From my not so knowledgeable point of view we have:
It seems the Spanish government messed up massively here. Instead of embracing a referendum about independence they decided to flatly declare it illegal and attempt to ignore the problem.
If they initially embraced the referendum they could have won, I believe that a Yes vote to independence nearly always ends up failing. But instead what happened is, they blankly declared it illegal and hoped that would be the end of it. While parties who were against independence were telling people to boycott it and parties for it telling people to vote yes. It seems the only outcome there is a massive yes vote.
Once they had the massive yes vote, they have a democratic mandate for independence. Not only that, they get to say they have 90% mandate. The only way forward from that is for the Spanish government to back down and start negotiations or for indepence to be declared.
Here we are as Catalan declares independence, which it seems can either turn into a civil war, a flat-out failure with everyone arrested, Spain eating some humble pie to get them back to the table, or Spain just accepting Catalan is gone. It'll be interesting to see what happens.
The key point for me was when Spain announced that they were going to remove Catalonia's autonomy and dissolve its parliament. What did they expect Catalonia to do?
This seems like an iconic example of what NOT to do when faced with an independence referendum. Compare the situation in Scotland or Canada, where AIUI the central government grudgingly permitted the referendum, campaigned on the issue locally, and offered symbolic concessions to local autonomy while focusing heavily on the pragmatic risks and costs of independence. In Catalonia by contrast we have plenty of images of the police violently disrupting the referendum and independence protesters, then pledging to end local autonomy altogether.
I think the issue lies in that those central governments have become more tame over time, while Spain hasn't. They were largely united under a dictator where, in the very recent past, it was illegal for Catalans to teach their language or even speak it publicly.
Spain realizes the fragility of their position, and they're choosing to lash out in the same way Franco would have.
> they're choosing to lash out in the same way Franco would have.
sigh... Again asking for the blood bath?
What really Franco would have done? Well, Franco would have killed hundred-thousands of people. Again.
How many Catalonian independentists has been killed by the current spanish government since october? ZE-RO?.
Wake-up. Zero is not equal to thousands. Talk seriously or don't talk but please, stop with all this Franco BS. This comparison is insulting for any people with more than two alive brain cells that endured the Franco regime.
Sorry, you seem to have taken my words the wrong way.
The overall reaction of "we're going to assume direct control and remove your governmental power" is one of lashing out and entitlement, and an attitude that doesn't work as evidenced by the comment I was responding to concerning the methods other countries have chosen.
I meant that this reaction is in a Franco-like, dictatorial direction, not that their reaction is of the same magnitude (on the other side is the UK's replies to Scotland's desire for independence, for example).
This is probably because Spain is a sovereign state, and therefore is a different juridical entity.
Spain is not UK. Both situations aren't neither correlated nor comparable. In the same way that Londoners can't play with firearms in their backyards arguing than people in Texas can explode things all the time; Catalonians shouldn't enjoy the same level of independence than X merely by the argument than X exists somewhere.
The truth is that Catalonia would strongly reject a referendum to achieve the current Scotland status. They enjoy currently much more privileges and freedom to manage their resources at will, than scots can dream.
It seems to me that Catalonia has put the rest of Spain in a "no win" situation. If Spain tries to prevent the (unconstitutional) vote, then Catalonia tries very hard to push to have the vote anyway, and Spain either has to enforce their ban on the vote (which means violence), or else back down. If Spain doesn't forbid the vote, then the vote gains legitimacy in public opinion. So either Spain's the bad guy (because violence), or they're a paper tiger, or they tacitly say that it's OK for Catalonia to vote on independence despite what the constitution says.
If the referendum has no legal weight, then going to such lengths to quash it instead magnifies its importance, since the Spanish government clearly views it as being more dangerous than it is.
I get the sense it's the tail wagging the dog now in Madrid. They scored political points with the rest of the country keeping "those Catalonians" in line.
Now that action is required, the rest of the country is so riled up there's little room for compromise.
Some people does not understand that the independence referendum is a MacGuffin here. Not the main goal.
Is just a symbol of power. Another step to bend the arm of the central government again, not the end of the agenda. Catalonian people had another referendum in 2016, plus one free elections in between. Is insane to keep asking for a referendum each 6 months until independence is forced
That's not true. There was no referendum in 2016 and there is no "keep asking for a referendum" because the only referendum held was 1-O, and did not come from an agreement with Spanish government.
If Spain would have agreed on a referendum, the current situation would be very different.
Not quite that simple from what I understand. A week before the vote the Catalan parliament passed two laws, one that a referendum should be held and one that if yes to independence won, regardless of turnout, independence would be unilaterally declared. No way that the spanish government could allow that to go ahead unchallenged. Its worth noting that they have allowed nonbonding votes previously, there was one in 2014 with similar results and turnout. Its the fact that this one was binding that caused the crisis. https://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2017/09/e...
>It seems the Spanish government messed up massively here. Instead of embracing a referendum about independence they decided to flatly declare it illegal and attempt to ignore the problem.
Did they? The EU doesn't support Catalan independence, the US doesn't support the movement, the Catalan independence has 0 backing from any outside source, while most countries see this as an internal affair within Spain. Madrid even loosened rules on Spanish companies, allowing them to easily move their headquarters to Madrid, triggering an exodus out of Barcelona. The response was certainly heavy-handed, but the table is definitely in Madrid's favor.
>Here we are as Catalan declares independence, which it seems can either turn into a civil war, a flat-out failure with everyone arrested, Spain eating some humble pie to get them back to the table, or Spain just accepting Catalan is gone.
