Who could disagree with the right of the inhabitants of a given territory to decide its future freely, peacefully and by democratic means? Actually, this seemingly self-evident right is not so evident, bar cases of genocide and massive violation of human rights. While secessionists tend to argue its inhabitants constitute the relevant political subject, entitled to decide, others think there are no rights outside the initial political community from which the first ones want to secede. Therefore, from a normative point of view, there exists no right to leave a democracy or not to follow the rules which bind everyone in a democracy. In turn, this leads to the question of who constitutes the demos and which are the boundaries of the political community. These aspects of the right to secede are present in the current debate in Catalunya, which this paper will address from a normative perspective.
