THE SCOTTISH PRECEDENT IS DEVOLUTION OR DEPARTURE:

[W]hile the Scottish referendum was jointly proposed by the British and Scottish governments, Mr Mas is treading a more dangerous path. Madrid has refused to hold a referendum, so he is going it alone. On Friday Catalonia's parliament passed a so-called "law of consultations", with a view to allowing Mr Mas to call a referendum on November 9. Spain's conservative prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, will try to block the referendum by sending the law to the constitutional court for study. They will almost certainly suspend it for several months, and may strike it down. 

Mr Mas may try to call the referendum over the weekend, before the court has a chance to suspend it. But the court could then ban the referendum. If Mr Mas obeys and cancels the referendum, his minority nationalist government, propped up by the separatist Catalan Republican Left (ERC), may fall. The ERC has called for civil disobedience if the referendum does not take place.

In the mildest scenario, Mr Mas may go through the motions of rebelling for several weeks before finally bowing to the law. In the most extreme one, Mr Mas could stage an illegal referendum, with police moving in to remove urns and Madrid suspending the Catalan regional government's right to rule. That is unlikely, but not impossible. Much depends on the attitude of ERC.

A final option might be for Mr Mas to call early Catalan elections, turning them into a clear demand for an independence referendum, as Scottish leader Alex Salmond did. A large "yes" vote would be hard to ignore. If national elections next year weaken Mr Rajoy or produce a Socialist victory, Madrid might become more malleable. But Mr Mas's own Democratic Catalan Convergence party (CDC) is likely to do badly in those elections; the likely winner would be the separatist ERC.

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