AFTER his final cabinet meeting of 2017 Mariano Rajoy, Spain's prime minister, admitted that it had been "an extraordinarily difficult year". The economy purred along, unemployment and the deficit are falling, but there was a shadow, he said: the "instability generated by politics in Catalonia". The problem is that the outcome of last month's snap election in Spain's rebellious north-eastern region suggests that 2018 may not be much easier.
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