This really will be political and I’m sure get me downvoted to hell & back.
It’s amazing that the old political guard still haven’t got this. Look at Spain today. What do you think would work better - hitting them with rubber bullets and batons or something more loving like sending people down to make it “Hug a Spaniard” day and making the Catalan people feel closer to their fellow countrymen?
This method, it was called the "love-in" [1], was used by the Canadian government in 1995. It was illegal as hell as it was a blatant violation of election spending laws.
Some people say it was counterproductive but the proof is in the pudding I guess.
I'm not on their side, but they should have announced it was invalid and that the results don't matter, promoted unity and then secretly committed fraud they could expose. They could have posed as pro independence units preventing no voters from voting (recorded "secretly" on a smartphone). Then they could spin the separatists as dirty playing and corrupt.
What're they going to do when Catalan goes underground and high tech with their voting?
As a northerner who lived in the South I can unequivocally tell you this doesn't work. Southerners who do this come off as saccharine and insincere. It's incredibly transparent and irritating (which I always felt was the point) to people who don't agree with you. You aren't fooling anyone.
I think the trick is that you actually have to be sincere. You almost have to feel sorry for the other person, but in a "wow you seem fucked up but I hope you can still have a good day" way. I never mastered it.
Also being heavily advocated by Zoffix right now who is a prominent member of the Perl6 project (trying to get it renamed to Rakudo to distance it from Perl5, which makes some sense).
See also: Troll hugging http://pugs.blogs.com/audrey/2009/08/my-hobby-troll-hugging....