Usti nad Labem/Bilina, North Bohemia, Oct 3 (CTK) – The Catalan referendum on Sunday showed the beginning regionalisation of Europe, Czech President Milos Zeman said in a debate with the Usti Region officials on Tuesday, adding that he expects Scotland’s effort to leave Britain.
Zeman, who arrived on a three-day visit to the region, said later he considered the Spanish central bodies’ intervention against the referendum on the independence of Catalonia, a rich Spanish region, inappropriate.
“Let us imagine that supporters of independent Moravia are demonstrating in Brno… And imagine that the police start shooting rubber bullets at these demonstrators who want to vote. This should be the reason for the government to fall, or at least for the dismissal of the interior minister, but I should say the fall of the whole government,” Zeman said during his visit to Bilina on Tuesday.
If this did not happen in Catalonia, it proves the Spanish government’s desperate fear of the Catalan independence, Zeman said.
“A response by rubber bullets is never an adequate response in democratic politics,” he added.
At present, search of independence is not a topic in Catalonia only, Zeman said.
“We can watch the start of a gradual regionalisation of Europe. It does not involve Catalonia only, but also Scotland, which reacted to Brexit by demanding a new referendum, and it is very probable that this time, Scotland will want to leave Britain and enter the EU,” Zeman said.
“There is also Padania, where quite a strong separatist or autonomous movement has emerged,” Zeman said.
He said it is natural that separatist tendencies appear in well-off regions.
He said his own wild hypothesis are possible separatist tendencies in Germany.
“If I applied the above criterion to Germany, who should drift away first? Naturally, the Free State of Bavaria. Of course, I am not saying this will happen, God forbid. Nevertheless, I would like to mention the fact that a project of the restored Bavarian kingdom under the Wittelsbach dynasty was prepared shortly after World War One. If the project had been implemented, it might have been harder for Adolf Hitler to come to power,” Zeman said.
Zeman also reiterated in Bilina that regions of the current European countries might start seceding from them soon.
“Let us count with some European region to start longing for independence from time to time. Let us hope this will not be Moravia,” Zeman said.
Barcelona announced that 2.26 million voters, or 42.3 percent, took part in the referendum, and 90 percent of them voted for Catalan independence. Almost 900 demonstrators were injured in the Spanish police’s tough intervention against the Catalan separation’s fans on Sunday.
