Today we have to move away from the idea of a United States of Europe, to think of the EU as a republic, as the European res publica, and to put citizens and civil society back into the centre stage that they have abandoned.
The huge demonstration in Barcelona on September 11 – the national day of Catalonia – under the banner of “Catalonia, a State of Europe”, has changed the stakes. Independence would be bad for Catalonia, but it would be even worse for Spain.
If globalisation has made the world flatter, it has also fragmented it into crevices, mountains and a myriad of islets. The new media and the standardising technology favor the multiplication
