Then you will be SHOCKED the moment you learn what’s the percentage of people who voted for the current Spanish government.
You, know, the ones that actually created the problem…
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Precisely. It is not as if the Spanish are a long established democracy.
Trying to prevent a vote organised by a regional government looks like Madrid did not like the expected outcome.
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I just don’t understand why Madrid has pursued a course of actions that anyone could see would only escalate tensions. It’s almost as if they wanted things to come to a head so they could completely revoke Catalonia’s existing autonomy.
As a left-leaning Texan, I watch the right-leaning members of my state, including some grandstanding from the state government, threaten to illegally secede every time the Democrats are in the White House. I’m very glad they really can’t, and I entirely understand many Catalans may be in a similar position (though I acknowledge there exist substantive difference between the analogous situations). I’m merely disturbed by how Madrid has reacted.
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Because they are idiots. And ideology, of course.
Only appears. In the regional elections in Spain, we vote to the regional congress (legislative), who then elects the regional government (executive). What they are doing is against the executive, not the legislative, who will be still in normal functions until the next (advanced) elections. For the normal citizen there will be almost no difference. This is scheduled to last a maximum of 6 months, but it will probably be less, as they are talking about the end of January for the advanced elections.
And then it will start again, because the results of the regional election are not going to change that much from the last ones.
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Eh… a vote on a creation of a completely new polity really should require a higher level of legitimacy and participation than a regular parliamentary election.
I think the problem has existed since before 1714 and the scars were reopened and partially re-healed several times since.
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El PP, PSOE, Podemos y Ciudadanos son todos idiotas. En el fondo da igual quien hubiera estado gobernando, esto se veía venir desde lejos, y lo sabes…
There is a big difference. The equivalent of the US is the EU, though it is much weaker. Catalonia does not want to secede from the EU. It wants to secede from Spain. And I can’t see what’s wrong with that. But then I’m an anti-centralist. I want to see people able to exercise democracy at the lowest appropriate level, under a supranational framework to ensure that anti-democrats do not take power. Germany has this and has had it for a long time.*
Switzerland is an example of this; its cantons have extensive local government. It has been stable for a long time. The smallest cantons are the size of a medium size market town.
Americans often do not realise that local democracy is often much weaker in EU countries than in the US. In England it is very weak indeed; we have to deal with a monolithic Westminster government while Scotland, Wales and NI have a degree of regional autonomy. I think we would actually be a lot better off if England was regionalised.
EDIT - today Lombardy and Veneto are having nonbinding referendums on greater independence from Rome. No violence, no arrests. Why? Because Sardinia, Sicily and Trentino (which is on the mainland) already have a great deal of independence, but within the EU because the Italians have managed to deal with things somewhat better than the Spanish.
*As late as WW1, for instance, the German army was organised on a regional basis and the Bavarian regiments refused to serve on the Eastern front.
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Could you clarify for those of us who are not as familiar with all the background? What is it that was seen from far off?
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Fair enough. I only meant that I understand not wanting to be swept along. In the US, the central government for all its myriad flaws, serves as a valuable check on state and local government where democratic majorities are sometimes all too willing to trample civil rights of both political and ethnic minorities. The EU seems to provide some of that balance, but as you note, the scope of its power is much narrower than the US federal government. But that’s enough about that; I don’t want to take us off-topic. I can see how Scotland and Switzerland are more apt parallels.
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The Catalonian government was as democratically elected as Donald Trump. 52% voted against them in the last elections but due to a quirk in the electoral system that gives rural (more pro-independence) areas more power than urban ones, they still won the elections despite losing the popular vote.
Since anti-independentists reject the referendum as illegal and shunned it, the turnout and results are meaningless.
