Catalan independence movement declares a general strike in Barcelona

boing
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These are just words. The fact that California calls itself a “state” does not mean that it is a country. It is an administrative unit below the level of the US, there are counties that are administrative units below the level of “California”, there are metropolitan areas below that level. Vermont was once such a unit within New York, it then seceded and later joined the USA.

I’m sure there are good arguments against Catalonian independence, but arguing that they have no right because of the name of their administrative unit is not going to convince anyone of anything except that you have no better argument.

You should drop this comparison please. It is deeply offensive (and I don’t mean to the Madrid politicians).

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Franco has been dead for 40 years.
If the only reason for independence is that Spain is a descendant of the Nazis, it seems to me that this is a lie with very little travel.
I insist that the European Union that now includes France, Germany, UK, Portugal, Italy etc … has never ever said that Spain is Nazi, is a dictatorship or even that there is a minimum shadow of suspicion.
You will say that the transition from dictatorship to democracy was not correct but the truth is that all those who had to flee from Spain when it was a dictatorship have become communists included.

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Would you be opposed to their independence if they took Aragon, Valencia, and the Balearics with them? They were certainly their own state, wouldn’t you agree?

Focusing on whether or not something historically had a state is a horrible way of deciding things, though. Kurds never had their own state (okay, okay, Saladin, but still…) but do they not have the right to self-determination?

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Please stop shifting the topic. You made an assertion about California doing a independence referendum. That assertion was shown to be false. Don’t shift the goalpost back to Catalonia and apply Spanish law to the California assertion.

Again, you’re crossing up discussion of a US state and a Spanish region, and I will assume it’s just confusion rather than a bad faith argument.

Of course, it didn’t start with independence. The first step was an attempt to negotiate better treatment from the central government. The independence movement came from the harsh response to the first attempt.

At some point, when there is a disagreement between a state/region/people and a central government, and the central government always escalates to hard line responses, including draconian laws and police violence, it doesn’t matter what the law is. That state/region/people have a right to be treated fairly, and if the central government responds to calls for fairness with draconian prison sentences and police violence, those people have a right to independence.

Before you bring up the US Civil War, that’s an example of the direct opposite case. The Confederate states started with concessions from the formation of the country, and were given more and more concessions over time.

We’re familiar here with that. It doesn’t play well. If it looks like a fascist, acts like a fascist, and smells like a fascist, call it a fascist.

(And while I’m editing) When the Spanish government is changing laws to punish a specific region, jailing leaders of that region, and committing violence in the street against peaceful protesters, there’s more than a whiff of fascism there.

Franco loved Catalans so much, he hugged them with bombs!

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I certainly wouldn’t use the same arguments.

I completely ignore the subject. I’m sorry.

The truth is that I don’t understand what you mean.
Nor is I supposed to say that it is not true.
I have tried with a couple of translators and I have not been able.
If you want me to answer you, I ask you to summarize it and so I can translate it.

92/5000
I’ve seen a lot of American police fights on television and I can’t miss calling them Nazis

Franco bombed all of Spain.
There were fewer casualties in Catalonia than in other provinces in proportion.
The Spanish province that provided more fighters to the Francoist side was Catalonia.
The one that resisted less time.
The one that betrayed the republican troops to go on their own.
The one that suffered less control of the Franco state after the victory.
In which he found greater collaboration of the elites.
until football club Barcelona gave 10 medals to franco, No other team in Spain has done it.
He favored the appearance of heavy industry and textiles there.
This may not be told by independentists but this is something known by anyone who investigates the subject a bit.

The royal origins date back to the Carlist wars. There were two kings and different supporters in Spain.
The movement has been changing politically over the years until now.

108

Probably a good place to put this reminder…

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I’m not sure that that’s true. If you look back through the archives, you’ll find stories on issues in Latin America over the years. Plus there are many members here either from Latin American countries originally, or who currently live there.

