Spain has already given up control of interest rates to Frankfurt, but at least it has an input. Catalonia would not even be an afterthought to the ECB. And of course, Catalonia would not be able to print euros, and so would be reliant on trade for hard currency.

That needn’t be a death knell –it works OK for Ecuador with the US dollar – but it certainly isn’t healthy. And if Catalonia’s trade did collapse once it found itself outside the EU, then it might well suffer a serious hard currency crisis.

Beyond the economics, if Catalonia does declare independence by next week, the Generalitat will be dragging a lot of unwilling people with it. Events this weekend may well have changed minds, but at the last count in July, support for independence was only at 40 per cent, and it dropped to 32 per cent when given the option of more autonomy.

On top of that, while Catalan identity is strong, the region has a multicultural society, and the Catalan language, so central to separatism, is only seen as “their own language” by 38 per cent of residents, compared to 45 per cent for Spanish. In addition, many non-Catalan Spaniards live there, as do a lot of immigrants, especially from Latin America.