Parties calling for independence from Spain got yesterday a combined 51% of the votes in the Catalan Parliament election and secured an enlarged absolute majority of seats. The result opens the door for main independence parties ERC and Junts to rekindle an agreement to stay in power, although it is unclear what their roadmap will be. Keep reading

Pressure in China against the use of languages such as Tibetan, Uyghur, or Korean is worsening, with schools having become one of the battlegrounds. Chinese authorities have now announced that regulations allowing the use of minoritised languages in classrooms are unconstitutional. Keep reading

The Scottish National Party (SNP) has unveiled a Scottish government’s plan to hold a second independence referendum if, in next May’s elections, pro-independence parties win a majority. The SNP seeks to reach an agreement with the UK government, but in case that is not possible, the pro-independence party does not rule out a legal and political conflict. Boris Johnson, for the moment, is sticking to a strict “no”, despite some speculation to the contrary. The following are important facts and figures to take into account in order to have some context. Keep reading

Quebec announced in December 2020 an agreement to demarcate 20% of its northern territory —home to the Inuit people— to protect it from industrial exploitation. But Quebec’s main Inuit organisation, the Makivik Corporation, is saying now is not the time to talk about that, as the priority lies in an ongoing “self-determination process” that should lead to the creation of an autonomous government in Nunavik. Keep reading

Recent confirmation of a prison sentence for Bashkir activist Airat Dilmukhametov has again highlighted the dangers of raising one’s voice for the rights of stateless nations and peoples in Russia. The Volga republics —such as Bashkortostan and Tatarstan—, Caucasus, and Crimea account for most of the cases. Keep reading

Three articles on Nagorno-Karabakh are among the 10 most read in Nationalia among those published in 2020. New articles on linguistic diversity have been the other major focus of interest among our readers, along with some background analysis on countries that are not usually make headlines. Thank you all for reading, and we hope that next year will be better than the one we are closing. Keep reading