I’m reading Federico Jimenez De los Santos book, Memorias del Comunismo, which is completely alarming, because I think the same scenario is occurring now...not in Russia, not in Spain, but in the US.
I have friends who are Catalans (that is born there from families that can boast generations upon generations) who are being excluded from society because they speak Spanish in everyday life and appreciate the culture of their country, Spain. They also speak Catalan and are even left-wing...but obviously not enough to be PC. One friend who lives in an area targeted for having “espanolistas” (sorry for lack of diacritical...my new keyboard wouldn’t do it!) is very afraid, because the Spanish government is not strong enough to protect them and obviously the “Catalan government” doesn’t want to. And the Church is completely political, left wing and catalanista, so there’s no hope from that direction.
There are many similarities today in the US with what happened in Spain in the 1930s, Russia in the early 20th century, and France in the 1790s. The cultural and religious divides between urban and rural populations, the situation (in Spain) with ethnic separatist movements (though our unassimilated minorities don’t want secession - they want to rule without contributing, while Spain’s prominent ethnic groups - Catalans and Basques - were located in industrial centers), the destruction of tradition (not only removing the monarchy, but changing the flag and such), and the general acknowledgment all around that the status quo was unacceptable (in the case of the US today, leading to Trump’s election - while Hillary could barely squeak out a primary win against old communist - and extremist - Bernie Sanders).
Spain is a country with an even lower birthrate than us; those Catalans pretending they want independence will be extinct soon enough (seriously). For all their condescending attitudes towards Spain’s rural population, in the end they couldn’t feed themselves. Sarah Palin talked about the people who “grow our food and fight our wars” - and Catalonians are apparently above such things - and such people.