Sobirania i progrés/Sovereignty and progress

Contemporary world has never had as many independent and sovereign states as today we can see. For good or evil this is an irrefutable statement that nobody can question.

The US economist and Nobel prize winner Gary Becker made it very clear in an article called "why small has become so beautiful". Becker defends the notion that small and medium size countries are much more prepared to face the current challenges of modern world. Small and medium size countries seem to have less internal and domestic problems and tend to be more efficiently organised. In Europe it looks like after a post-cold war period where the pro-independence winds where blowing from the "far less-developed and troublesome East" now it may be the time for some other nations located westwards. Has the time finally come for Catalonia, Basque Country, Scotland, Flanders or even more to the west Quebec? The answer is not clear but perspectives look less cloudy than ever for those nations to regain independence. It seems that traditional European nations are too small to face global challenges and too big to face regional ones. Nowadays Catalonia experiences some of these challenges and the role played by the Spanish government is anything but satisfactory to the Catalan interests. The dealings with the Catalan Statute, the question of the airport or the lack of response with the myriad of problems regarding infrastructures and industrial outsourcing are just a few examples that show the state´s failure or negligence to meet efficiently local or regional demands within her own country.
With such scenario it seems understandable that to those that not long ago were reluctant to defend propositions in favour of greater sovereignty now may quickly come to the judgement that greater self-rule implies necessarily greater well-being. The challenge for those -like myself- that for long have made up our minds will be to do our best to prove such assumption true. This can only be done from a cross-party entente where the most ideologically oriented arguments need to be played down in favour of the common democratic goal of sovereignty.