>Of course the people in a prosperous part of the country want to split off. Absolute democracy seems to result in an undesirable situation, because do we really want to live in a world that converges towards little selfish islands?

Did you ever consider the possibility that maybe the people in Catalonia somehow work harder/smarter/better than in the other regions of Spain? In which case the rest of Spain would be the selfish ones, wanting to mooch off Catalonia, just like a lazy brother always nagging his richer brother for money. In my experience, often when Person A calls Person B selfish, it's because Person A expects Person B to do something for Person A without Person A doing anything back in return, which to me seems particularly selfish.