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.
