Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2017/10/27/catalonian-parliament-declares.html
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I don’t think this will end well…
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I knew a Catalonian once.
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Does this void Catalan’s relationship with the EU? Will other EU countries permit Spain to take back the region or will they support the new nation?
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With 70 out of 135 votes, they would not have been able to elect the Audiovisual Council of Catalonia, or to reform their own Autonomy Statute, since both of those require a 2/3 majority. And those 70 votes represent less than half of the people that voted in the last elections.
This is not legal and it is not legitimate. It is a coup d’etat, a top-down “revolution” perpetrated by an extractive elite.
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Kids with signs and clubs versus black-clad armies with bayonets and plexiglass shields. It’s the standard “quash uprising” play.
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Its a shame blogs like boing boing depict spain as a ferocius dictatorship abusing poor Catalonia… If you dig a little you will see that almost all the news about catalonia in the catalonian social networks are fake or at least dubious… This event is bad for Catalonia, bad for Spain and bad for Europe, it´s a lose-lose situation derived from the fanatism and the corruption of a small portion of the catalonian people.
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It didn’t start well
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Technically, as a new nation they will have to apply for membership.
That was the advice that was given to Scotland during the run up to their independence referendum. If you leave a member state and become a new state, then you don’t get grandfathered.
So Catalonia is now on WTO rules, with no import/export and no border controls.
How the EU reacts will be interesting to see. I doubt that they want to punish Catalonia, but they have to implement things like border controls and tariffs if they’re to be taken seriously by the rest of the world. These are obligations that they have to both their own members and to other countries via numerous treaties.
How Catalonia will react to discovering this will be interesting.
As I’m in the UK and a Remainer, I’m also curious to see how it will affect our hard-right “WTO rules will be fine” brigade of Leavers…
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Since Catalonia doesn’t have a relationship with the EU, no.
Taking my pedant pendant off - Only if anyone else recognises it as valid.
If Spain says its still part of Spain, it’s still part of the EU.
Which do you think?
My guess is that the EU commission’s response will be to say that the makeup of member states is an internal matter for member states and does not fall under EU competencies and to appeal to both sides to come to some sort of deal, possibly brokered by EU negotiators who happen to fancy several months, if not years, spent shuttling back and forth between Madrid and Barcelona.
Lovely city, Barcelona. Lots of nice restaurants and bars.
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The truth is that nothing will change, because Spain will not allow it, as this people is breaking the spanish laws, and most important breaking the spanish constitution. Tomorrow some of the catalonian independentist leaders will be in jail, and they will not be political prisoners as they like to be called. In my country, like yours if you break the lay you go to jail, its easy to understand…
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Not at all would be my guess. Why should external reality be of any interest to them now?
More generally, it’s an interesting one given that in the case of Scotland, everyone would have accepted that Scotland would be an independent nation (well, so we were told, whether it would actually have been allowed is another question).
In the case of Catalonia, Spain doesn’t accept it and I doubt the EU will. So Catalonia stays in the EU while waving their little sign saying “We’re independent!”.
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If Catalonia becomes independent, it will not be a member of the EU. I wonder where the delusion it would remain to be in the EU or would be promptly admitted comes from.
And since admission has to be by unilateral vote, they won’t get admitted for decades, as long as Spain is a member.
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Certainly events that the Cascadia secessionists would want to be watching, one would assume.
First of all, who are you? You seem to have just created an account to argue against Catalonian independence, and it makes me curious. Are you Spanish? Are you connected to the Spanish state?
Secondly, the vote appears to have been 70-10 with 2 abstaining. That is an overwhelming majority. I would think if there were significant opposition to such an important vote, they would have showed up to cast a vote, to prove the point you were trying to make. But they didn’t, presumably because opposition really is pretty marginal.
I don’t know the details though - is there a reason so many people didn’t show for the vote?
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Brexit won with 51.9% of the vote. It’s legal acording to Catalan Law. If your concern is about how many people support this, do you support a referendum? I’m afraid you’ll say: “no, that’s illegal!” We did that referendum, while spanish police was beating us, and we won it by 90%.
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I do appreciate that feelings run high on this one in Spain but as has been pointed out numerous times on various different posts on the issue of Catalonia, simply saying “It’s all illegal because Spanish law says so and so does the Spanish constitution” really does not add much to the debate.
By definition any attempt to secede from the parent state is going to be deemed illegal and invalid by the parent state.
Basically all that is saying is “Catalonia is part of Spain and we’re not going to allow a bunch of uppity locals to say otherwise”.
Perfectly valid in a realpolitik sense but not much good as a legal or moral argument.
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In fact there is such reason, the voting was deemed illegal by the spanish constitutional tribunal so only the independentist went to vote
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I think it would have been allowed. The referendum there went ahead with London’s consent and was democratically sound. They would have separated, after lots of negotiations. And left the EU by default. They then very likely would’ve applied for membership and get fast tracked, as all the institutions are already there. As in Catalonia, but unlike Catalonia it would have been in the interest of England to remove as much friction between London and Glasgow as possible.
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