Catalan Way
Catalonia saw several local referenda for independence take place in hundreds of villages between 13 September 2009 and April 2011, with an overwhelming number of "yes" votes being cast.
The 2012 Catalan independence demonstration, organized by the Catalan National Assembly, argued that Catalonia should become an independent state within the European Union, under the slogan "Catalonia, new state in Europe". The number of participants was estimated at about 1.5 million according to Barcelona's Municipal Police and Catalonia's Department of the Interior, about 2 million according to the organizers, and about 600,000 according to the delegation of the Spanish government in Catalonia.
Politics of Catalonia
Unlike the autonomous communities of Navarre and the Basque Country, Catalonia lacks its own tax system; thus the economic financing of the regional administration depends almost entirely on funds raised by national-government taxation and budgeted to Catalonia. This became a mainstream issue at the time of amending the Catalan Statute of Autonomy. From an economic perspective, the regional government aims to achieve a high degree of fiscal autonomy (based on the argument that the region pays in more to the national Spanish coffers than it receives, thus overlooking the "solidarity between regions" enshrined by the Spanish Constitution of 1978).