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The Catalan government is going to be deposed for acting against the Catalan Statute of Autonomy and the Spanish Constitution. Two laws have recently been passed by the Catalan regional parliament: one to call for the independence referendum and another to give absolute power to the Catalan regional Government, removing the separation of powers. Those laws were passed violating established parliamentary procedure. Both laws were suspended by the Spanish Constitutional Court for violating the terms of the Spanish Constitution. The police acted following instructions from the courts to stop the illegal referendum.
I have lived so far in three countries: Spain, Germany, and the United States. In none of these countries it is allowed for a part of the country to separate from the rest of the country without reforming the existing constitution. Article 155 of the Spanish Constitution was borrowed from the Article 37 of the German Basic Law. I think that we all remember what happened the last time that some states tried to secede from the United States. Direct rule has been used in the US to impose federal mandates on the states, as in 1957 in Arkansas, and several times in the UK for Northern Ireland.
Catalan nationalism, like every other nationalism, is not a “Wonderful Thing”. It is basically racist and based on historical myths and falsehoods. We should be removing borders, not adding new ones.
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You know, most of us were only vaguely aware of Catalonia until the rubber bullets came out. It’s not as if we have a dog in this fight. It’s just that Spain is acting as if Franco is back.
From the position of an outsider, it seems as if a surprising number of new users have come just to convince us the Catalonian referendum was bad. You can go to work elsewhere, boys, we aren’t the opinion leaders you seem to think we are. A lot of us simply won’t get on board with the rubber bullet faction, no matter how many times you wring your hands over that “illegal referendum that nobody wanted.”
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Has Franco also comeback to every other place in Europe were rubber bullets are used? Don’t the Catalan police use them too? Do you think that is okay for the regional government to put themselves above the law?
I have been a reader of Boing Boing for many years. I used to have an account and also commented a little, but that account does seem to work anymore, so I created a new one. In any case, I always prefer to listen better than to talk, but in this case I felt compelled to talk. Please do not use Ad hominen arguments, let’s talk about facts.
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There is no such thing as an illegal referendum.
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Yeah, sure, you’re totally an old Boinger, your old account just mysteriously can’t be used here. Sounds legit.
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The Alaskan Supreme Court and the German courts seem to disagree with your legal opinion.
Again, please no Ad hominen, let’s talk about the facts. I don’t care about being an old or a new happy mutant.
Catalonian police DO NOT use rubber bullets. They had being illegal since 2014, approved by the Catalonian parliament (against the votes of the Popular Party).
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As a reader of BB, you know that there have been a streak of stories this last year about increasingly sophisticated campaigns sowing authoritarian rhetoric and FUD using troll armies, so this reaction should not be a surprise. I mean there is one country (China) where that has become endemic and it is frighteningly effective.
It’s getting harder to trust people, and all we can rely on right now are heuristics like “Did they join with a number of others shortly after X happened?” And “Are they very quick to equivocate?”, “Are they a single issue poster?”, “Do they ever engage positively or just negatively with discussions?”
This topic is tripping red flags for me and while that doesn’t mean bad faith posters are certain, it does mean we should tread carefully. Let’s talk facts, but let’s also acknowledge some facts can be omitted or manipulated in a set to create a different narrative, and we’re long past the point where we can assume good faith participants in a discussion without some background to audit.
Here are facts I’ve gathered so far:
- A large fraction of the Catalan population wants independence, enough to make it an issue.
- Catalonia wanted a vote and Madrid tried to forcefully prevent organization of the vote, and then tried to prevent voting on the day of, escalating to use of rubber bullets and injuring a little less than a 1000 people (the count I saw was 834).
- Even still, 43% of the population came to vote and of those 92% voted yes.
- Now Madrid is threatening direct rule.
These facts appear to be accurate and unbiased description of the events so far, and they make it look like Madrid is being a major authoritarian dick.
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That is true, they don’t use them anymore, but they have used them in the past.
It is also a fact that the Catalan regional Government has tried to promulgate a law to put itself above any other Spanish or Catalan law or court of law, and so to end the rule of law and the separation of powers.
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