The idea of the Catalan plebiscite is not new, the idea emerged immediately after the manifestation of last year’s Diada. It is an antidote to the referendum ban. What will happen in Catalonia in 2014 or 2015. The news, the date of the plebiscite proposed by President Artur Mas for 2016, revolutionized independence.

In view of Mariano Rajoy’s answer to Mas, you can now see how the first referendum clash occurs and when the plebiscite is held. The response of the Madrid Government has not been the hardest, as it closes the door to the referendum, but it offers carrots to CIU and Mas. There will be time for tougher positions. But if the clash comes, and everyone is accumulating their own trench with arguments of all kinds, because it has to be shown that everyone does everything they can to adapt to what can be in a Western democracy.

It was Rajoy who made his bet, but it cannot be imagined that it goes beyond the tax pact. It is a question of resisting, of demonstrating that Spanish legality is above the will of the Catalans. In the meantime, to reach an agreement with the PSOE in Spain. If, at the EU’s request, the budget deficit target was met overnight in the Constitution, they will seek formulas to meet the Catalan challenge.

They will not be able to stay the same, as well as feeding Catalan independence, in Europe they would not look clean either. The tax pact and the federal model that must be offered, while addressing the threat of fear, particularly with the economy and with the exclusion of the EU. But it won't be enough, and there will also be tougher threats: The suspension of the Statute; the legal threats with Mas and other leaders; and with Spain, of course, the force and the threat of the army. The continuous references of the Balkans are there. And also the activity of the Spanish extreme right.

WHAT MORE? But it moves through last year's Diada, which was captured by the wave of independentism and which has since surfaced it in a vague way. Javier Pérez Royo, for example, is clear that the regional elections last year were plebiscitary and Mas lost: “No one can overcome the annulment of plebiscite elections, this is definitive and irreversible” (El País, 06-09-2013).

Vilaweb’s director, Vicent Partal, strongly sees Mas, but gives him more importance than Pérez Royo, considering him key in this process. “It has a strong image (...) and a large part of the people, even the part that does not vote, recognizes that without it all this would not go ahead.”

However, the uncertainty is great, and independence is rooted in the regression of the 2006 Statute of José Luís Rodríguez Zapatero in his brain.

And what possibilities does the Generalitat have? For the time being, continue to build up forces and convene a referendum in 2014, as set out in the full government agreement. The next Diada would not be a bad date. Spain will deny it, and then plebiscite elections would be convened in the same winter of 2014 or in the first half of 2015, according to Rajoy. That is what the president of AMI (Municipalities for Independence), Josep Maria Vila d’Abascal believes: “The municipal elections of May 2015 can be used to hold the plebiscite.”

Depending on the results, the following steps will be taken, which according to the position of Spain can reach the declaration of independence. But that's going too fast, there's a lot of scenarios and you can't predict how they're going to open up. However, there is no doubt that Catalan independence continues to grow and that, in one way or another, it will find a way of expressing the majority.

In any case, knowing the trajectories of Mas and CIU, it cannot be ruled out that there is a desire to slow down the path and that there is an agreement with the PSC that recognizes the right to decide. If Mas got stuck in the next elections, the CIU option would be the most realistic option. By the force of independentism, it would be the weakest hypothesis, but from the point of view of each other's trail, it would also be the most inevitable.