Catalan has 0 outside support and the support within the region is fractured as well, with Barcelona split on opinion. Many major companies have already moved their headquarters from Barcelona to Madrid. Spain has constitutional powers vis-a-vis Article 155 to impose authority. All signs point to this independence movement being a flop.
Countries will support the likely winner, or more specifically, whichever choice is advantageous to their national interests.
When Turkey's coup took place, for example, Western countries absolutely wanted Erdogan gone and Ataturk's values restored. It wasn't until the coup had clearly failed that the vast majority of countries expressed support for Erdogan and his regime.
Who supports who doesn't confer any moral validity to a people's right to democracy and independence, though I understand if you mean the practical advantages of support.
Either way, we may quickly see these international attitudes change as events progress, especially if Spain takes away autonomy in Catalonia.
You dont need outside support to declare independence, it is of no concern to those in Catalan what the US or anyone else thinks. The best course of action for the Catalan parliament would have been to call an election and then if they won it with a decent majority used that as their mandate to declare independence. As it is they dont have a solid mandate so it is easier for Spain and the EU to ignore them, however all those Catalans who didnt support independence may well change their minds if the spanish army comes rolling into Barcelona.
"You don't need outside support to declare independence" is a philosophically pleasing but politically unsound idea. It's the sort of thing that leads to martyred revolutionaries instead of redrawn boundaries on a map.
If a group of people had enough military might to declare themselves independent and not fall to subsequent invasion, then it doesn't matter what the rest of the world "thinks", they are independent.
They may be independent in some sense but it still matters a great deal. If other nations don't accept your sovereignty you can't really have trade or diplomatic relations. Just ask South Ossetia, Novorossia or Transdnistria. These days it's pretty pointless to be independent if you can't have foreign trade.
I'm pretty sure most sub-regions wouldn't trade their political dependence for North Korean-style independence (but I admit to not knowing the hearts and desires of most people ;) ).
Well, there's the Abkhazia option where you become a weird pseudo-state with no recognition. It's not great, even if you have a big friend like Russia who does recognize you.
By the same logic NYC can be independent of the NYS and the rest of the United States, which is ridiculous considering that it won't be able to withstand a week without food and fuel supplies from outside the five boroughs.
I keep reading this in international media. The Spanish government didn't declare the referendum illegal. It was the top court, which is independent from the government. The government ensures that the law is applied once that is decided.
That said, I think Spain should have held a referendum (by changing the constitution). Everything would have been much easier.
In the US "the government" typically applies to either all three branches (courts, legislature, executive) or occasionally to the latter two only. The latter definition is typically only used in the case of a lawsuit involving the state. This is in contrast to parliamentary systems where the government is formed of the dominant political party or coalition in parliament, and also gets to act as the executive branch. The US almost always uses the first definition (all 3 branches are government), parliamentary systems almost always use the second (courts aren't government).
In the first (more common) US-style sense, the government certainly did declare the referendum illegal.
This doesn’t sound right. I’d like to see some proof of this. I’m from India and I only use government to refer to the legislature which happens to commingle with the executive branch. I’d love to join the mainstream if my usage is in the minority.
Also, Spain is a parliamentary monarchy so in a thread centered on Spanish politics, I feel you should use the word government as used by Spaniards.
It's more common in the US for government to mean all three branches. It seems to be more common in parliamentary countries for government to mean just the legislative branch (and possibly, when present, the monarch's implied consent?).
This is a point of confusion here, because this is a US based discussion site. So US persons say 'the government suppressed the election', Spain persons say 'no, the government didn't do it, the courts did it'.
To the US person objecting, it doesn't make a huge difference if judicial, legislative, or executive is suppressing an election -- suppressing an election is bad. How can a vote be illegal? Certainly the referendum may not be legal, and that should be decided by the courts, but we're not used to that being decided before holding the vote.
But do you have a word for the whole of government in the US sense? I can't think of something that's not awkward.
Edit to add: In the US sense, government also includes military and police. In the US those are mostly part of the executive branch, but may act at the direction of the judicial or legislative branches. In some countries the military is an effectively separate branch of government.
"more common" may just mean "more common in US English". There are good reasons for the term to have a different meaning in the US and other English-speaking countries with parliamentary systems.
As an American, though it is absolutely true that I think of "the government" as including the courts, because the government of the US is established by the Constitution, which establishes all three branches. There's not even good reason to talk about a "governing party" most of the time, except for rare times such as now when the Republicans control all three branches of government.
US news media using the word "government" are of course going to use the word "government" in the American English sense. Reporters or copyeditors may not even realize there is a distinction to be made.
I suspect your usage of the term is much more common in India (and possibly other nations outside the US).
I'm really curious as to whether this difference in interpretation is just a linguistic fluke, or if it actually reflects some larger cultural difference in how we in the US view our government compared to how people in India and Spain view theirs.
Do you have a different word which encompasses all governmental bodies and organizations? The State, perhaps? Or would you not consider the courts to be part of the State either? Obviously the courts are involved in governing, since they interpret the law and they have legal authority granted by the constitution. How then are they not part of the government?
This is also confusing in nations where administrative regions are called states. I've seen some media refer to Catelonia as a state, although I believe the term used in Spain is autonomous community.
Internationally “government” refers to either the monarchy in a strong authoritarian regime, or the ruling coalition in parliament. The US model of separate but equal powers in a federation is somewhat unique.. although it is more of clusters on a spectrum and many countries copied he US model (or had it forced upon them).
Most definitions of government include the judicial system as part of government. I don't know much Spanish, maybe they have different words for the different parts of government, but no word that describes all of government in general, so maybe it is just a translation issue.
