Important moves are being made in Scotland. First minister Nicola Sturgeon has fired the starting gun in the race to the second independence referendum, which is scheduled to take place before the end of 2023. Unlike the previous indyref, for which her predecessor, Alex Salmond, reached an agreement with the British prime minister David Cameron in 2012 to allow the consultation to take place in September 2014, this time there is no political pact in sight with Whitehall, as the current British PM Boris Johnson has spoken out several times against it, completely rejecting the possibility. It is true that Johnson has his own problems at the moment and a highly uncertain political future after he overcame - not without difficulty - the confidence vote by Conservative Party MPs, in which, not without some good reasons, the very significant total of 148 parliamentarians turned their backs on him. The history of British politics reveals that in such circumstances, the government and the tenant of 10 Downing Street tend to have problems sooner rather than later.
With a will to get beyond this deadlock, Sturgeon went on the BBC to launch the campaign to hold the referendum, which is planned to culminate with the holding of the vote on independence. For the first minister, there is an "indisputable" democratic mandate to call a second ballot. And it is true that the election results held in Scotland in recent years - with successive victories by the Scottish National Party (SNP) - prove that the spirit of independence is stronger than in 2014 and that the departure of Great Britain from the EU via Brexit has given different injections of energy depending on what the citizens of each nation - Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland - wanted. Scotland has thus, indirectly, gained an ally: none other than the European Union, which would gladly welcome it, to the displeasure of Downing Street.
Sturgeon's move undoubtedly revives the hopes of nations who, as is the case of Catalonia, have not been able to complete their independence process, and she contributes to new hope amid the lack of agreement and enthusiasm that is found all too often today amid the boredom of Catalan politics as it is practiced among the pro-independence ranks. Sturgeon puts independence back on the map and sends a message that it is still, as she herself pointed out on Tuesday, an opportunity to improve the quality of life for Scots. One of the papers published to present the argument for a new referendum is entitled "Wealthier, happier, fairer: why not Scotland?" - an ideal pitch for all those who are hesitant or afraid of separation from the United Kingdom.
We must wish good luck to Sturgeon, and finezza to Catalan politicians when it comes to making use of the Scottish example. Scotland is a lever, but the Scots gain nothing from seeking an alliance with Catalan demands; in fact, the inverse is true, and the Catalan independence movement does have a lot to gain. To begin with, Europe, the European Union, the states of the European club, have a different view of the independence of Scotland than their perspective on the Catalan case. Then there are the differences between London and Madrid when it comes to interpreting what Sturgeon has rightly defined as the expression of an indisputable democratic mandate to call a second ballot. We already know how London interpreted it the first time, agreeing to the referendum, and how Madrid did it, sending the police to beat the protesters and suppressing the institutions of self-government.
We'll see what happens now and what Sturgeon does if the Westminster government bans the referendum. From the SNP the message is that it will still go ahead. We'll see, since it would thus be on a path similar to that of Catalonia in 2017. There are still many unknowns and it will have to be followed with close attention.