The Great Game

Ikram at the Path of the Paddle reports that the world is getting more Canadian. Specific he notes the Canadianness of the current seperatist rhetorica is Spain.

Jax

In Spain, President of the Basque province Juan Jose Ibarretxe has a plan. He's calling for a referendum on

a Basque Community "freely associated" with Spain on the basis of "shared sovereignty" ... joint Spanish and Basque citizenship ...an independent Basque judiciary, diplomatic representation abroad, the right to call referendums on issues of self-determination and almost complete administrative control over the Basque country.

Soveriegnty and association? Where did Ibarretxe get that crazy idea? And how should the centre-left Spanish federal goverment respond?

Socialist Government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has countered with promises of regional reforms. These include making the national Senate more representative of Spain's regions and reforming the arcane system of regional financing

Senate reform? Reforms to the system of regional financing? What an innovative way to respond to a separatist threat. What does Spains right-wing opposition have to say?

A legal challenge in Spain's Constitutional Court is also a near certainty. Jurists on both sides of the debate acknowledge that the Ibarretxe Plan almost certainly contravenes the constitution, whose founding premise is "the indissoluble unity of the Spanish nation".

A constitutional challenge to get "clarity" on the legal situation from the nation's highest court? Curioser and curiouser...