Is Spain about to break up?

When the economic meltdown of 2008 struck, there were few countries harder hit than Spain

When voters in Spain’s Catalan region go to the polls on October 1, much more than independence for the restive province will be at stake.

In many ways the vote will be a sounding board for Spain’s future. But it’s also a test of whether the European Union — divided between north and south, east and west — can long endure.

In some ways, the referendum on Catalan independence is a very Spanish affair, with grievances that run all the way back to Catalonia’s loss of independence in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714). But the Catalans lost more than their