The writer is a PhD candidate at the University of Sussex

For three European states, the coronavirus pandemic is serving to catalyse pre-existing territorial disputes and empower regional nationalist movements. The UK, Spain and Belgium have each had different responses to Covid-19. Even so, independence movements have gone on the offensive in all three countries.

In the Spanish region of Catalonia, still living in the shadow of the 2017 independence crisis, an early election has loomed since January. Before the pandemic, the left-nationalist Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) party had been exploring a dialogue with the Socialist-led government of Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s prime minister. But this drove a wedge between the ERC and its coalition partner in Catalonia’s government, the more hardline Junts per Catalunya (JxCat) alliance.