MADRID — Spain’s election this month risks pushing the explosive issue of Catalan independence right back up the political agenda.

Nearly a decade after a separatist drive in Catalonia plunged Spain into a constitutional crisis in 2017–2018, the topic now lies dormant, barely making the headlines.

But that could change quickly if the conservative People’s Party (PP) and the far-right Vox take power in the vote on Nov. 29, as polls predict. Their staunch brand of unionism could well inflame feelings across the region of 8 million people.

“We know that they are certain to cut back our self-governing powers and intervene in Catalan society in a very heavy way,” Francesc-Marc Álvaro, a candidate for the Senate in the upcoming election for the Catalan Republican Left (ERC), said. “This would amount to throwing gasoline on Catalan society.”

Lawmaker Míriam Nogueras from the pro-independence Junts party said Catalonia had “never been respected by any Spanish regime or government,” and the next would be no exception. “Whatever its political color, the next Spanish government will be exactly the same as the previous one on one fundamental issue: Catalonia,” she said, adding that “the independence movement will regain momentum, and it will do so with renewed strength, because Catalonia’s dependence on Spain makes everyone poorer.”

For Madrid, the stakes are economic as well as political. Catalonia is Spain’s second-biggest autonomous region after Andalusia, representing about 19% of the national economy and 16.5% of the population.

End of Sánchez era

Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez took office shortly after a failed independence drive in 2017 saw several nationalist politicians flee abroad and nine others jailed.

In contrast to the PP’s uncompromising approach to Catalonia, Sánchez negotiated with pro-independence parties, making concessions in exchange for their parliamentary support.

An amnesty benefiting Catalans involved in the secession attempt angered the Spanish right but helped calm the political atmosphere in the region, eliminating a major nationalist grievance.

Meanwhile, the cross-party unity between separatists that was so instrumental in driving the independence movement a decade ago has dissolved.

Although 43% of Catalans remain in favor of independence, according to the regional government’s statistics institute, the topic has fallen off their list of priorities, behind housing, immigration and crime.

Carles Puigdemont, the former Catalan president who led the 2017 secession bid, recently admitted that “nine years on, the independence movement is fragmented and weakened.”

Speaking to Catalan news outlet El Punt Avui from Waterloo, Belgium, the separatist said: “What I want is to stop being Spanish. I don’t say this as an act of rejection or contempt. I often compare it to someone who feels like a woman trapped in a man’s body,” adding that he should be able to “cancel” Spanish nationality like any other subscription.

Reviving old traumas

The big question now is to what degree hostility from the PP and Vox could rebuild the movement.

PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo, citing Sánchez’s willingness to engage with Catalan nationalists, accused him of leading a government that “has begun a process of separation with and deconstruction of the constitutional system of 1978.”

Vox rose to prominence on the back of its fierce opposition to Catalan separatism. It has called for pro-independence parties to be made illegal and advocates the dismantling of Spain’s decentralized political structure, which it claims is wasteful and encourages regional nationalism.

“We want to make [separatist parties’] life as difficult as possible, because they’ve been making life impossible for Spaniards in general,” said Vox spokesperson José Antonio Fúster. “We are going to work, without a doubt, to make sure that pro-independence parties accept that the unity of Spain cannot be meddled with, is not questioned — otherwise it is clear that they must not form part of the Spanish political landscape.”

For now, however, both the PP and Vox are not taking a directly confrontational approach on Catalonia.

In an interview with Barcelona-based newspaper La Vanguardia, Feijóo insisted that the region had nothing to fear from him. 

“I’m not here to centralize; I’m here to make self-government work and for the Spanish state to have a presence in Catalonia,” he said. He also complained, on the region’s behalf, that budgeted public works were not being carried out there, echoing a longstanding grievance among Catalan nationalists.

The PP leader said he planned to repeal the amnesty law benefiting Catalan nationalists, a move that would not have any practical effect. However, he also pointed to his own Galician background to underline that he understood the “issue of language, the identity- and cultural-based sentiment” associated with coming from one of Spain’s regions. 

So far during the election campaign, Vox has also toned down its rhetoric on Catalonia. Party leader Santiago Abascal has instead prioritized clamping down on immigration, saying that Catalan identity needs to be protected from “Islamism.”

Vox’s relatively muted approach to Catalonia appears influenced by a desire not to antagonize voters of Catalan Alliance (AC), a far-right pro-independence party that will not run against it in the general election.

Wolves in sheep’s clothing

The Socialist Catalan president, Salvador Illa, is one of many who remain unconvinced by the emollient approach from the right during the campaign.

