A quiet country town, with an unpaved main street that doubles as a river bed for flash floods from the hills, Arenys de Munt seems an unlikely starting point for a revolution.

But when the town north of Barcelona held a referendum last month and voted overwhelmingly in favour of Catalonia’s secession from Spain (with 96 per cent of the 2,671 who voted saying Yes to independence) it spawned dozens of copycat referendum plans across the region.