"I identify with the popular outcry," he said, adding that only his responsibilities as regional prime minister had prevented him from joining the demonstrators. "Catalonia needs a state," he added. "For years we thought it could be the Spanish state."
But just as northern Europe was getting fed up with the south, and vice versa, so Catalonia and the rest of Spain were now fed up with one another, Mas said.
He implied that one way for Rajoy to dampen the surge in separatist feeling would be to agree to a change in funding, allowing Spain's wealthiest region to hold on to more of the tax it generates.
Catalonia wants to be able to collect its own taxes and send a share to Madrid, rather than the other way around. That would make it different from most of Spain's other 16 regional government, but similar to the northern Basque country.
Mas will see Rajoy next week to discuss what he called an issue of "fiscal sovereignty". Popular outrage at Catalan money going elsewhere amid health and education cuts was fuelling the thirst for independence, he suggested.
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