“These wolves are now presenting themselves as little lambs when it comes to regional government,” he said. “We’ve spent 47 years building our regional self-government. And in just one legislature of Feijóo and Abascal, it could all go down the toilet.”

The policies of a new right-wing government would likely depend on the balance of power between the PP and Vox. Dismantling the system of regional government may be a step too far, as might the outlawing of pro-independence parties, both of which the PP has resisted in the past.

A less dramatic but nonetheless significant move might revolve around the use of the Catalan language, which has previously been a political flashpoint.

Eliminating the use of regional languages — such as Catalan, Basque, Valencian and Galician — during debates in the Spanish Congress might be an easy policy to implement for a PP-Vox administration. It would also, according to Oriol Bartomeus, director of Barcelona’s Institute for Political and Social Sciences, be “a declaration of war” for separatists.

Álvaro, of the pro-independence ERC, sees a prototype for what PP and Vox would be likely to do once in government in Valencia and the Balearic Islands, where the two parties govern together and have introduced measures aimed at reducing the use of those regions’ local languages, which are variants of Catalan. 

“A PP-Vox government will definitely be militantly opposed to the language immersion model” in place in Catalan schools, Álvaro said. He also foresees a right-wing administration cutting back the Catalan government’s financing and powers in areas such as policing.

Feijóo’s willingness to exploit unionist feeling — and rile Catalan nationalists — could depend on his ability to resist the pressure of his likely coalition partner. It could also depend on how his government fares elsewhere.

“The Catalan issue is always there, liable to be used to serve political interests,” said Bartomeus, who sees the PP taking a harder line on the territorial issue if it underperforms in the election. “If you can’t implement, for example, a successful economic policy, you can always wage a culture war.”

If the next Spanish government takes a hardline approach to unionism, that would be more likely to re-energize Catalan separatism.

Puigdemont’s Junts per Catalunya party, which has been struggling in polls and helped trigger the snap election by voting in Congress against housing measures presented by Sánchez, has been awaiting a change of administration in Madrid, according to Bartomeus.

“Junts thinks that a PP-Vox government will favor a revival of the independence movement,” he said. “They are banking on the idea of a Spanish nationalist government in Madrid which is dedicated to screwing Catalonia. The objective is to reproduce the blueprint that led to [the events of 2017].”

Junts’ leader, Puigdemont, recently pointed to the “extreme division” in Spanish politics. Identifying an opportunity for his cause, he said that “even in the most difficult times for the independence movement, Spain generates crises of which we should be prepared to take advantage.”

Puigdemont has been living in Belgium since leading the 2017 independence bid. After a lengthy legal wrangle, the Spanish judiciary has finally declared that the Catalan amnesty can be applied to him.

His return home, expected after the election, could provide a morale boost to pro-independence Catalans just as a Spanish right that abhors separatism enters government.

As he himself puts it: “Even in the most difficult moments for the movement, Spain generates crises that we should be prepared to exploit.”

LONDON — Britain’s government runs on numbers — but what if they’re a shot in the dark?

From tepid economic growth to squeezed household incomes, this week’s budget from Chancellor John Healey was packed with grim figures about the state of play in the U.K. — and a host of costly measures to try and turn things around.

Yet it’s almost certain that the budget forecasts Healey relied upon Wednesday will be revised by the time the next fiscal event rolls around.

In this week’s episode of the Westminster Insider podcast, POLITICO unpacked the numbers that govern the U.K. — and found out just how many doubts there are about the information the country relies on.

1. True levels of immigration

Few issues divide Brits like immigration — but grappling with hard data on the issue has proven to be a repeated challenge to governments of all stripes.

For decades, immigration into the U.K. was calculated by the International Passenger Survey (IPS) — essentially people with clipboards at airports, train stations and ports asking people about their intention to stay in the U.K.

But between 2012 and 2020, the number of European Union nationals coming into the country was off by 76% — or 93,000 people a year. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) only discovered this error after trialing a new approach to counting immigration that focused less heavily on the IPS, which was dropped altogether in 2025.

The ONS now uses this new measurement — relying on a combination of Home Office data, information from the Department for Work and Pensions and tax receipts.

But this was again wrong in the year to June 2023 — by 234,000 people.

The original numbers published by the ONS in November 2023 said net migration to the U.K. was 672,000. A year later, the ONS admitted there had been a mistake and said it was in fact 906,000.

Laura Gilbert, who ran data science in No. 10 Downing Street until last year, told POLITICO that net migration numbers are often incredibly misleading — and even the way we calculate those numbers is “highly spurious.”

