I had, last month, the great pleasure to represent the First Minister at the annual gathering to commemorate those Welsh volunteers who joined the international brigades in Spain. There was a political irony there that, at that very time when we were making that commemoration, there were the scenes in Spain of crowds making fascist salutes, singing Franco-era fascist songs. The growth of Franco-era falangism, which seems to be behind the growth of Spanish, Madrid-based nationalism, is one of the real concerns.

I'm very grateful, also, to the comments made my Neil Hamilton. I'm glad to see he's undergone a Pauline conversion over the years from his previous apologism for the South African apartheid state and his tendency to be sympathetic towards the Pinochet fascist Government in the 1970s. There's no doubt: this is partly a struggle against those oppressive actions, but for me, it's fundamental. This isn't about Catalonian independence; it is about the rule of law and the proper interpretation of the rule of law as being something that actually represents the will of the people, and that's what a constitution is. A constitution that loses the will of the people, that divides the people, is no longer a workable constitution. It is no longer a compact between people.

So, for me, the biggest and the saddest thing to see in this was the UK Government automatically and blindly falling in with a hypocritical position that contradicted everything we said. Whether it be from 1968 with the invasion of Czechoslovakia, whether it be about the Falkland islands, whether it be about Gibraltar—ultimately, it's the people's right to actually choose, and that's what this is actually about. It's equally distressing to see the sterility of, really, the argument within the European Union, that they have failed to actually grasp that one of the fundamentals of the European Union and the visions behind it was actually the grasp of the rule of law, and fundamental principles, and the rights of people, and that once you move away from that to defending purely the concept of the centralised state, then you begin to sow the seeds of your own destruction. 

So, I think it is absolutely right in this Assembly that we actually make our own voice heard, that we actually stand up, through this resolution, for what is ultimately support for democratic rights, support for the rule of law, and support for the fundamental principle, enshrined in the United Nations charter, that people have the right to determine their future.