spain.

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