His party is running a one-man, single-issue campaign: a vote for Artur Mas, president of the Catalan government, is a vote for independence from Spain.

The election poster shows Mas against a backdrop of Catalan flags, both hands raised in a four-finger salute. Why four fingers? Because they represent the four red stripes of the Catalan emblem, allegedly created when a Catalan count drew his bloodied fingers down his shield in a dying act as he defended Barcelona from the forces of Islam.

But is Mas really a messiah leading Catalonia to the promised land of independence? It appears that quite a few people inside Catalonia, as well as abroad, think this is what is at stake when they vote in regional elections on 25 November. But the truth is more complicated.

By creating a colourful link with the iconography of the nation, Mas hopes to make an indissoluble connection between himself and the essence of being Catalan. He also hopes that Catalans will forget that, before they decided that independence was the magic bullet that would cure all ills, they were taking to the streets daily to protest at his government's cuts in public spending. The campaign slogan is "the people's will".

The question many are asking is whether Mas is a closet secessionist who has finally come out or just an old-fashioned opportunist surfing the nationalist tide that has risen out of the economic crisis. Could it be that the messiah of independence is not himself a believer?

Mas never uses the word "independence" and it does not appear in his party, Convergència i Unió's manifesto, which instead refers to "our own state", Mas's preferred locution. Even that sticks in the throat of Josep Antoni Duran Lleida, leader of the Unió half of CiU, who said recently that he could not imagine Spain and Catalonia being separate. In a meeting with business leaders Mas even referred to Spain as "our country", something not even the most half-hearted separatist would say.

It was a placatory measure. CiU is the party of business and is anxious not to scare its natural ally with separatist rhetoric. And business is not keen on independence for two reasons: it does not like destabilising change and, in general, business likes things to get bigger, not smaller.

The boss of Planeta, Spain's biggest publisher, has already said he would move his headquarters out of Barcelona were Catalonia to become independent. The Spanish publishing industry is worth €2.8bn and 40% of it is headquartered in Catalonia, so this is not to be sniffed at.

"One major reason for multinationals to locate in Barcelona is access to the Spanish market and being in the European Union," says Xavier Mendoza of ESADE Business School in Madrid. "Investors are not going to want to invest in Catalonia in a period of transition and instability. I think independence is a lose-lose proposition for both Spain and Catalonia." Catalonia accounts for 19% of Spain's GDP.

Money may indeed triumph over sentiment, money and the fear of being ejected from the EU. There were rumours, for example, that next season Barcelona football club's away shirt will be the red and yellow stripes of the Catalan flag. The rumour has since died away, however. Perhaps someone in marketing reminded the club's nationalist president that more than half of the estimated 1,800 supporters' clubs are outside Catalonia and that fans in Madrid or Seville might find it awkward, to say the least, to walk around dressed in a Catalan flag.

The outcome of the election may hang on the 50% of Catalans who, according to polls, do not favour independence. Traditionally a minority of people of Spanish origin vote in Catalan elections, seeing it as a local affair. However, with independence on the agenda, they may feel they need to play a part this time.

Having initially appealed to voters to hand him an absolute majority, claiming that without it the independence project would lack credibility, on Friday Mas admitted that winning such a majority is "practically impossible". He is now seeking "an exceptional majority," a somewhat vaguer concept, which seems to mean ensuring that the Socialists come a very poor second.

Disappointingly pragmatic, coming from a messiah.