Please don't bend the facts for your own bias. The king doesn't appoint those judges, will just ratify and is pretty much symbolical. They do have political influence but is kept balance traditionally. Just because everyone has political inclinations you cannot blame it of being controled by the government.
Who is paying the judges wages? For important matter like that, it is difficult to trust that the State and the government have totally no implication.
That probably would have been the better move as far as "optics" are concerned, but the Spanish constitution states that this kind of referendum is illegal.
In any case -- I think the ruling party in Spain wanted this to flare up so they could consolidate political support during the next election, since most of Spain is adamantly opposed to Catalan independence.
As a Canadian kid, i never understood why they would let Quebec go through with a referendum. Seems insane to just "divorce" a country (for lack of better words). As i grew up, i thought it was pretty progressive to allow it. As an adult, it seems like the only logical tactical option.
A lot of people will claim that it isn't legal. They will be right. But their constitution wasn't written with modern times in mind. <b>Without violence</b>, how is Spain going to stop Catalan from succeeding? What if Catalan gets violent? How will Spain respond?
There are very few good moves left here for Spain.
It was coming out of a fascist dictatorship at the height of the Cold War. I’d say the context was pretty far removed from the modern EU, even if it was in living memory.
I won't split hairs with you on that, but -- right or wrong -- Spain's Constitutional Court ordered the referendum stopped, and the Spanish government moved to enforce that order.
The plan was laid out clearly. The question asked of the electorate was also clear.
February 2016
The process for withdrawing from the European Union
Presented to Parliament by the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs by Command of Her Majesty
2.1 The result of the referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union will
be final. The Government would have a democratic duty to give effect to the electorate’s
decision. The Prime Minister made clear to the House of Commons that “if the British people
vote to leave, there is only one way to bring that about, namely to trigger Article 50 of the
Treaties and begin the process of exit, and the British people would rightly expect that to start
straight away”.
The referendum question, June 2016 :
---
Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?
21 pages, is not a plan. The Scottish independence plan was 500 pages or something.
Also, that "plan" merely states they will trigger article 50. Not what they will do after that. Which is the important part of the whole process. There was no talk of soft or hard brexit. No talk of how much it would cost, no talk about anything other than "We'll trigger article 50". Which it actually turned out, the plan was flawed because they legally couldn't do it and had to create a new law.
I don’t think it’s valid to claim the non voters in an aggregate 65%. Otherwise you could say 68% of the country didn’t vote to leave. Which presumably means it was a stronger position.
68% also didn't vote to stay. It always gets silly when you try to make arguments about vote percentages based on the entire population because they always work completely in reverse as well.
The UK public has historically been one of the most eurosceptic countries in europe and certainly the most eurosceptic in the EU. When given an actual chance to vote on the issue amazingly the British public followed through... who could possibly have seen that coming?
The farce is that people who should've known that were somehow shocked by it.
The British are not sceptic about Europe, they're sceptic about the EU. There is no farce. 67% voted to join the EC in 1975 and 52% voted to leave the EU in 2016.
Firstly Spain is in no better a condition now than it would have been had it allowed a vote and campaigned and lost.
Secondly, a more accurate UK comparison would probably be with the Scottish referendum, which was won by those who wanted to remain part of the UK and so Scotland did remain part of the UK.
I don’t think that’s true. The violence that occurred on the day of the vote and the uncompromising attitude of the Spanish govenrment likely caused things to escalate more quickly than it would have otherwise.
Yeah, what a disaster that was. Time to take a step back and reconsider this whole "democracy" sham for what it is. All it does is let the clowns run the circus. And once commoners are voting, who knows what else they'll be doing.
Or you know - attribute malice and responsibility to the people spreading fallacies and fanning the flames of discontent for political gain?
Matter of fact this should be read as a win for direct democracy and responsibility- you believe that you can get away with your rhetoric ? Well sucks to be you. People liked what you are selling.
I think this calls for stronger links between claims and actions. A stronger more automatic contract between the people voting and the people making the claims.
I think brexit was a monumentally sad moment, the cross roads between the old world and the new connected world. The resulting decisions based on emotions and a super biased media system results in brexit.
The media helps spread junk for political points and as revenue, and the new political class believes that they can get away with it. A belief bubble that requires treatment - via holding people to task for the words they used.
Bah. Who am I kidding. If it was so easy - it would have been done already
People also have the right to remain. It is not clear that a majority wants to secede, the percentages are close to 50% though. So want happens with the rest of the people. Besides the independent Catalunya movement does not apply that freedom to its regions and considers Catalunya indivisible (For instance they deny the right of Tarragona to secede an hypothetical Catalunya state https://youtu.be/3eS-j9Wx8lw?t=999).
If an identifiable geographic region wants to secede, and there is sufficient support among the public, it should be able to do so. Crimea I think falls into that group: 93% voting in favor of joining Russia with 83% turnout.
I think there needs to be more than just a geographic region. A people have a right to self-determination. I'm not sure if any group of persons should. You need to look at history, ethnicity, language, culture, etc.
When only one of the sides have weapons, there can not be a civil war, only a genocide. I am convinced that there is a limit on the violations of Human Rights that Europe will be able to tolerate from a state member.
"civil war", "genocide". Come on people, don't throw these words willy-nilly, leave that to bad news outlets.
Yes, the spanish government was quite brutal in its attempt to stymie the referendum (probably unnecessarily so) but we're not on the verge of a catalan genocide in any way, shape or form. If you keep abusing words they end up losing their meaning.
