THERE are times when history moves like an express train. Nicola Sturgeon faces a major decision this week. She is anxious to get on with the day job of getting a Budget through, coping with the rising tide of demands on the NHS, and creating a National Investment Bank.

At the same time, she and her teams at Holyrood and Westminster have to rescue Scotland from the economic car crash that Brexit entails. And she has to continue patient progress towards the next independence referendum, whenever that might be. That’s an agenda for a lifetime never mind one parliamentary session.

Unfortunately, Mistress History does not always leave a politician free to get on with the day job, even Nicola. When asked what he feared most, wily old Harold Macmillan replied: “Events, dear boy, events.” It is the unexpected poke in the eye by events that tests a politician’s mettle. What to do when history takes a different course from you want or expect? Especially if the unexpected event is not close to home but abroad and outside your control. In, say, Catalonia.

Nicola is not alone this week in having to put aside the local briefing books and think is going on there. Across Europe, the tumultuous events in Barcelona and Madrid are suddenly centre of the European political stage. For Brexit is a comparative doddle compared to the ramifications for the EU of the decision by Spain’s Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, supported by the Spanish Labour Party (the PSOE) to end Catalan autonomy.

Or more exactly, the sudden eruption of this second European crisis – with democratic legitimacy at its core – could compound the problems with Brexit and wreck the entire post-war European integration project.

The problems inherent for Nicola in this situation are obvious. What to do if Catalonia declares independence and resists (albeit peacefully) the suspension of its legitimate institutions by an outside Spanish force, for the second time in 78 years? Will the SNP Government recognise the Catalan move, both in words and by passing a motion through the Scottish Parliament with the help of the Greens plus any Labour MSPs with an international conscience?

The Catalans will be desperate for any crumb of diplomatic recognition as they wrestle with the Spanish state to keep their institutions functioning.

If so, Scotland would not be alone. There are strong rumours that Slovenia will step up to the plate and recognise Catalan independence. And for good reason. In 1990, the Slovenian parliament voted to negotiate independence from an increasingly fascistic Yugoslav regime. Rebuffed, Slovenia held an independence referendum in December 1990 — deemed illegal by Yugoslavia. Despite an 88.5 per cent majority for independence, Slovenia (like Catalonia now) suspended implementation, hoping for a peaceful dialogue.

Belgrade stonewalled. In June 1991, the Slovenes finally declared unilateral independence. But the only states to recognise them were former members of the old Soviet Union, including Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. It was another six months before Iceland broke the logjam in the west, followed by Germany (guilty about its role in the Balkans during the Second World War). It would be 1992 before the EU and UK crawled off the fence, under pressure from Berlin.

Scotland is not an independent state and any recognition of a free Catalonia would be token. But we should not undervalue its importance to Catalan morale. Catalonia is bent on a peaceful process for winning independence. Madrid might try to seize control of Catalan institutions, but it can’t run them without the Catalans themselves. Sustaining Catalonia’s will to peaceably resist depends on friends abroad showing they care and keeping up the pressure on Rajoy to talk. In this respect, official Scottish recognition of Catalonia is vital and urgent.

I AM aware of the complexities the Scottish Government might face. For starters, it could gain the long-term enmity of the PP government in Madrid — important if an independent Scotland was seeking EU membership.

The counter-argument comes in three parts. First, we have a moral duty to uphold the democratic right of Catalonia to self-determination — a right it has under international law.

Secondly, if we don’t support Catalonia in its hour of need, don’t expect others to support Scotland in ours. And thirdly, anyone who thinks that the implacable, ultra-nationalist Madrid regime will be kind to Scotland if we play dumb while the Spanish Guardia Civil is bashing heads in Catalonia, is being naive to say the least.

But there is another issue to consider. Any move by the SNP Government to recognise a free Catalonian state would be jumped upon by our domestic opponents to make mischief. We’d be told again to “get on with the day job” instead of playing international politics. But the folk playing international politics are the British Unionists parroting all the specious arguments from Madrid about Catalonia pursuing an illegal course. Even I have been surprised by the extent to which Unionists have rallied to the cause of the right-wing Madrid regime. So let’s remind them of the folk they are cheering on.

The man in charge of crushing Catalan democracy is Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido. He is a former mayor of Seville, where he was accused of wilfully refusing to implement the Law of Historical Memory which mandates the removal of overt Francoist symbols from public buildings and spaces.

The head of the Guardia Civil operation in Catalonia is Colonel Diego Perez. Perez comes from old pro-Franco stock. His father was a candidate for the ultra-Francoist National Front. The NF’s avowed aim was to “keep alive the ideals of July 18, 1936”, ie the ideals of Franco’s coup against the elected Spanish and Catalan Republics.

Colonel Perez is well connected. His brother Francisco was president of the Spanish Constitutional Court until earlier this year and was the man who ruled the Catalan independence referendum illegal.

Then there is Judge Carmen Lamela who ordered the detention without bail of the two main leaders of the Catalan civil protest movement, Jordi Sanchez and Jordi Cuixart, on charges of sedition. Lamela is notorious for having ruled that a group of Basque youths on trial for roughing up two off-duty Guardia Civil officers in a pub brawl should be tried as “terrorists”, and thus subject to 50 years in jail if found guilty.

The Spanish state is a sham democracy that remains in breach of international law by refusing to investigate the genocide, torture, assassination, forced disappearances and kidnapping of children conducted by the Francoist forces during the Spanish Civil War — not to mention the likely 200,000 extra-judicial executions conducted by the dictatorship between 1939 and 1975.

What surprises me, given this murky record, is the abject failure of the UK Labour Party to take a stand on defending the democratic rights of the Catalan people. Or just getting on the phone to their sister party in Spain, the PSOE, to urge dialogue. It is they, not the SNP, who are guilty of ignoring the day job.

History is where it is at. The Scottish Government must stand with the people of Catalonia. It should start this week with the Cabinet Secretary for External Affairs, Fiona Hyslop, getting on a plane to Barcelona to meet President Puigdemont.