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Catalonian bonds

Location of within Spain

Some politics, some finance, and yes some philosophy here. Would you buy a bond for your portfolio that had been issued by the Spanish province of Catalonia?

Would you do so in the expectation that the local government, which issued the bond and which now considers itself to be the leadership of a sovereign state, would be ready, willing, and able to continue to make payments? Or, in the expectation that Spain, which has now asserted direct control of the province, would be making the payments?

The worry, of course, is that neither will happen -- that the situation will continue to be unsettled, that the government in Madrid won't make these payments as a way of undermining the legitimacy of the folks who issued these bonds, that those folks won't be able to make payments either, and thus that the buyers will be left holding the bag.

The website CREDIT SLIPS has noticed something odd about these bonds:

http://www.creditslips.org/creditslips/2017/10/catalan-bonds-anyone.html#more

NOTE: Yes, this was written during the weekend or so when there WAS a govt in Catalonia that considered itself an independent state. Madrid cracked down and resistance fizzled quickly. If you bet that payments would continue to be made on a regular basis, you won. Still, the anomaly observed by Credit Slips is an intriguing one. 
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