I think they'll be shooting less because they're a particular ethnicity and more because they're rioting, protesting the decision, or directly fighting the government. Ethnic differences would be coincidental in such an occurrence.
"Quite brutal" by the standards of the ordinary course of civil society, yes. "Quite brutal" by the standards of governments facing an insurrection? Not so much.
Yes, the spanish government was quite brutal in its attempt to stymie the referendum
That's wrong. There were a handful of injured, don't believe the propaganda. Most international media that were fooled by that lies have acknowledged this much.
Regardless of the scale and strength of the repression I'm still of the opinion that it was unwarranted. Declare the referendum to be illegal, tell lawful spanish citizens to stay home then disregard the results. Maybe prosecute the people organizing the referendum if the law allows it.
Even though the referendum was illegal it didn't create any imminent danger. Therefore I think the use of force by Madrid was disproportionate. It also effectively backfired by making the independentists look more sympathetic even though their motive is for the most part rather selfish at the core.
It's true that it was a disaster but not because they tried to prevent it, but because they didn't the obvious thing and sent the police one day earlier. The videos that are in that page are not particularly violent, just what you would expect when people resist the police.
Oh FFS. We know what we saw on TV outside your little PP-controlled broadcast TV bubble. I was watching footage of your police beating the shit out of people all day long.
This particular argument -- "fake news, it didn't happen" -- is outside of Spain the most ridiculous Trumpish nonsense imaginable. "Lies"? I saw it with my own eyes in real time. Looking us right in the eye and insisting that black is white is offensive.
The Spanish government regularly wastes Catalonian money, including sending in police to suppress this technically illegitimate vote. Whatever this vote cost to administer, it is a pittance in the grand scheme of things, especially considering the people seem to be willing to bear the economic burden of attempting to gain sovereignty.
If their crime is misappropriating funds for the referendum, then surely the police should be arresting the politicians, not harassing the public at large.
Because they were planning to spend millions of euro in an illegal thing, and use the results to try to legitimize the illegal thing in the eyes of the world.
They may not have much arms now, but they have money. There are certainly states that would not mind selling them arms for profit.
While secession will be troublesome, there are not many attempts at preventing secession that have not turned ugly violent in recent years because of attempts to prevent it.
I lived through a non-violent federation split and certainly hope for this outcome elsewhere. In the case of my country majority of the people didn't want the split either. Despite that it was possible to happen without violence.
I suspect the only reason the US government lets Americans think the second amendment would enable the population to forcibly remove an undesirable government, is because the weapons and strategic/tactical/leadership skills of the population are vastly out-classed by the armed forces.
What good is a semi-automatic against a supersonic jet that just fired an air-to-ground missile in your direction? Plenty of AK-47s in Afghanistan, they don’t even take on subsonic drones effectively.
In other asymmetric warfare situations, supersonic jets have done very little to end a conflict. No sane person would ever want to start a war with a civil militia containing nearly all able-bodied men in a region; it's bad enough when just a couple per cent are against you, all with small arms. Imagine how bad it would be with 20%, 30%, 40% of the able-bodied against you.
Consider also that there are arms manufacturers and state militias all across the country. If it's California, they have (some of) Northrop Grumman. If it's Virginia, they have General Dynamics Mission Systems.
Yeah, it'll work out really well when the U.S. military uses their General Dynamics Mission Systems radios to order their General Dynamics Mission Systems drones to fire General Dynamics missiles at General Dynamics. While their General Dynamics M1 Abrams tanks and General Dynamics Stryker AFVs roll through the streets to kill the civilians.
This is not the way things would play out. The federal government would twiddle their thumbs and say that they are very cross with the separatists, and we'd all get on with our lives.
I thought the implication was the tanks rolling up at General Dynamics offices and factories to “protect national security assets from terrorists”, and the General Dynamics CEO welcoming them with the closest one can get to open arms when you’re wearing heavy body armour.
“Disappeared” isn’t just destroying, it’s capturing, too.
When tyranny starts to come in there's a long period where the government can order the police / military to stand down, but doesn't have the power to order them to commit atrocities themselves.
So there's usually a violent group of government supporters who don't have any special arms or training. eg, Hitler's brown shirts.
The second amendment is very affective against them.
If the alternative is genocide then I'll take my chances. Asymmetric warfare is a real option and with enough turned generals and armed forces you'd have access to the same high powered weapons and the people could form a militia as well.
It would only come to nukes if the other side escalated to weaponry just below nukes. In that case, it's not "nuking Americans in Seattle", it's "nuking well organized terrorist cells using advanced weaponry, in order to save further loss of life."
The point is that no matter how much "power" the federal government has granted to civilians via the 2nd amendment, the federal government will ALWAYS have more.
It would never be “over a sovereignty dispute”, it would be to stop what the rebels were imminently going to do in that sovereignty dispute. Nuking is extreme, but there will always be (at least, in the eyes of the government) a excuse to escalate to the level beyond what is available to the rebels to protect the innocent threatened by them.
Those weapons only win if you don't care about civilian losses (that is one way to win a counter insurgency, see Mandatory Palestine) - but by not caring about civilian casualties I mean you have to be willing to commit genocide (again, see the British actions in Mandatory Palestine).
If you do care about civilians (and I assume the US armed forces would be forced to care) a jet is probably not worth much against an AK-47, as long as that AK-47 is in the hands of a guy who is willing to hang out close to a bunch of civilians.
Again you can win a counter insurgency either by winning over the local population or by utterly destroying it (see manda, the Island of Melos).
I wouldn't cite Afghanistan as an example of how well military high-tech works for suppression. If it did, it wouldn't be and wouldn't have been such a mess.