Gilbert says the quality of the numbers on immigration normally improves months later, sometimes by “quite a lot.” But she warned, “if politicians are making a decision based on exact numbers, often they are using the first number that comes out, which is the worst one.”

2. The scale of unemployment

Healey and Prime Minister Andy Burnham have vowed to get welfare spending down “but in a Labour way.” Much of this will rest on getting young people into work, the subject of a 217-page report by Tony Blair-era minister Alan Milburn.

But Britain’s workforce — and the number of young people out of work — is counted by the Labour Force Survey (LFS), an ONS measurement beset with issues.

For example, between 2019 and 2024, the LFS missed 1 million workers because people with full-time jobs are less likely to answer the phone to surveyors during the week, according to the Resolution Foundation think tank.

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) admitted just this week that the survey is too unreliable to measure productivity. “In recent years, falling response rates have significantly affected the quality of the LFS, making it more difficult to estimate reliably the number of workers and the hours they work,” the watchdog said.

Gilbert says Healey’s claim that there are “1 million young people out of work” is unlikely to be accurate.

The number of NEETs — people not in education, employment or training — is also based on figures from a subset of the LFS, which is particularly susceptible to inaccuracies.

“I think being within 50,000 on either side of that number is very unlikely to be the sort of level of accuracy that you’re at,” Gilbert said. “It’s entirely spurious, if I’m completely honest, but it’s a big number, you write it down, and everyone reads the papers.”

Ben Warner, who set up 10DS, Downing Street’s data science unit, says the LFS can’t accurately measure the number of entrepreneurs arriving in the country, either, making it difficult for ministers to know if decisions — such as a much-hyped tax relief for founders — are actually encouraging people to come to the U.K.

“I’m willing to bet you a hundred quid [we don’t have accurate numbers] at the level that you would need to make thoughtful policy around this,” Warner said. “I am sure there are people who have very, very good knowledge of the economic statistics. But if you’re a minister, you don’t necessarily have access.”

3. Where inflation and GDP sit

These are hugely important measures for a government: Are costs rising for households — and is the British economy growing?

But buried inside this week’s budget assessment by the OBR was a startling admission: There is a one in five chance inflation in 2027 will come in at over 4.5% … and the same chance it will be under 2.5%. They are profoundly different outcomes for the cost of living, a top political issue.

Warner told POLITICO, “The whole thing is mental. We are discussing the uncertainty of the numbers and pretending that these are real.”

Gilbert says there are knock-on effects at play: problems with net migration numbers and workforce data bleed into inflation and GDP projections.

“Understanding migration tells us about the demographics of the country, and when we look at how many people are in work, and that is wildly undercounted, it looks like there are more people who are unemployed, which has a knock-on effect on GDP and inflation,” she explained.

4. The number of kids on free school meals

The number of pupils in England on free school meals is just over 2.2 million, according to government statistics from the start of this year. That’s more than a quarter of all children in the country.

But Gilbert warns that these numbers are likely to be overestimated because schools “game the system” when census data is collected. “So for anyone who has children in school they may have received a text message that says don’t send them to school with a packed lunch — because the schools get funding based on how many children are on school meals,” she said.

5. The number of rough sleepers on the streets

One of Burnham’s flagship promises when he became prime minister was to end homelessness in the U.K., and Wednesday’s budget put £432 million towards precisely that promise.

Yet the way rough sleepers are counted in the U.K. varies according to each council, with some areas relying on an estimate and others on a street count — sending workers out to physically count the number of people on the streets on a particular day in autumn.

Some councils have swapped between methods — which can make it look as though they have dramatically reduced their rough sleepers from one year to the next.

For example, in 2017 Brighton and Hove Council used an estimate of rough sleepers which put that number at 176. The following year, the council used a street count — but this took place on a snowy night, so the number fell to 68.

This made it appear as though the number of people experiencing homelessness had been more than halved.

Budgets are all about numbers: growth, inflation, unemployment, headroom. So this week on Westminster Insider, Sascha and Pat look into the numbers behind Britain’s economy — and just how much government policy is really made up of guesswork, rather than solid measurements.

Sascha talks to Dr Laura Gilbert, the former director of data at Number 10 Downing Street, who explains exactly why the numbers we have on measurements like immigration or the workforce are often wrong by hundreds of thousands of people.

Ben Warner, who was chief advisor on data and digital at Number 10 during the pandemic, explains why this uncertainty spells chaos for political decision-making and says he believes most ministers don’t know how to use data.