"Sociological Francoism" is a term I learned about through this website, and I find it a bit ridiculous that it's listed under ideologies here. It's Spanish fascism and there doesn't seem to be need to demarcate it differently in the English language section of this website. Spanish language section? Sure, it makes perfect sense. English language section - do you really expect anyone to recognize this?
Nevertheless, my uninformed American self will make an attempt to answer. Spain is in the EU. The end-goal of the European Union is a federal Europe; most Euroskeptic… Read more parties just want to delay that outcome until their dead and its not their problem anymore. Spain's reaction to the Catalan secession thing was ridiculous. If the European Union is eventually going to federalize then it doesn't matter if all the minority regions break off to form their own states, because they're all going to be part of the EU anymore. National unity does not matter in this context.
Spanish politicians seem to care for two reasons: 1) Catalonia is the wealthiest region in Spain and, apparently, contributes more money to the Spanish government's coffers than the rest of it. It'd be like if the Northeastern United States, Texas, Florida, and California all decided to secede from the US tomorrow. 2) Spanish nationalism is defined by a desire to keep Spain whole, but Spain unified because of a marriage 500 years ago, not because of popular will and all of that countries' minority populations would rather jump off that sinking ship.
I'm sure a Franoist response to this question would be something to the effect of "Ban Catalan language instruction, murder all the independence activists, and keep most of the country on military occupation forever." But Francoism only succeeded in comparison to the other fascist states that destroyed themselves in the Second World War. By every other metric it left Spain poorer and worse off.
The sensible answer here would instead seem to be to accelerate European unification by continuing the practice of wealthier countries in the EU offsetting the performance of poorer regions with wealth transfers to them - the same way it works in the US and the same way is sort of seems to work in Europe already. This way, even if Catalonia successfully succeeds the rest of Spain is still benefiting from their relatively greater wealth the way they are now, and they're also benefiting from Germany and France and the rest of the continent.