Then what is the alternative? Wouldn’t you rather die with the honor of defending you and your families liberty than live under an oppressive regime?
The argument that “the government is too strong they’d beat you with your puny guns” is so incredibly short sighted. You’re discounting the power the rifle gives the people not only as a weapon but a symbol of freedom and revolution. An armed society is a deterrent at the very least.
I would flee a country if and when it looked like that country was too far down a bad path.
I am in the process of doing so now, as it happens — leaving the UK because of the Investigatory Powers Act, because the Home Secretary wants to ban unbreakable encryption without understanding it, and because Brexit removes one of the major obligations to follow international human rights laws which would allow me to sue the government to fix that law.
I’d rather pick my battles and live somewhere new, than die an unknown and unnamed victim of a remote death machine.
If the referendum is invalid, even more reason to let it happen if you can't make it go away. Ignore it, make sure those friendly to you promote the idea of participating especially if you are against it. If "leave" doesn't have a clear victory, you can point to it for why you are against them leaving. If they do, your position is at least not worse than it is now, and probably better since you haven't burned most of the goodwill people have towards the government.
(It's my understanding that the laws passed by the local catalonian parliament that said things would happen as a consequence of the referendum result were thoroughly voided before the referendum due to being against both spanish and catalonian rules. At that point, one should be able to treat the referendum as just a poll to inform future politics)
Maybe you are right, but the scenario is this:
1 a group of people organizes a referendum or something similar
2 someone else complains at the Constitutional Court or whatever is the institution that has(by law) decide if the act is constitutional or not
3 if the thing was declared illegal the institution that has (by law) stop the illegal thing must act
My country has a similar constitution, a region can't separate unless the constitution is changed. Probably this is not fair for some regions but it is how it is, you can't decide to ignore constitution, not sure how this is in your country. I was hoping that in future EU would unite us and we get rid of the nationalistic views and finally borders.
This is really not a useful argument. Self determination is a natural right. The idea that it's against the law to seek it doesn't work when the people themselves are arguing they don't want to be under that law.
But then you can apply same logic when a city or a village vote to not pay taxes there, or have special rules, my opinion is that constitution is a very important law and there is a reason that changing it requires the majority to vote(probably differs by country).
I understand your point but to get the independence is something extreme in this case it should not be a simple process but something more complex otherwise bypassing the constitution can happen every month.
Referendums are a way of converting democratic mandates into decisions; but the democratic mandate doesn't go away just because the referendum isn't valid.
More than 50% (70 of 135) of the democratically elected local parliament voted for independence too.
> a country or area under the full or partial political control of another country, typically a distant one, and occupied by settlers from that country.
From wikipedia:
> In politics and history, a colony is a territory under the immediate political control of a state, distinct from the home territory of the sovereign.
If Spain asserts itself as the ruler of Catalonia, without the will of the Catalans, it appears to me that the word is very apt.
Except not one of the requirements is meet: Catalonia is part of Spain since Spain was created with the marriage of the Reyes Católicos. Catalonia is not another country, is just a part of the same country, in the same peninsula as the most part of Spain, is not occupied, hasn't been independent ever... Also it's one of the richest regions of Spain, demanding just to avoid to support with taxes to poorer regions.
I suppose the word colony is a matter of perspective. But I have a hard time equating Catalonia to the offshore territories the Europeans considered colonies in the past (and still to some extent). Especially considering that Catalonia was part of the European collonialism as part of Spain and profited from it as well. In which point in History Catalonia exactly was that distinct territory that was invaded by Spain?
Sure, but that’s not an unchangeanle fact. It’s totally legitimate, and a good constitutional and political move, to legislate for referenda where appropriate. It’s what happened in Scotland, and that was vastly more peaceful.
Everyone keeps talking about the constitution as if it is set in stone. The constitution was made by people, 50 years ago. It can and should be changed to reflect new realities.
Catalonia has, unfortunately, 0 power in changing the Spanish constitution. It's up to Spain's good will to do so. And we have seen enough examples of such will.
Nonsense. Most of the big companies have left Catalonia last month. Half of Catalonia population doesn't want independence. Rule of law will be restored in a few weeks and all the thugs that have promoted this idiocy will be jailed.
Edit: to the person responding, you only see what you want to see. Police acted according to judiciary orders and there were no deaths and just a handful of injured people. Try to resist police in any other civilized country and see what you get.
Edit2: did you see the idiot father charging against the police with a child in his shoulders? did you see the police reaction? or the man that knocked inconscious a policeman throwing a chair at him? or the one kicking a fallen policeman in the head without provocation? did you know that most of the charges footage are old from mossos, not spanish police, from Chile or other countries? Or the girl saying she was tortured and forgot in what arm were the fingers supposedly broken? Real injured numbers are literally a handful, even The Guardian had to admit they've been duped. Of course nothing near the 800 mentioned in propaganda.
Oh and keep downvoting, you can't downvote facts and they0re surfacing now.
Your comment is problematic because you crossed into incivility. Pugilistic comments on divisive topics produce conflagrations. Those are all the same on the internet and therefore they are all boring and therefore we don't want them here. Since this thread has managed to remain relatively civil despite people being on opposing sides of the issue, a comment like this does more relative damage even than it usually would. That's probably the reason for the downvotes.
The guidelines also ask people not to go on about downvoting, so please don't do that either.
Look at the reverse: can the U.S. amend the constitution to say, "The U.S. is made up of the fifty states, plus Mexico"?
