There’s no doubt the UK will go through some difficulties should Scotland decide to call it quits – but it will get over it. No so certain about the situation in Spain. Catalonia practically feeds the rest of the country, pays everybody else’s bills and feels greatly disrespected. In short, they’re the only rich people in Spain, for all intents and purposes, and should they build up a wall around their land—which they’re planning to do—everybody else in Spain will starve.
This is why Spain will definitely vote against accepting an independent Scotland into the EU. And should the required vote be unanimous – there goes Scotland down the tube into poverty and lonely nights nursing a 12-year-old Glenfiddich by the open fire.
Barroso was skeptical that many other states would want to offer support for the Scotts when they seek EU membership. “We have seen that Spain has been opposing even the recognition of Kosovo, for instance, so it’s to some extent a similar case because it’s a new country and so I believe it’s going to be extremely difficult, if not impossible, a new member state coming out of one of our countries [getting the agreement of other existing EU member states].”
A new country! Scotland had been a proud and independent country centuries before there was a United Kingdom, and certainly before there was a Portugal. But when you’re an oligarch watching your chickens running away to unexpected coops, you don’t have to be right, you just have to own a big boot.
Scotland’s Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon was offended by Barroso’s unconcealed disdain for freedom and democracy, and she told the Guardian he was being “preposterous.”
“…As the ridiculous comparison with Kosovo illustrates. Scotland is already in the EU and has been for 40 years,” Sturgeon argued. “The question of Scotland’s independent membership of the EU is a matter for the democratic wishes of the people of Scotland and the views of other member states – not the European commission.”
It’s raining bad people over there, in Brussels.