The powerful images of rioting across Catalonia following the Spanish Supreme Court ruling against the Catalan separatist leaders have raised fears about the potential impact on the domestic economy. Following the unilateral declaration of Independence in October 2017, analyst consensus was that Catalonia was heading towards a recession, and the Bank of Spain itself supported this thesis. Human beings tend to have a cognitive bias that draws us to negative and alarming articles. In this note we check our internal alarms against the facts.