Then why not let them vote (well, because Brexit has them shitting their pants, obviously, but still)?
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You’re not wrong. It’s part of a right-shift attitude on PP’s strategy. Basically not escalating would make the party lose support from and also there’s no apparent benefit for them to pursue this strategy.
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I would like to point there is a bit of misunderstanding about that one. The estatut transfered a lot of competences to the catalan government (including Cercanías the local train service, INEM (SOC in catalonia) the unemployment bureau, SNS (Catsalud) public healthcare) but has not transferred the money necessary to manage these competences. Note that we are not talking about new money, we’re talking about the money the state actually spent on these and that comes from the taxes collected in catalonia.
To compensate for that the state graciously allowed us to raise taxes, cut spending and borrow money. The result is that Catalonia is overtaxed, with many services underfunded and deep in debt. A debt we would not need if the state simply gave us the money we need.
Few remember that the September 11th 2012 manifestation that started all this brouhaha was not about seceding from Spain but for pressuring Spain to give us the money that rightfully we own.
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You’re not wrong. But not right. The Senate is a redundant body, a remain of the francoist era where communities didn’t had it’s own voice. And the system to elect senate representatives is heavily schewed to favor the majority party (4 representatives per region. Most voted gets 3, second most voted gets 1) with the result that the PP, with 33% of the votes, gets almost 80% of the senate.
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Relevant fun-fact from social choice theory:
Under certain (decently reasonable) assumptions, democracy and individual liberty are mathematically incompatible. See Sen (1970), The impossibility of a Paretian liberal.
More information at That Wiki.
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But what if they disagree?
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Britain’s antics in Northern Ireland is probably not a good playbook, you know.
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Another “what they want is illegal” based argument…
Your problem with that approach is that a significant proportion of your readership are proud citizens of a country whose existence was at some point considered illegal. Thus you’re limited to the sympathy you can get from citizens of countries that were never occupied, or never forced to be the lesser party in a union or empire. That’s not a great many people.
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Pretty much Athenian democracy then.
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Yup. Athens mostly sucked.
I’ve noted before that modern US foreign policy resembles the Delian League.
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It was about states rights, but not for the reasons you stated. It was actually the Union that wanted to protect states rights, and the Confederates wanted the federal government to protect their slave owning rights in inter-state disputes (e.g. if a slave escaped north they would be obligated to return them). Lincoln offered them a deal where they got to keep the slaves but the northern states didn’t have to honour their property contracts, but they wouldn’t accept that.
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I think I still don’t fully understand the situation because the response from both parties seems to be so irrational on the face of it. Why would you strike a referendum down with so much force unless you want escalation? Why would you hold a referendum you full well know will be illegal and where the polls suggest you’re opinion is not the most popular?
However, when you consider the possibility that both parties are to a certain extent about nationalism and/or populism the violence and the shortsightedness are suddenly easier to explain.
I also like to sympathize with the rebels or the underdogs but in this case it’s still unclear to me.
See, that is a position I could get behind, but that does not require secession so that does not seem to be the (only) thing at play here.
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I’m actually in favour of Catalan independence, in theory, I would have voted for it if I lived there and had the vote. It’s quite clear though that there currently doesn’t exist enough support for a UDI, the behavior of Madrid during the election was wrong, they should’ve just let them hold the referendum, advised people to abstain and ignored the result; but Puigdemont’s behavior since the election isn’t justified either, he should have used the result to push for a legitimate referendum instead. Catalan independence makes no sense without membership of the EU, and that’s never going to happen with a unilateral declaration, so all the effort needs to be put into forcing Spain to agree to a legal referendum.
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The thing is… they tried to negotiate for years. The statute was approved in 2006. PP inmediately raised several injunctions against it in the Constitutional Court. They never stopped negotiating, but the PP has nothing to lose by denying the money. And each year it passes Catalonia is deeper in debt (saint pete don’t you call me coz i cannot go…).
To simplify it a lot: Catalonia contributes about 16.000 million euros each year to the state coffers. Then the state decides how much money wants to give back and in which form. The government currently pays back about 4.300 m€, but we need about 7.800 m€. A small part from that comes from extra taxes we pay for being in catalonia and catalan loteries, which adds about 540 m€ to the coffers. The rest of that, the central state allows us to borrow money at low interes on certain conditions (political pressure and debt! supernice!). This give-and-take has been for almost 15 years. Last figures estimate about 52.000 milion euros of debt, interests included.
The state justifies this by investing in “infraestructure” that we don’t really need (like the high-speed train line) that pads the idea of how much the state has contributed to catalonia. So while the state contribution is 4.300 m€, it says it invested 17.000 m€ (because of those infraestructures) so where in deficit to the state (we owe them 1.000 m€). So the state, the following year, gives us 3.300m€ because last year we “overespended”.
Note that we don’t decide how, how much, and when this infraestructure will be applied. Nor we have a say in which companies will build these infraestructures, or the plan. For example, we have been demanding for quite a long time that the rail infrastructure of the called “corredor mediterraneo” (that goes from france to cadiz following the mediterranean coast) has to be reinforced because there’s quite a lot of traffic, specially the very profitable goods traffic. Because this line doesn’t pass by madrid, they are simply not putting money there, instead throwing money to a superdeficitary high speed line that puts us in the second place in km of HST -just behind china and AFTER japan-, also commanded by a private company that makes us eat the loses but keeps the earnings.
This secession movement is a desperate intent to raise international awareness and, in my opinion, failed because Europe is terrified of the prospect of endorsing secession (brittany, alsacia, lombardy, corsica) in the wake of the extreme right movements.
People like me (who are not in favor of secession, except if for secession means seceding PP from power) we hoped for a change of government in the past elections. But with the PP four years more in power, Catalonia is doomed to either becoming a puppet state of Spain by force, or be crushed by debts and become a puppet of the state of Spain by virtue of economic concern (a bit of what happened to italy but to a lesser scale).
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Why is this a good thing?
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In the context of this discussion, that is a red herring, since the application of Article 155 is also supported by PSOE and Cs. PP, PSOE, and Cs would have a majority in the Senate even with a perfectly proportional system. And the model for the current Senate is not so much the francoist Senate, but the German Bundesrat.
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Because I like to move around? So far, I have worked and lived in three countries.
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Another “what they want is illegal” based argument
You obviously did not even bother reading what i wrote. You might want to re-read it and we can take it from there.
In any case, the logic behind another “a lot of today’s countries originally declared Independence illegally” argument does not justify just about anyone declaring independence.
I think what he’s trying to say is that you need to put a better reason on the table than simply “is just illegal”.
There are a lot of good reasons to not secede. The legality of the action is the least good.
And before you drop the obvious, let me answer in advance:
"But the constitution is clear on that!"
The constitution can be amended. It has been already modified for less noble reasons and back on 2015 PP was arguing that the current constitution does not fit its territorial vision and was in negotiations with PSOE to change it.
It’s illegal because the ruling parties want it to be and find no reason to change it. Protesting was legal until the infamous “ley mordaza”. Making jokes of Carrero Blanco was legal until it wasn’t. Conversely, forcing your wife to ask you permission for her to work was legal until not long ago in Spain.
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Good on you. So if I am correct in assuming you’re an EU citizen then you could look forward to the chance to live and work in a future independent Scotland or Catalunya – provided we all do our bit to admit them into the EU or EEA.
And why would a border automatically prevent you from going somewhere? A border was put up between Russia and Lithuania at some point, then at a later point Lithuania joined the EU and voila now you can live and work there too!
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