I think that was foolish action on the part of the Spanish state, but this is for the Spanish people and the Catalan people to resolve, as they are, I think, at the moment—. There certainly are consequences from the action that the constitutional court in Spain has taken—[Interruption.] Well, you know, I think we need a fair and open debate here, Adam, so perhaps you need to listen to the alternative point that is now being expressed.

And who gets to say that a particular population—it could be a city, it could be a region—is now, in fact, a nation? These are highly contested matters, and the right to self-determination in itself is not an easy thing to express. What entity expresses is? Woodrow Wilson's 14 points tried to grapple with this, but he refused to talk to the Irish nationalists, because he did not believe that they had a right to statehood, because they were embedded in what he thought was a democratic multinational state. Now, few would agree with him, probably, in retrospect, but that's what he had. And why should the entity be the nation? Cities are by far the oldest political unit in the world, and indeed, many are now generating a sense of identity that could, under certain circumstances, be interpreted as holding national characteristics.

Can I just finish, Llywydd, by saying how highly problematic the concept of secession is in international law and also how it's treated with the greatest caution by political philosophers? Not many political philosophers accept the principle of secession and those who do highly qualify it—[Interruption.] I think it's fairly typical that the proposers of the motion are not even now listening—[Interruption.] Well, I don't know. Generally, those who have held secession—[Interruption.]