Spain suppressing Catalan Indyref

Rolfe said:
The Spanish police attacking the Catalan firefighters standing in their firefighting protective gear, but unarmed, in front of the civilians trying to vote, was another low point. And the Catalan police lined up in front of the civilians trying to protect them from the Spanish police.

And the civilian woman who was trying to protect a group of elderly voters who was thrown to the ground, thrown down a flight of steps, and had her fingers deliberately and systematically broken one by one by the Spanish police was another. That was filmed live, as well as the woman herself giving a somewhat stressed account of it once she got back from hospital with her hands in splints.

I saw on Twitter there had been a fatality.

You know, I don't understand these people who say, I'm not in favour of the break-up of big states, we should stay united, I want the minimum number of states on the planet, and so on. Which states are behaving in the most egregious manner on the globe? By and large, the big ones. Look at any of the rankings of prosperity and happiness and you'll see the top spots dominated by countries with less than 10 million of a population.

States of that size are far less likely to be throwing their weight around, "punching above" that weight and generally making a damn nuisance of themselves. Why would anyone doubt the ability of Catalonia to thrive as an independent country? Or Scotland either for that matter. Just look at the most comparable existing states and see how they're getting on. Just fine, is the answer.

A few more Catalonias and Scotlands and yes Kurdistans, and fewer Spains and UKs and Iraqs, and the world would be a better place.
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Painting with a very broad bush there.
 
dudalb said:
The backlash against the British government in Ireland came with the execution of the leaders,which many advised them against;that it would turn a group of people that many who favored Home Rule considered to be bunch of extremists into matrys;it ,for the first time, caused a majority of the Irish people to think that armed resistence to the UK Government was justified.
Spain might have just made a similar mistake.
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Yep.

In other news, General Francisco Franco is still dead... but stirring slightly.
 
ddt said:
Italy's as well, Garibaldi managed to conquer Naples and Sicily with 1,000 volunteers.
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The unification didn't see much fighting, but it is less known that in the aftermath to hold the south they needed to deploy almost one hundred thousand troops and apprehend/kill thousands of "brigands" (both the number of casualties and of detentions weren't officially documented, probably they didn't jibe well with the rethoric of unification).
 
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Giz said:
Yep.

In other news, General Francisco Franco is still dead... but stirring slightly.
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Hey, Giz, don't steal my shtick;I mentioned Franco is alive and well a couple of pages ago.
It is scarily reminiscent of the run up to the Spanish Civil War.
 
dudalb said:
Hey, Giz, don't steal my shtick;I mentioned Franco is alive and well a couple of pages ago.
It is scarily reminiscent of the run up to the Spanish Civil War.
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Franco my dudalb, I don't give a ... wait, wrong secession. Just think of it as putting the homage in catalonia.
 
Planigale said:
Although 'constitutions' are often lauded, this shows a problem.

The Spanish / Castillian? government tried to move forward on autonomy for Catalan. It is not the central government that is the barrier but the constitution. Barriers are put to constitutional change.
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It seems to me this is grounds for amending the constitution, no?

It doesn't need to allow secession (though at this point it is fast becoming necessary), but it should allow sufficient autonomy within the Spanish state for Catalonians to feel at peace with it, at least for a time.

This would be the way to go in 2010. Now, I think, Spain will need to do far more if it is to calm the region.

McHrozni
 
Yes I agree.

Constitutions are usually designed to be difficult to be changed. If there was a strong commitment from the central government they might achieve this. But I suspect there may be many other special interest groups that would need to be bought off.
 
Planigale said:
Yes I agree.

Constitutions are usually designed to be difficult to be changed. If there was a strong commitment from the central government they might achieve this. But I suspect there may be many other special interest groups that would need to be bought off.
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Yes, but that's a feature, not a bug, of constitutions. They need to be difficult to change or else they're meaningless, but hey must also be possible to change, because the needs of the times also change.

McHrozni
 
McHrozni said:
This is nonesense.

Catalonia was a major part of the kingdom of Aragon, which formed, alongside kingdoms of Castillie, Leon and Asturias, the kingdom of Spain. It was never conquered by Spain, Spain didn't even exist when the union was created. It doesn't belong to Spain any more than Castillie does.

McHrozni
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Early history. There's more, later! Besides, "citizen by royal marriage" is shaky grounds, especially if Castile wants to double-down on claimed legitimacy.
 
