Battling for Catalonia and Greening Dubai: The Week in Global-Affairs Writing
The highlights from seven days of reading about the world
Matt Goulding | “The issue of Catalan independence has become as much a PR question as a political one. Knowing that Spain would never allow a clean break, the separatists’ primary hope has been to garner enough international support to pressure the Spanish government into allowing a binding referendum. In 12 hours of boot-stomps and nightsticks, Madrid did more to legitimize a call for independence than anything the Catalan politicians have done in recent years. By the end of the day, everyone from Belgium’s Charles Michel to Angela Merkel, politicians