Certainly Mexico would hold a minority vote and not be able to influence the outcome. Does that mean that all the people of Mexico are "ignoring the constitution" if they don't want to be in the United States?
... and Catalan doesn't have a military position to enforce its influence.
The United States was an exception, but it was an exception borne of geographic distance and fighting against a parent already beset by its adjacent neighbors. Catalan will have no such military advantages if people try to settle this dispute via civil war.
> If they initially embraced the referendum they could have won
They could have also lost in that case. There has been a huge for-independance campaign spanning 20+ years and including indoctrination of former children that now can vote.
The last governments should not have ignored the problem, making instead an effort to provide objective information on what an independence entails. This is not something that you can level with a couple of months of "No" campaign.
My take on this is that we end up having to open a process to change the Constitution with an ensemble of unprepared politicians (on all sides of the table) that blocks the country for a couple of years (for reference, we have recently spent 18 months with a government in functions because we could not manage to vote the new president).
EDIT: It seems that some people didn't like "indoctrination". Ignore the word, my comment remains the same: education has been strongly focused on building a Catalan identity. It is not something that you level in a short term campaign. In Rajoy's shoes, this is something against his position.
The counter protests and polling indicate that there was/is significant opposition to Catalan independence. Spain could've embraced and supported that opposition, or pushed for more negotiation, but instead they used violence and oppression to try stopping the vote. That kept most of the anti-independence voters away from the polls, and it also turned many moderates toward independence. Now the Catalan government has a huge mandate and even more support to push for independence.
The Spanish government fucked up massively, and I wish the EU had more power to step in and moderate the situation.
The EU does have the power, they don't have the guts, because the governing institutions are set up to be run by spineless bureaucrats that 'know better than the citizenry'. The solution then is to procrastinate on doing anything difficult and hope it goes away like a bad dream, nobody's job is in danger anyways.
> They could have also lost in that case. There has been a huge for-independance campaign spanning 20+ years and including indoctrination of former children that now can vote.
By which you mean adults?
Is indoctrination one of those irregular verbs?
* i convince
* you indoctrinate
* he is brainwashing
Do you have any proof about indoctrination of children beyond mere anecdote, hearsay, or accusations from unionist organizations? The indoctrination argument is an argument that just got popular recently for usage by unionists, but was almost unheard before. As far as I know, it hasn’t been validated by court on any occasion.
The first link seems to be the most solid proof that unionist parties like Ciudadanos use to ask for investigating the Catalan school system for indoctrination (An investigation I think could be done, as long as there's enough guarantees that it will be impartial and not a witchhunt). It was made by a syndicate that seems to be pretty much nonexistent (see https://www.ara.cat/societat/denuncia-ladoctrinament-llibres... ; yes, I know Ara is a biased source), and has been criticized (see http://www.lavanguardia.com/politica/20170518/422719728704/s...).
Of course, this is just an argument by authority; but if you look at the content, it's pretty clear that many of the supposed instances of bias are just factual reports that the report argues are instances of bias, but the way to eliminate that bias seems to be that it should be reminding the kids about the existence and goodness of Spain at every turn.
For example, end of page 17, the textbook says: "On 1700, the spanish king Charles II died without sons. Charles of Austria and Philip of Bourbon were the two candidates at the throne. The two sides fought in Succession War (1702-1714), which Philip won. Then, Philip V promulgated, as the new king, the Nueva Planta decrees (1716), which suppressed the laws and institutions of Catalonia, banned the use of catalan, and imposed the laws of Castille."
The report then goes to argue that "this presents the king of Spain as an unjust person that hates Catalonia".
End of page 15, start of 16, the textbook says: "Barcelona is the capital of both the autonomous community of Catalonia and of the province with the same name".
The report argues that "this presents Barcelona as the capital of Catalonia, as if it were the capital of a state, not as a city in a state with another capital" [when the textbook clearly says "Autonomous community of Catalonia"]
And on and on and on...
The second link fits into what I consider anecdote - a single case, that cannot be extrapolated to be evidence of a general case. See my other comment in this thread for a more elaborated response.
I agree that some arguments of the report don't hold water. But others are more convincing to me. Note that they analyze textbooks that are sold in stores, not stuff made by random teachers.
About the anecdote, a single case... there have been at least a couple dozen reported. Who knows how many were unreported. Even if they're kind of isolated, they show what kind of environment may exist in some places.
Personally I don't care, I don't have any stake on the matters. I don't like either side.
Can you place this countries in the map? Catalonia, Spain, Portugal, France, England, and Germany. Colour each one in different shades and name their capitals.
That's exactly what I mean by anecdotes. It's easy to find random material that represents Catalonia in an unrealistic way relative to Spain, be it by outright manipulation by nationalist teachers, bias, or just incorrect beliefs.
What I'm asking is if there is any substantiated evidence that points to an effort by a sizable part of teachers, education departments, or the like. That's what I understand indoctrination would be. As far as I have been able to tell, there is none.
(6) is misleading; the president of PP (the party of the central government) in Catalonia has himself asked for a secret vote recently[1], hoping for defections in the pro-independence groups. Yet a few hours later he calls them cowards for having a secret vote.
Well I am referring to public schools. Public schools are controlled by the local government, and there are lots of complaints that options for parents that want teaching in Spanish for their children, for example, are close to non-existing. The teaching language is mandatorily Catalan until age 12, and then onwards chosen by the teacher, which is appointed by the local government.
If you want education that resembles what is taught in public schools of the rest of the country, you need to pay for it.
