Spain needs a coalition of the sober

LOOKED AT FROM outside, Spain appears to be doing pretty well. Its strong economic recovery from the euro crisis continues, albeit at a slower pace than in the past. Unemployment, though still high, is down to almost half its peak. Bars and restaurants heave with tourists and with Spaniards who once again have cash to spend. Despite that, the country has just been proclaimed the world’s healthiest. Yet as the campaign gets under way for a third general election in little more than three years on April 28th, Spain’s underlying strains should give the voters cause for concern, even alarm.The first worry involves Catalonia and the aftershocks from the unconstitutional drive for independence by the regional administration there in 2017. This was contained, partly by judicial overreach. A dozen separatist leaders, nine of whom have been in jail for up to 16 months, are now being tried in the Supreme Court on charges potentially punishable by long prison terms. The trial has reinforced tribal loyalties. Polls suggest that some 2m Catalans still want to leave Spain. To many other Catalans and Spaniards, the separatists’ antics constituted an attempted coup that posed a deadly threat to their country. Catalan nationalism has thus revived its Spanish equivalent, largely dormant since the transition to democracy in the 1970s.