Spanish steps

King Felipe of Spain (Scotsman, 4 October), along with recent correspondents, criticises the Catalan independence referendum as being “illegal”.

We should remember that the late General Franco rebelled militarily against and overthrew the elected government of the Spanish Republic inthe1930s,atthecostofmany lives.

That was certainly illegal, but the present Spanish king and government owe their positions to it. Some older Catalans, seeing recent Spanish police violence, remarked “Franco lives”.

DAVID STEVENSON Blacket Place, Edinburgh The lack of condemnation of the brutality encouraged by the Spanish government against supporters of independence in Catalonia and meted out by thuggish police forces on their behalf shames the British government and indeed virtually all of the EU countries with the honourable exception of Belgium.

This is also reflected in comments made by the Scotsman columnist Brian Wilson and at the micro level by your correspondent Alexander Mckay (Letters, 2 October). It appears that for these gentlemen and their ilk, such is their hatred of the SNP and fear of Scottish independence that it surpasses any requirement to expect civilised behaviourfromallegeddemocracies like Spain.

So long as people who have the gall to exercise their right to self-determination can be labelled with the pejorative term of “separatists” and defeated by the power of the state, be it by police or propaganda, it’s all right by them. However, history is littered with literally hundreds of examples of small states which have had to struggle to obtain independence from historical imperial powers. It tends to show that the worse the level of repression is, the more it has galvanised the impetus towards independence.

GILL TURNER Derby Street, Edinburgh