It's not limited to that. I agree that you should be able to learn in Catalan (but have the option of Spanish too). Visit the Catalan wikipedia, and you'll see how History is changed there with respect other Wikipedias. Read their books to see the bias in the way History is told. Indoctrination is a message with a "them and us" message that polarizes society, and has successfully done so. We all know words can be used in ways that can build a way of thinking of a generation. Well, those words are in the education system.
“We are not even allowed to wear a bracelet to school with the Spanish flag’s colors, but you can wear one with the independence colors,” Ms. Camina said.
Ollala de Mora, 16, said: “People in school are really against Spain. Our teachers try to influence us. They say the Spain steals from us and the government is bad. If you think differently from that, they try to change your mind.”
That is indoctrination, and there are constant examples of this in daily life for decades. Only the thought of hating Spain is encourage, and less often the thought of coexistence. No wonder that things are like they are now.
And NY Times is one the biased media I see, clearing the supporting more the Catalonian side.
You can actually check my previous claims. They are not vague. Is just too extent, so if you want to dig deeper feel free to read both sides of the story, and not just what your particular media tells you.
I do have a bias against independentism/nationalism because I've lived through it. I cannot give concrete documents about this because there aren't such. Contrary to police violence of which there are.
You don't have to be convinced, I'm just trying to express my opinion, not trying to convince anyone of who is better or worse here. But I can confidently assert that there are no "good and bad" in this story, just a war between two different stories with lots of falsehoods in both sides.
Should I infer from the downvote that the general consensus is that there are a good and a bad sides in this story then?
I'm interested in knowing if that's the case.
I have a hard time otherwise understanding the downvote, unless is someone downvoting anything that doesn't defend the Catalonian independentist movement downright.
Sorry, there are social circumstances which are very difficult to see and document, believe it or not.
Because "national pride" and "duty to fight for (economic) freedom" can be taught by your parents, schools and local culture as noble, absolute values and goals unrelated to any reason and discussion.
That's not how referendums work. Are you saying that if tomorrow you and few buddies decided to set up a new country, on a land you own, via a "referendum", the government should just go with it?
Why does the number matter? Lots of people here (including the person I was replying to) talk about the "right thing" to do, not about military power. If it's the right thing to allow for millions of peoples to secede, why isn't it the right thing for me and few buddies to secede? Are we inferior in some way? Where is the cutoff? Is it ok to secede if we are 1000 people? 10K? 100K?
A government doesn't declare things "illegal", judges are the ones that do it. According to our constitution, Spain is not divisible, plus regions can't decide something like that in a referendum because national sovereignty belongs to all Spanish citizens. I.e. regions aren't sovereign. Same as most if not all federal governments out there, by the way.
> Would self-determination have argued in favor of the secession of the south?
Perhaps, if that is what the people in the South (and not just those in positions of relative legal privilege) wanted.
But I doubt that, for example, the 55% of Mississippi's population that was in slavery was particularly energized about secession to preserve the right of their masters to keep them in slavery, though.
I believe that's a common misconception. UN charter makes no mention of colonies Art 1.2(http://www.un.org/en/sections/un-charter/chapter-i/index.htm...). Although a UN-charter-based document is applied to colonies, which is what you might be referring to.
> While people displaced by a colony are obviously disadvantaged, the colony itself and its residents are not.
I think you may be confusing the pattern of colonization in British North America with colonization more generally; the pattern elsewhere was more often of subordination to an imported elite rather than displacement.
Good answer, but you’ve made me realise I made an even deeper error — I was thinking like Civilization: cities as the fundamental unit, not the productive capacity of the nearby land they control.
They can’t really claim a mandate for leaving when those who wanted to stay boycotted the vote. That said, it would have been much less divisive if a proper referendum had been sanctioned.
As someone born in Barcelona, with dual Spanish/British nationality, all I can say with certainty is that I’m deeply saddened to lose not one, but possibly now two connections to my European neighbours.
I cannot imagine that it ends in a civil war. Civil wars happen when you have
1) a lot of young men,
2) who have little to lose, and
3) who are used to living a life with not much more comfort than that of a soldier (maybe even less)
The young generation in Catalonia is small, they have a lot to lose, and they live very comfortable lives.
I don't see them taking up arms. Maybe they will take to the streets for a few days, but they are not willing to fight in great numbers, or give up studies or jobs.
In the last civil war in Spain or the one in America or the ones in the Middle East, those conditions were present.
I agree, civil war is very unlikely. I think we're in for a period of unrest much more like the Irish Troubles, with organized acts of political terrorism.
There is a huge difference between the well educated but for now unemployed Catalan, 28 year old, only child (or with one or two siblings), always well fed, always warm, maybe living with his parents, maybe sharing a flat somewhere, all his life feeling safe, spending his days playing Xbox, surfing the Internet, chasing girls, hanging out on cafes or bars or going to Camp Nou to watch games, going skiing in January, to the beach in the Summer
and then your young, angry Arab man, third son in a family of 5, little education, no girls, no fun, no safety, no future.
It actually sounds like you’re describing the leadup to wwi. These conditions lead to war, not against it.
I’d love to hear a contrary opinion for the downvote I got: gross economic disparity and a large populace that has forgotten war sounds a lot like the early twentieth century.
People here downvote all the time once discussions are political. Don't bother.
What I wrote applies more to civil war than to war between nations (where citizens can be forced to war by governments). Of course, in reality the line between war between nations and internal civil war is often blurred - civil wars and wars are often mixed up and neighboring nations often support one side with money, weapons, troops etc. Furthermore realities of war can force people to take side once the conflict is ongoing, if nothing else, then to survive.
Now, with that in mind, prior to WWI you had a large generation of poor young German and Austrian men, and a large generation of poor young French, Russian, and British men. Today you don't.
