Is the independence of Catalonia a cause worth dying for? This question appeared hypothetical until voters in Barcelona and other Catalan cities found themselves under police attack during last Sunday’s controversial independence referendum. While separatist leaders say hundreds were injured, fortunately no one was killed. Mariano Rajoy, Spain’s conservative prime minister who oversaw the assault, should count himself lucky. The violence was viewed around the world via social media, turning international opinion against the government. Creating martyrs for the opposition is not the way to win a political argument.

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The ill-considered police action was the latest in a string of attempts by Rajoy’s weak, minority government to block the push for independence. Earlier this year, the former Catalan president, Artur Mas, was banned from public office for staging a previous, symbolic referendum in 2014. At that time, 80% of participants voted “yes”. Yet less than half of Catalonia’s 5.4 million eligible voters took part, due to a boycott by the “no” camp. Sunday’s disrupted poll produced a similar result. But despite winning considerably less than 50% support, the separatists now claim to have a mandate to break with Spain.

Rajoy declared the referendum illegal, drawing on a ruling by Spain’s constitutional court, and tried every means to thwart it. Pressure has only increased since the vote. A meeting of the Catalan parliament on Mondaywas banned. The assembly is now due to meet on Tuesday. If, as threatened, a declaration of independence is made then, Rajoy is poised to impose direct rule from Madrid, deploying the national police and possibly the army, too, and arresting separatist leaders. It is at this point, if it is reached, that the prospect of dying for Catalonia becomes very real indeed.

It is plain that the Spanish government has mismanaged recent events. Matters should never have been allowed to reach this point. Rajoy’s contention – that the Catalan regional government has overstepped its authority and ignored or broken the law – is irrefutable from a narrow legal perspective. But his ever louder insistence that this is a purely a legal and constitutional issue does not make it so in the minds of the public at large. Catalan independence is primarily a political problem requiring imaginative political answers. These Rajoy has signally failed to provide. The divisive partisanship shown by RTVE, the state broadcaster, and other media has further clouded the picture.

According to opinion polls (and the 2014 referendum, which was not disrupted by police), a majority of people in the autonomous Catalan region do not support independence. They also dislike being told what to do by Madrid. This majority is what is sometimes called “Silent Catalonia”. When Carles Puigdemont, the Catalan president, called a post-referendum strike, workers in many Barcelona shops and private sector businesses ignored him. Residents who have spoken to the Observer complained of intimidation and threats by pro-independence activists. Far from criticising members of the Guardia Civil, a group of women in one Barcelona neighbourhood thanked them for stepping in on referendum day after local police allegedly failed to keep order.

Puigdemont and the ramshackle coalition of nationalists, republicans and leftists that supports him continue to ignore this majority view, claiming to have finally made the case for independence when the exact opposite is true. Their behaviour, like Rajoy’s, is irresponsible. Like Rajoy’s minority government in the Cortes, their political base is narrow: they have but a tenuous grip on the 135-seat Catalan assembly. Puigdemont, the man at the heart of the independence storm, was the unexpected replacement for Mas. He lacks his predecessor’s experience and elan. Like Rajoy, he seems desperate to make his mark and fearful of appearing irresolute.

In common with other European countries, Spain is cursed by weak leaders. The neglectful insouciance of the EU and European governments is a case in point. If ever two opposing sides, locked into confrontational positions and with tempers fraying, needed an honest broker to yank them back from the abyss, this is it. But who will help? Not the EU it seems. Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker’s lazy contention that Catalonia is solely an internal matter is as foolish as it is unrealistic. The fact that Rajoy is an ally of the centre-right majority in the council of ministers and the European parliament could partly explain this dereliction.

The EU has clear obligations under European and international law to safeguard the rights of EU citizens in Catalonia, which include the right to self-determination, however that is defined. The EU also has an obvious political interest in the stability and integrity of an important member state, not least because a violent secessionist struggle could trigger separatist sentiment in the Basque country, northern Italy, Flanders and Northern Ireland, to name a few potential flashpoints. Manfred Weber, a senior German MEP, warned yesterday of “European wildfire” if Catalonia crashes out of the EU. How humiliating that Switzerland is offering to mediate while Brussels sits on its hands.

Amid all the recalcitrance and recklessness, there are small hints of compromise. Rajoy has repeated previous offers of all-party talks on remodelled autonomy arrangements – if the “illegality” ceases. A government representative has apologised for last weekend’s police violence. The idea of new Catalan regional elections has been floated, to clear the air. On the separatist side, Puigdemont is hesitating over an independence declaration, now saying only that he will discuss the “political situation”. His repeated appeals for outside mediation suggest a man worried his bluff is about to be called. And less divisive figures are emerging within the separatist camp, notably Santi Vila, the business minister, who wants a “ceasefire” with Madrid.

The negative consequences of an unsanctioned rupture are meanwhile becoming clearer. One-third of Catalonia’s police force, the Mossos d’Esquadra, is reportedly on the point of quitting because they were not allowed to support the national police. Alarmingly for the region’s economy, leading businesses, utilities, wineries and banks are shifting their corporate headquarters elsewhere, encouraged by a pre-emptive regulatory change by Madrid. The Bank of Santander is said to have opened up to 6,000 new accounts for Catalans moving their savings to Aragon or other safer parts of Spain.

When all is said and done, there is something inescapably romantic about an independence struggle. It excites visceral feelings about identity and destiny. It conjures wild images of flags, clenched fists and Braveheart heroics. But reality rarely matches the dream. Economic viability is one critical consideration. Here is another: in a globalised, interconnected world, where national frontiers, especially in Europe, count for less and less, especially among the young, the 19th-century concept of the exclusive nation state is increasingly anachronistic. Amid all the emotion and calculation, a basic question remains unanswered by Catalonia’s separatists, as it does in pre-Brexit England: at a time when old divisions are thankfully breaking down, why create more walls?