In a strange fate of timing, I arrived back in Madrid from Barcelona, just a few hours after Kosovo broke away from Serbia and declared its independence.
Kosovo, though formally part of Serbia, had been under U.N. and NATO control since the end of the Kosovo War in 1999. Members of its congress, after attempts of "supervised independence" failed in the U.N. Security Council due to Russian objections, finally declared themselves a sovereign nation.
Within a few days of the declaration, countries began lining up to recognize the new state. Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States quickly announced support, but the most powerful neighboring block, the European Union, announced its member countries would decide individually whether to recognize Kosovo.
Spain was one of the few Western European members to choose to not recognize the upstart country. The reason was really quite simple. Despite the inclusion of the phrase, "Observing that Kosovo is a special case arising from Yugoslavia's non-consensual breakup and is not a precedent for any other situation," in the declaration, Spain feared it could be just that: a precedent for one of several Spanish autonomous regions to declare itself independent and form a new nation.
Barcelona is in the heart of one of those regions, Cataluña. The 1978 Constitution of Spain, adopted after the death of dictator Francisco Franco, declares that the country is composed of many "nationalities" and gives those nationalities the right to self-government.
One of the key provisions granted to the people of Cataluña was the right to speak their own language, Catalan.
Despite its linguistic intricacies and self-government, Cataluña does not seem likely to break away from Spain anytime soon. One recent study by a Barcelona university found that 59.5 percent of people surveyed should remain in its current autonomous community status, 17.5 percent thought it should cede more power to the federal government and only 13.5 percent believed it should be its own country.
Other regions of the country, specifically the Basque region, pose a greater threat to Spanish unity. This region is home to ETA, a Basque terrorist organization. The group has killed more than 800 people in its 40-year existence, including journalists, police officers and politicians opposed to Basque separatism.
Basque terrorism continues to be an election issue. In debates Monday evening, just two weeks ahead of the March 9 national elections, the candidates sparred over the group. Mariano Rajoy of the conservative Partido Popular accused current Prime Minister Jose Rodriguez Zapatero of lying after he secretly continued negotiations with ETA when the group broke a cease-fire and Zapatero publicly insisted negotiation no longer was possible.
Zapatero countered, calling Rajoy and the Patrido Popular liars. After the bombings of the Madrid commuter trains in 2004, the governing Partido Popular blamed the attacks on ETA, only to discover that radical Islamists actually carried them out. The mistake was a big factor in the Socialists' victory.
As Kosovo struggles to find its place in the world amid increasing levels of violence there and in Serbia, Spaniards watch to see how it fares and what effect it may have on its own potential breakaway nations.