Also, visit a European house or apartment from 1850-1900, which most people still lived in around WWI. One that is used as a museum so that it hasn't been renovated. You'll see that they were significantly less comfortable than today. No AC, no radiators, often no toilets (but a loo outside), usually no showers. Heat was from coal briquettes in a stove near the center of the house which meant constant draft and bad air. Cooking happened from gas, briquette or wooden fueled stove. There was no fridge or freezer but usually a small room that was cooler and where food would be stored. The house had little or no insulation, the windows had one layer of glass. There would often be electricity, but it would only be for the light bulbs. Radios or phones were still not common, hot water was still not a thing everybody had. There might be hens in the yard and milk was delivered in bottles. Most of this, except the radios and telephones, was true for 1939 as well.
Having been in the army myself, it always strikes me how much closer life before modern conveniences was to army life. Take 25 year old Hermann, a single guy from 1914, and put him in a military camp. He would not experience such a huge drop in comfort as you or I would before the fighting begun. He would eat, drink, sleep, keep warm etc. much in the same way as if he was home. He would entertain himself with books, songs etc. much in the same way. He would be surrounded by men just as he likely would at home or work or university. This was in the beginning of woman's emancipation so he would probably not miss out on a dating scene, going out with girls, male/female social life etc. For many, life meant long hours of hard manual labor in factories or farms, not less hard than the manual work in military. No vacation, no weekends (but a Sunday). His life outside of military was not that much better. Until the fighting begun, of course.
Today, joining a primitive militia/guerrilla group would mean a huge decline in quality of life of an 18 year old from Barcelona. Take 25 year old Jordi from Barcelona. He graduated as a graphical designer some months ago and spends 2 hours a day playing Counter Strike and 3 hours on his iPhone7 swiping left and right. Sometimes he looks for jobs online. He has female friends, and a dating life. He is used to walking to the metro, but otherwise doesn't get much exercise. He still lives with his parents and will likely do so for a few years more unless he gets himself together and turn that computer interest into something useful. Life has its challenges, but it sure isn't that tough. He has never killed anything he ate. He has never done much manual labor. Right now he's concerned if he will have enough money to join his friends skiing in the Pyrenees in a few months and what he's going to tell the date tonight about his job situation. He sure isn't worried about food on the table.
Might Jordi join the protest on Placa Catalunya? Yes.
Would he take up arms and hide in a forest in the low mountains west of Zaragoza waiting to ambush the approaching castellano troops? I wouldn't say never, but I just can't see it happening. Jordi loves the idea of Catalonia but he also loves his life and camping is not really for him. Plus he has a date tonight.
There is simply a greater difference between Western "working class" or middle class life and the outdoor, offline, off dating manual labor life of a soldier, than there was before.
Civil war is unlikely but it's certainly on the table. If it does end up like that, it'll probably be a "terrorist" war of attrition. Which the EU will want to have none of.
> Instead of embracing a referendum about independence they decided to flatly declare it illegal
Not, this is a lie. Was not the government that declared it illegal. Were the judges of the hightest spanish tribunal, because in their opinion this is a disguised coup against constitution.
> Once they had the massive yes vote the only way out to the evil government is to surrender and negociate...
Another thousand times repeated lie. Because 2 million of votes (including X people voting n>1 times) is now the 90% of 46 million of people (including 7,5 million of catalonian people).
Lets suppose, for example, that some people would want to reinstall the slavery to Louisiana, or to bring comunism to Nebraska. "Would be good for the economy" they say. So they require to ask people for "blah blah blah democracy". Let suppose that they declare that if the referendum is positive, all black people will lose their properties and be slaves again, "because blah blah blah, pacifism".
And they want you to pay this circus with your tax money, because their shamelessness is infinite.
And then some people ask that government should allow this, because voting is good.
Should the government "embrace" this spoiled children acts and let them to steal millions of dollars in their face?.
Everybody can promote a referendum to ask people their opinion about anything, but with their money, without using public buildings and resources and without shamelessly declaring that the results from the poll will trigger a chain of illegal abuses and changes for most of the people in the zone.
Well, some of the ingredients here are the comrades of the self claimed anticapitalist party Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP) asking for some veeery peculiar things, (i.e. proposing to expropriate the Cathedral of Barcelona to make a market and a school of music there), and there was also a larvate (and sometimes not so larvate) racism and harassment against non indepentendist spaniards that last for years.
Taking all of this in mind and much other things, I think that can be taken as a fair example. Not equal, but much closer than you could expect.
Despots rarely give up without a fight. I question whether Catalans are willing to pay with their blood to gain their freedom. Clearly Rajoy is happy to shed their blood in order to keep them in thralldom.
It seems the Spanish government messed up massively here. Instead of embracing a referendum about independence they decided to flatly declare it illegal and attempt to ignore the problem.
If they initially embraced the referendum they could have won, I believe that a Yes vote to independence nearly always ends up failing. But instead what happened is, they blankly declared it illegal and hoped that would be the end of it. While parties who were against independence were telling people to boycott it and parties for it telling people to vote yes. It seems the only outcome there is a massive yes vote.
Once they had the massive yes vote, they have a democratic mandate for independence. Not only that, they get to say they have 90% mandate. The only way forward from that is for the Spanish government to back down and start negotiations or for indepence to be declared.
Here we are as Catalan declares independence, which it seems can either turn into a civil war, a flat-out failure with everyone arrested, Spain eating some humble pie to get them back to the table, or Spain just accepting Catalan is gone. It'll be interesting to see what happens.