Hlafordlaes said:
Early history. There's more, later! Besides, "citizen by royal marriage" is shaky grounds, especially if Castile wants to double-down on claimed legitimacy.
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Maybe so, but it isn't "military conquest". I'm not saying Spain should be kept together at all costs with the present approach. I'm saying not all criticisms of the present approach are accurate.

McHrozni
 
Planigale said:
The Spanish / Castillian? government tried to move forward on autonomy for Catalan. It is not the central government that is the barrier but the constitution. Barriers are put to constitutional change.
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From reading the wiki page on it, the 2006 Catalonian government reached an agreement on the statute with the governing left-wing PSOE government, it was approved by the Spanish parliament and then a constitutional challenge was filed by the opposition right-wing PP (which is now in government), as well as by surrounding autonomous communities. The Constitutional Court wrangled with the issue for four years. I haven't looked closely into this, so I don't know what the importance of the articles they rewrote resp. interpreted is.

McHrozni said:
Yes, but that's a feature, not a bug, of constitutions. They need to be difficult to change or else they're meaningless, but hey must also be possible to change, because the needs of the times also change.
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Indeed.
 
McHrozni said:
Maybe so, but it isn't "military conquest". I'm not saying Spain should be kept together at all costs with the present approach. I'm saying not all criticisms of the present approach are accurate.

McHrozni
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Well, that was what I was getting at. :) The last round was indeed the Siege of BarcelonaWP, 1714, a military conquest. BTW, there is another common expression in Madrid: "It's proper due diligence to bomb Barcelona once a century." The fort atop Montjuich and the Ciutadella, now destroyed, were put in or around the city for that purpose.
 
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Craig B said:
It was the execution of the signatories of the 1916 Proclamation that turned the populace against the UK in Ireland. And their offence was not to hold a peaceful Referendum, but to launch a bloody uprising.

If Madrid punishes the Generalitat for conducting a peaceful democratic enterprise, following the Spanish police's own recent brutality in Barcelona, that will be a gift to the separatists.
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I'm not at all sure this reading of Irish history is correct actually. It seems to have become a generally accepted meme that the execution of the leaders of the Easter Rising turned a peaceful, Home Rule wanting population towards armed Irish Republicanism, but when you look at that period of history in any detail there's scant evidence for it. Closer to the truth I think is that the executions formed a rallying point for a population who were already in sympathy with the Rising, just as internment did in the North in the early 1970s.

And just as the actions of the Spanish police will probably do in Catalonia.
 
Strawberry said:
I'm not at all sure this reading of Irish history is correct actually. It seems to have become a generally accepted meme that the execution of the leaders of the Easter Rising turned a peaceful, Home Rule wanting population towards armed Irish Republicanism, but when you look at that period of history in any detail there's scant evidence for it. Closer to the truth I think is that the executions formed a rallying point for a population who were already in sympathy with the Rising, just as internment did in the North in the early 1970s.

And just as the actions of the Spanish police will probably do in Catalonia.
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A majority of the population at least in what was to become the Republic,was in favor of Home Rule.but only a small militant minority seemed in favor of a violent uprising.....until the aftermath of the Easter Rising.
You seem to be buying the more militant Irish Republican reading of Irish History...which is to be taken with a ton of salt.
 
The actions of the Spanish Government were deplorable, but I have a really hard time buying the 94% in favor of secession claims by the party involved. You only get that kind of majority in staged elections like you see in dictatorships. I think we are going to get all kinds of B.S. from both sided.
 
dudalb said:
The actions of the Spanish Government were deplorable, but I have a really hard time buying the 94% in favor of secession claims by the party involved. You only get that kind of majority in staged elections like you see in dictatorships. I think we are going to get all kinds of B.S. from both sided.
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Last I heard it was 90%, but in any case, I'm not surprised. Hard police action was already announced and there had been several raids of would-be polling stations and storage of the ballots.

In those circumstances, it's not surprising if only people who were in favour of independence came out to vote and risked getting beaten up. I think it's more surprising that still 10% who voted against risked that to go out and vote.
 
dudalb said:
You only get that kind of majority in staged elections like you see in dictatorships.
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Well, no. You can also get those kinds of numbers when the referendum is boycotted by one or more parties.

For example, the recent referendum in Puerto Rico was 97% in favor of statehood, because the pro-status quo voters were encouraged not to participate.

Not coincidentally, those opposed to independence in Catalonia boycotted this referendum.
 
Which sort of makes the referendum questionable as a reading of the will of the Cataloninan people?

But people here are in full "Up The Revolution!" mode,so I should not expect balanced opinions.
 
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