An introduction to separatism

I'm in Nice, typing on a French keyboard where the a is q, the m is a comma, the w is z, and the punctuation is impossible. Beqr zith ,e.
I actually wrote the Barcelona post from Nice, and after that city but before this one we went to Olot, a small town in the northeast of France. We stayed for three nights with a family that two years ago was Johns host family.
We got the small Spanish town experience, nights out with Johns host sisters friends to the parks, the bars, and the forest (its a really cool forest).
The family was great. The daughter, Miriam, seemed to know everyone in the town and all the hot bars. She is our age and going to go to college in Barcelona. The son, Arnou, played Nintendo Wi with us. The Mom, Montse, made us huge lunches, including a ridiculously good paella. The Dad, Miguel, was the Patriarch of the Family. When he came home, everyone gathered around him, waiting to hug him, kiss him, and ask how his day was.
John's description of their typical family scene was dead-on. Montse and Miguel are in the kitchen. Montse is on the phone, replying, "Vale, vale, vale, vale, vale, vale" ("vale" means "okay"). Miguel is at the table, smoking a cigar and eating from a plate stacked with ham.
One time during lunch, the family poured wine into a jug with a straw-like spigot at the top. Then, they used the jug to pour wine into their mouth through the spigot. Montse and Miriam held it close to their mouths, as if waterfalling a bottle of water. King Miguel held the jug a foot from his face, pouring the wine into his mouth like one of those fountain-statues we saw around Spain, like a Viking celebrating after a battle.
Later on in the lunch, Miguel asked Sam why he was eating so little.
"I have a small appetite," Sam said in Spanish.
"At 10 in the morning, we eat," Miguel said in Spanish. "At noon, we eat." "At four, we eat." "At seven, we eat." "At 10, we eat." "And at 12, we fuck."
So that´s Miguel, the coolest dad in western Europe. He was also serious and passionate about the need for Cataluña (the area in Spain in which he lives) to get its independence.
One night, I came home early, sick. Miguel made me some tea.
We made small talk for a minute.
"No estàs en España," he said. In English: You are not in Spain.
I was confused for a second, before I realized what he meant.
"Estoy en Cataluña?" I said.
"Si, en Cataluña!" he bellowed.
We spent the next hour and a half discussing Cataluña's struggle for independence from Spain. The language barrier presented a significant obstacle to full comprehension, so I might have misunderstood some of what he said. But I got the gist.
Cataluña is a part of Spain in the northwest that includes Barcelona, Spain's second largest city. The people in Cataluña speak Catalan as well as Castillian (what we think of as Spanish), and Catalan is more like French or Italian than it is like Spanish. The culture is supposedly different, too.
Cataluña, according to Miguel, is the engine of Spain. He said that the two places of greatest industry and business are Cataluña and the Basque country (the other area in Spain where there is a major separatism movement) and that greater Spain screws these two areas by extracting far more wealth than it gives back.
I told him that California suffers a similar fate, with the national government pulling out more money than it puts in.
He replied that to help the rest of the country would be okay, but that Cataluña was being hung. He put his hands around his neck so that I would understand. That Cataluña was being castrated. He made a chopping gesture, again to help me understand.
"And," he said in Spanish, "In the US, states can make their own laws."
I said that the freedom was not absolute, giving the issue of abortion as an example of the national government going above the states. He replied that the United States was still far less unitary than Spain. He presented the American states' differing execution laws as an example of laws in American states that differ far more than laws in Spanish provinces do.
The money issue and Cataluña's inability to make its own laws were important, but Miguel was most angry about what he perceived as larger Spain's disrespect for Cataluña.
I told him what Elena had said in Barcelona about Cataluña's separatist movement: in a globalizing world, separatism hurts efficiency.
"Si, tiene razón, he said. "Pero quiero unión con respeto," In English: Yes, that's a reasonable argument, but I want a union with respect.
He gave me a lesson in Cataluñan history. Cataluña once extended into France and Valencia (Spain's third-largest city), and the islands of Mallorca, Minorca, and Ibiza were part of Cataluña. All of that territory was lost when Spain forced a unification.
To an extent, I sympathise with Cataluña's separatists, if all of what Miguel says is true, especially about the unfair financial situation. But I buck against it, too. At some point in the conversation, I remarked on the sadness of the separatists' situation, saying they fought over sovereignty instead of issues that could create progress.
"But we are fighting for progress," Miguel said in Spanish.
And I guess many of the fights in America are no better. Fights over gay rights, abortion, stem cells, religion in daily life, flag-burning, and other sexy issues distract from the conditions that will have a far larger effect on our standards of living, such as how to protect the environment and what our foreign policy should be.
I asked why Cataluña didn't unite with the Basques in the national government to gain more rights for the provinces, especially over taxation. Larger Spain would still have a majority, Miguel said. So Cataluñans call for separation.
Still, they fight peacefully. By this time, Montse was in the kitchen, making a new batch of tea. She agreed, saying that Cataluña would be persistent but would not make violence. In the Basque country, some separatists are terrorists.
"Better to educate," Miguel said. "Better to educate American students who come to live with us."

In Nice, we have lived the high life on the cheap. We are staying with family friends of John's family (the family knows Sam and me as well).
They are incredible, giving us a living room in which to sleep, taking us out to fancy, delicious dinners, holding guided tours of Nice, inviting us along with them to a friend's house on top of a hill overlooking Nice and St. Jean (a neighboring city), and bringing us to all the hot beaches.
Nice is a beautiful, vibrant town surrounded by the Mediterranean and Roman ruins. We have relaxed in preparation for Amsterdam and loved it.
Tonight, we get on a night train to the Netherlands. Soon, I'll be writing from across the continent.