Spain and Catalonia

If you were looking for potential for Spain's position on Catalonia to fall apart....it happened late Tuesday.

Various news sources now report that Madrid ordered the 41st Logistic Support Group of the Spanish Army to be deployed into Catalonia....to provide 'material' and support to the National Police and Civil Guard.

The movement?  Roughly twenty vehicles and somewhere between 100 and 200 personnel.

Here's the problem here that is brewing for the National Police and Civil Guard.  They can only deploy and cover the entire region of Catalonia for a short period of time.  They are basically leaving their home districts throughout the rest of Spain with minimal personnel.  Should any terror attacks occur....the force would have to be recalled out of Catalonia.  The system simply wasn't built to sustain weeks, and perhaps even months of deployment. 

Adding to the situation...no one in Catalonia appreciates the National Police anymore.  There is distrust and frustration over their role in the state.

As for the 41st LSG?  Once you make the decision in Madrid to do this....you are invoking Franco-like tactics that were seen in the 1930s.  If you have any situation that develops and military troops are carrying weapons against a civilian society, your case for support dissolves (particularly around the rest of the EU).

Should anyone get shot by military members?  It'll create a snowball-like effect and just advance the whole discussion of an independent state.  The odds of more troops being sent into Catalonia?  I'd take a guess that another unit is in the planning stages and likely to move by the end of October.  You could see a thousand troops in some role before the end of November.

I noticed last night on German news that they laid out a map of at least ten different regions in Europe where separation efforts have existed for years and this could revive all of them....pushing for more discontent.  What drove most of these?  The internal mechanism of each state on revenue collected, and dispersed on some fair basis to the lesser states of a nation....giving the states with business-interest a prospective that they made the money and ought to be able to keep it. 

Just my humble prospective, but I'd give Spain probably four months of time before this really brews into massive hostility.  If you have any protest action that occurs, and the military reacts with weapons drawn...the whole Spanish argument for support within the EU dissolves quickly.