As you’ll have heard by now. A referendum on Catalan independence “will be held” on November 9 2014. It will consist of two questions: “Should Catalonia be a state? And if so, should it be an independent state?”. CiU, ERC, ICV-EUiA and CUP agreed these terms. This represents a plurality of the parties in the Catalan parliament. The agreement came days before the potential collapse of the CiU government over a budget vote due next week.

The response from Rajoy was immediate: “It’s not negotiable. It won’t happen”.

Jordi Cañas of C’s (such a fitting name) maybe hinted at the unionist approach on TV3 just now: “There won’t be a referendum in November next year” he said, “there will be elections”. And as suggested here before, this is the most likely strategy of Spanish opposition to Catalan independence: deny the right to a referendum and thereby encourage the ‘other path to independence’ – elections followed by a unilateral declaration of independence. This would put Madrid in a much better position in terms of international support and negotiating power. It is, I reckon, the preferred outcome in Madrid because of how easy it would be to paint the Catalans as thoroughly antidemocratic, as well as sowing disagreement between the pro-referendum parties (Iniciativa won’t agree to a UDI as an election pledge, I shouldn’t think).

So, in short: this time next year, we’ll still be talking about what might happen.