Today Catalonia has made history by voting to become independent from Spain. Catalonia includes Barcelona and makes up 20% of Spain’s GDP.

The Spanish Government has voted to take over Catalonia’s government and the Catalonians are committed to resist by creating human shields around their government buildings.

A year ago, Scotland had a referendum for independence, and the United Kingdom had avote for Brexit. Last week Veneto and Lombardy (25% of Italy’s population) voted in referendums for more automomy. 

Marco Bassani, University of Milan Professor of Politics says Catalonia “will have definitely a domino effect with Veneto, Scotland and all sorts of other regions. There might be easily 35 to 45 new countries coming up.”

“You have to realize that nothing happened in Europe after the Berlin Wall… nothing happened for 25 or 27 years now. So people are really waiting for a new order to develop coming from some sort of disintegration.”

Is a mass fragmentation of nations around the corner? And why is it happening now?

170 years ago there was a siesmic shift similar to the one starting now. 

1848 was the “Year of Revolution” when the Sicilian revolution led to a domino effect across Europe and the “Spring of Nations” - the largest revolutionary wave Europe had seen, spreading across France, Germany, Italy, and the Austrian Empire. It was the birth of the French Republic and of the Nation States that we see today.

Today, 170 years later, there is a similar “Spring of Cities” where citizens have less trust in the governments of Nation States, and more in city states.

Why now? In an accelerating world, power has shifted from economies of scale to economies of speed. Of the 12 most competitive countries in the world, 7 of them have populations of less than 10 million and two of them (Singapore and Hong Kong) are cities. These beat all the rest of the world’s 197 countries and continue to accelerate away based on their speed of innovation and growth, while larger Nation States continue to lose their relevance. 

Top 12 of 197 countries. WEF Global Competitiveness Report:

1 - Switzerland (8.4m)

2 - USA (323m)

3 - Singapore (5.6m)

4 - Netherlands (17m)

5 - Germany (83m)

6 - Hong Kong (7.3m)

7 - Sweden (9.9m)

8 - United Kingdom (66m)

9 - Japan (127m)

10 - Finland (5.5m)

11 - Norway (5.2m)

12 - Denmark (5.7m)

European Parliament Chief Antonio Tajani said Europe itself should “fear” the spread of small nations. Former French premier Manuel Valls says it will be “The end of Europe.”

It’s difficult to imagine that in twenty years centralized governments will exist in the same way as they do now when all other parts of our societies have already decentralized or are in the process of doing so. 

Our media, communications, finance markets, retail industry have all shifted from having a middle man in control, to the middle man disappearing. Our banking, education and medical industries are all going the same way. 

Are national governments who try and hold onto central power going to be next?

20 years ago, in 1997, Great Britain handed back Hong Kong to China. Instead of making Hong Kong just another city in its country, China instead made it a “Special Administrative Region” where it would effectively run as its own country with most of its rules and constitution entirely different from China’s and with its own passport.

20 years later, Hong Kong is now in the Top 10 most competitive countries in the world (ahead of China at 27th) with a GDP per capita of $43,681 - five times higher than China’s at $8,124.

What happens next in Catalonia - whether the citizens succeed in turning Barcelona it into the next Hong Kong or Singapore, or whether the Spanish Government manage to take back control for now - it’s just a matter of time before the next spring.

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” ~ John F Kennedy