Catalonia's Immigrants Add to Separatist Debate While immigrants "have played little part in the separatist debate so far, their sheer numbers and their contributions to Catalonia's economy have indirectly reinforced the claims by some politicians that the region should occupy a place in the European Union separate from Spain," Raphael Minder wrote in The New York Times about Catalonia's gathering drive to separate from Spain. An estimated 13,000 of the 21,000 Sikhs who have moved to Spain since 2000, mostly from India's Punjab region, have settled in Catalonia. "Sikhs are among the immigrants here who express some empathy for the separatist movement, drawing a parallel with their own struggles at home," Mr. Minder wrote.