Thanks very much for posting this link though. You’re new here, so if you’d like I can start a thread on this issue?

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Now I’m really worried for you. Such enthusiastic exaltations of the virtues of fascist regimes are known to have caused unwanted side effects.

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Please, promise us you will seek help as soon as you notice anything unusual.

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Could everyone please stop with the Nazi stuff? As badly as the Spanish government has behaved, they have not committed genocide and show no signs of being about to. There is actual genocide going on in the world, as well as a frightening rise in antisemitism in the world, these comparisons trivialize the real thing.

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I did not intent to offend anyone, the use of the word “nazis” was not gratuitous in this case, not at all.

In Spain the falangist party is the equivalent to the nazi party in Germany:

So it would have been more accurate to say that the falangists won the war and were allowed to keep their power positions in the transition to “democracy”.

Spain is the second country in the world after Cambodia with most mass graves, it is estimated that there are still 120.000 unidentified victims of the genocide perpetrated by the fascist dictator franco. These criminals have not been punished nor the victims recognized, because the actual criminals were allowed to stay in power.

I was just explaining that the authoritarianism of the Spanish state and police brutality should not come as a surprise once you understand that the power structures of the fascist state were allowed to survive intact in their transition to “democracy”. It also helps to explain the peculiarities of the Spanish constitution and the tolerance to far-right and downright fascist attitudes in Spanish society today.

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I mean, only a state that has this authoritarian heritage would give orders so that the police terrorizes the citizens like this:

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There are many – too many – authoritarian states in the world, but most of them, including Spain, have not tried to exterminate a race. The casual substitution of “Nazi” for “authoritarian” deflects from what was the most horrifying aspect of that regime. Or are you trying to say that the Catalonians are being treated by the central government in a way analogous to the way the Jews were treated in Nazi Germany?

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I’ll edit my post.

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I see your point. There was political and ethnical cleansing by the fascists in Spain, they even cooperated with the nazis in the murdering of thousands. The nazis supported the fascist in the Spanish civil war and the Spanish fascist fought alongside the nazis against the Allies.

But yes, although the repression was brutal and thousands were murdered, the nazis were much worse.

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This represents a hole in my historical knowledge. Other than the cooperation with the Nazis, what ethnic cleansing did the Spanish fascists engage in?

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I know BB has had articles, but inthe last years I’ve seen very few unless it’s about Mexico or, sometimes, Central America (both usually very related to the US).

I’m not new, but usually just read. I’m not active on the forum, but every time I’ve submitted some Chile-related thing (from the forgotten-by-the-us commemoration of the oj 9/11, the one where Nixon-Kissinger-CIA tore our country appart, to the violation of human rights and indigenous communities in the south), nothing ever made it to the page… and now the “submissions” system is completely broken.

I know this thread is about something else, but I was hoping to catch the eye of anyone with a little bit of influence on BB (I’ve even tagged BB in some of my twitter posts about the topic).

Thanks anyways.

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The cleansing was more political and religious in nature rather than based on based on biological traits.
Also, the regime had their own version of eugenics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Vallejo-Nájera . The fascist regime in Spain claimed that those who opposed them where genetically defective, racially inferior and had to be eliminated.

Those 120000 still unidentified victims are not the result of combats but rather of killings of civilians. People would be routinely put in concentration camps, subjected to forced labor and killed for not being spiritually “pure” according to the standards of the fascists (non catholic, ahteist, non fascists, homosexuals, etc.)

It is estimated that 30000 children where separated from their parents at birth to keep the race “pure” and prevent them from being infected by their parents.

Those who the fascist deemed inferior and were not killed where sent to concentration camps, banned from public life, starved in prison, not allowed to have jobs, their properties confiscated.

To this day this crimes have not been investigated due to the strong opposition of the Spanish state, because the fascist were allowed to stay in power. The heirs of the criminals are part of the power structures of Spain, the judiciary system, the deep state, the police and the army.

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