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Article snippet: TERRASSA, Spain — Jordi Juanico Sabaté, a 6-foot-8 giant of a man, folded himself into a cafe chair in this Catalan city and fixed his eyes at a point on the horizon. He was thinking about Sunday, when Catalan leaders have scheduled a vote on separating from Spain. Vast numbers of Catalans are hurtling toward a confrontation: Spanish security forces have been moved into the region on cruise ships, under orders to halt the vote by force. But Mr. Juanico, 59, a counselor in a psychiatric hospital, shrugged off the threat of violence as if it were a detail. He looked serene, almost blissful. “All my life, I had the dream of dying in an independent country,” he said. “It was a dream that used to seem very remote. But now it is very near.” In an age of fragmentation, the Catalan referendum stands apart. Unlike the Kurds, who voted overwhelmingly this week to separate from Iraq, Catalans, who live in an autonomous region in Spain’s northeast, are not driven by an external threat or oppression. They live well, in the prosperous heart of Europe. Their grievances are old and bone-deep, reawakened by political movements, both in Catalonia and in Madrid, magnified by partisan news media on both sides, and accelerated by the Spanish government’s blunt, reflexive clampdown. That it has progressed to this dangerous point is testament to the power of a nationalist narrative. It unfolded so naturally, older people worried, that the young did not fully understand the risk they we... Link to the full article to read more