BARCELONA (MarketWatch) — Spanish police helicopters have been buzzing residential neighborhoods here most nights since the Catalonian independence vote on October 1.

“They fly so low outside my kitchen window,” a middle-aged, professional woman tells me with a roll of her eyes. “I’ve been saying to my husband, we should invite them in for dinner.”

If this is an attempt by the Spanish government to intimidate people — or to win friends and influence them — it isn’t working. Instead it’s just one of many steps Madrid has taken that seem to be designed to annoy, irritate, or inflame local opinion. These include sending in riot police with batons to beat people taking part in the independence referendum, arresting popular local figures, moving to suspend the local constitution and impose direct rule, and needlessly escalating the inflammatory rhetoric.

The results are what you’d expect. I”ve spent the last few days in Barcelona, talking to people of all ages and backgrounds and opinions. Most are still moderates. But they are being squeezed — and hard. Not long ago, only a small minority of Catalans, perhaps 20%, supported outright independence, according to many locals. Nowadays it could be more than half. Indeed, on October 1, 43% of registered Catalan voters braved riot police to vote on independence from Spain in the unofficial referendum; 90% said Catalonia should become an autonomous republic. As one middle-aged professional woman put it, “I’m running out of arguments for why I oppose independence.”

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This crisis matters in more ways than just the obvious. Spain’s national net debt is more than one trillion euros (about $1.2 trillion), according to the International Monetary Fund. That’s three times the amount owed by Greece when it went into meltdown. Anything threatening the stability of this country — the fourth-biggest inside the eurozone — would surely rock international markets. Catalonia is a key component of the Spanish economy. It’s among the richest and most productive regions, accounts for about a fifth of Spain’s gross domestic product, and is a major net contributor to the Spanish budget.

There will be no big winners and plenty of losers if this crisis escalates. So it is astonishing to watch Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy mishandle it.

Rajoy’s actions have been so inept that most people I spoke to in Barcelona assumed it was all part of a cynical ploy to provoke the situation for political gain. Rajoy, they say, wants to distract Spanish voters from a very public corruption scandal in which he was forced to testify in court. They also fear he wants to play the anti-Catalan card with voters in the rest of Spain.

The pro-Madrid voices here say Rajoy isn’t being cynical, just incompetent. Meanwhile many are also deeply critical of the Catalan government, accusing the separatist politicians of cynically using the crisis to achieve their own ends.

The question, as is so often the case these days, is: Where are the grown-ups?

The stakes are extremely high. For example, in the 1970s Montreal was the business capital of Canada. But Quebec separatism drove the economic hub to Toronto. It never returned. Barcelona is a major and thriving economic hub. Locals do not want this to happen to them.

Meanwhile, Madrid seems to have little understanding of how its actions are hurting its image abroad. It is barely four decades since Spain was a poor country ruled with an iron fist by a fascist dictator aligned with Adolf Hitler. Images of baton-wielding stormtroopers beating voters don’t just make investors think twice about Catalonia — they make investors think twice about Spain. Seriously, does Madrid think this plays well in New York, London, or Tokyo?

Many Catalans also say they are also deeply disappointed by the apparent indifference of the European Commission to the problem. Brussels claims it does not interfere in the internal affairs of member states. That would surely come as news to the Greeks, now currently enjoying their seventh year of EU-imposed austerity.

If Madrid had just stepped in to take away the coupons of German banks, rather than the political rights of Spanish voters, does anyone believe Brussels would remain silent? Brussels is quick to speak up for the “rights of EU citizens” when it can use them as bargaining chips for more money in the Brexit negotiations with London. Otherwise, not so much.

Barcelona does not yet feel like a city in crisis. The restaurants are busy, the shops and market squares are buzzing. My flight in from London was overbooked, and so was the following one. There is no air of menace on the streets. On the contrary, I’ve rarely liked a city more. Barcelona is like a warm-weather Paris. I felt safer than I would in Disney World. Even the independence demonstrations were family affairs. They took place between the Apple shop and Emporio Armani, kids and grandparents came along, and demonstrators sipped white wine from long-stemmed glasses. Catalans, even those supporting independence, seem much more pro-Spanish than, say, the Scottish and Welsh are pro-English.

Widespread support for independence is new. Most people I spoke to here still seem open to a sensible compromise. Madrid could probably solve this crisis with generous symbolic gestures towards Catalonian national identity, a bit more autonomy, and either some rebate on Catalan’s tax overpayments or some additional infrastructure investment. And the King could make himself useful, and undo the damage of his bellicose previous speech with a positive one.

Madrid and Barcelona can still avoid a completely avoidable crisis. But the longer this goes on, the harder that becomes.