The fact is that in that referendum only the indepentendists went to vote, if you make an illegal referendum, that’s what you get… so of course they won!
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I think you’re probably right. But my paranoia does make me wonder what problems might have been thrown up by issues like North Sea oil and the nuclear submarine bases.
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I refer the honourable gentleman to the answer I gave some moments ago.
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I am a human being, a former Spaniard, and now a US citizen. The deputies that left the chamber did it because they did not want to legitimize the illegal vote.
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It is not legal according Catalonian law. Any amendment to their basic law, the Statute of Autonomy, requires approval of 2/3 of the deputies. And the referendum show was illegal too.
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Yeah, I can understand, but the fact is that here in Spain we are a Democracy, and if you want to secede, first you have to change the constitution, or at least if you talk of moral arguments have more of the 60 or 70% of the votes in a conventional regional election, and that is not the case. If you like history, you will know that nationalists tend to distort the truth… if you search in youtube “save catalonia” there’s a video that depict’s catalonia like it was grozny in the middle of the war with Russia…
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But then why aren’t there 0 votes opposed? MPs did show up to cast “no” votes in a vote they felt was illegal, just not that many.
Also, it seems like a big assumption to claim that only those who support Spanish rule would avoid the vote because it was declared illegal. For example, if I was a cowardly MP, even if I supported independence I would probably avoid casting a vote out of fear of persecution by the Spanish government.
It’s hard to extract a perfectly clear conclusion from a vote that’s under direct duress by the (supposedly democratic) government itself. But even taking into account the complications, this one looks like a pretty strong mandate.
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Yes, because Cory kind of glossed over the fact that many boycotted the vote. The Catalonian parliament has 135 seats. So 70 is actually a very slim majority for a vote that even many Catalonian deem illegitimate.
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Zikzak, I understand that if you view this from the outside, it looks that Spain is the bad guy, but you have to see the facts, and this is a very complex matter involving years of corruption in both the spanish and the catalan government and lots of indoctrination to the catalan kids in the last 20 years. I am from another region of spain similar to Catalonia, with our own language and culture different from other parts of spain, but we embrace our spanish brothers like equals instead of generating hate and mistrust.
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Californians take note.
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The Spanish government and courts really screwed the pooch on this situation, from beginning to end. I don’t think that separatism is a great resolution for anyone, but I don’t feel too sorry for Spain here. I’m not sure why they couldn’t handle things like they did with Basque Country, but perhaps the involvement of France in that situation tempered Spain’s incompetence.
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Only if the EU recognises its independence, which is unlikely.
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Is that a 2/3 majority of all seats, or 2/3 majority of those voting?
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As I said, lots of negotiations. My gut feeling is that there would have been a lease of those bases, as Scotland would probably apply for NATO, too. And in any war that goes nuclear, “not being UK” would mean nothing for Scotland. They share an island, they would be affected anyway.
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So why doesn’t Spain run a legal referendum?
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Why would you think that Catalans are the only ones who are subject to a form of indoctrination, though? Aren’t we ALL subject to indoctrination regarding our own national, regional, and local context? Indoctrination into the nation was a key element of the modern nation-state system and is always working in ways both visible and invisible.
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Almost all the non-independentist MP refused to even vote. Because they consider voting this an aberration.
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interesting. Saying “this vote is binding because we are technically correct” is kind of like Madrid’s take on the referendum.
From the outside, this looks far less legitimate than the referendum in Crimea. And the parliament as appealing (and democratic) as the student councils I visited in the 90s.
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Yes, I’m sure it’s very complex and there has been dishonorable behavior “on all sides”, as they say. The broad strokes international perspective is not necessarily the correct one, since we may be missing important detail and nuance. But conversely, you may be so wrapped up in petty hostilities and political drama that you have lost track of the importance of the broader principles in play here: democracy, autonomy, self-determination.
I don’t think the facts as they’ve shown themselves justify dismissing the independence movement as simply being a complex facade for conspiratorial Catalan elites. Indeed, many of my comrades in Spain who absolutely hate the Catalan elites find themselves on the side of independence, which suggests to me that this is a genuinely populist movement.
Rather than trying to dismiss the whole movement as an illegal conspiracy of elites, it might be more productive to argue starting from the point that this is a morally justifiable, genuinely populist push for self-determination. Then discuss why that might be a bad idea, or why people should oppose it. I would actually be interested to hear those arguments.
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