Intro
With our presentation we have identified the most important independence
movements influenced by Brexit. Surfing the net looking for information
for the research we understood the reason of all this trouble: after the
financial crisis of 2008, all these regions have been the engines of their
countries. But now they are bored to be exploited and after the example of
Brexit, independence has grown up in the heart of these people.
Catalonia
Catalonia and Spain have always been different: they
don't share the same language and they have different cultural backgrounds
and history. But the independentist political movement we know today finds
its origins in 1922, with the foundation of the Catalan state party. This
and other parties managed to reach a sort of autonomy in 1931, with
negotiations with the Spanish state. Because of Francisco Franco, autonomy
was revoked in 1938, but then was recovered in 1975. After the economical
crisis of 2007, the modern Independence movement was born, in particular
in 2010 when the Constitutional Court of Spain ruled that some of the
articles of the Statute of Autonomy were unconstitutional. Popular
protests against the decision quickly turned into demand for independence.
Carles Puigdemont, regional president of Catalonia, said about Brexit that
"the referendum has shown that nowadays it's possible to decide about
sovereignty with total freedom of choice".
Northern Italy
The northern regions of Veneto and Lombardy are some of the Italy's
wealthiest. Unlike Catalonia, these regions are not asking for
independence but their goal is to reach in the future a step by step
autonomy on financial matters. A few months ago a referendum was held to
let the citizens choose if these regions should start negotiating for a
sort of autonomy about minor areas such as culture and so on. Obviously
this is just the first step, but the final goal as I said is to reach
independence financially-wise. Brexit was taken several times as
example during the political campaign of the parties desiring this
particular type of independence. They said for example that it is normal
that richer regions aim to autonomy, because they can manage money in a
more efficient way. They also said: "Just look at Great Britain: now that
they can use their money as they want, they will become more and more
powerful".
Flanders
Another nation that pretends to become independent from the motherland is
Flanders. Thanks to the nationalist movement NVA (New Flemish
Alliance) they succeeded to be part of the government after the 2014
elections, building the foundation to transform Belgium into a
confederation. While in Catalonia people were expressing their opinion on
the independence, Flemish have paraded to state their support for YES, to
follow the wave of separatism and arrive to the Belgian votation at
2019 with an hard support of the Flemish population. But the most hilarious
thing is that they fought a "war" for independence in Brussels,
headquarters of some European agencies and emblem of Union.
Texas
Secessionism and independence are widespread in the USA and by the
emergence of the economical crisis they are becoming difficult to manage. In
particular today I'm going to focus my attention on Texas exit, they call
it TEXIT. Daniel Miller is the leader of the nationalist movement
called TNM, whom after the Brexit requires a referendum to the Governor
by declaring the support of over a quarter million of supporters. But
why should Texas get out of the USA? First of all, the general discontent in
the population, which comes from the excessive tax burdens and from the
military campaign financing. Secondly, the majority of us maybe don't know
that Texas is the second largest economy in the United States, in fact
Texas has the fourth biggest oil reserve and its petrol is considered as the
greatest of the Nation. Also the field of energy resources is rich with
wind and solar energy. Not to mention the Bank's financial support that
finances development and research. If Texas independence would be
recognized, this State would be about 14th in the World.
Canada
We have a different situation in Canada, in particular we
are talking about Quebec. The independence is not something that
population want but it is a Government's desire. Parti Québécois is the name
of the independence group that tried to promote Quebec independence
through the huge number of citizens that don't consider the
independence as a priority basically because they realize that there are
more serious problems to solve like the unemployment, which is 7,3%
higher than the national standard, or the Public health, where the 62% of the
population is unhappy of the poor service. To cut the story short,
we can say that the Quebec independence is something that in this moment
politicians want just to obtain more power and advantages for themselves
and not something that could potentially improve the internal Quebec's
economy.