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Comment by Oletros | Hacker News Reader

> There are about half of the population of Catalonia that doesn't agree with you.

By the way, polls show that people in favor of having a referendum is majority. A lot of people agree to have a referendum when they themselves would vote no to independence. They are different things

> This is not a referendum to ask about sideways width. It's about asking people if they want to commit a crime: secession.

Secession is a crime? Tried Scotland or Quebec to commit a crime?

Czech Republic and Slovakia are criminals?

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You have to consider the circumstances under which the Spanish Constitution was written. Franco had died, and after years of dictatorship and repression, the government was afraid of exactly this: separatism.

So I guess that as a concession to the still strong fascist powers, the Constitution stated that is a crime to attempt to break the "the indissoluble unity of the Spanish nation".

This doesn't make sense in the 21st century, I think, but that's the way it is.

Guess what part of Spain voted massively yes to the current constitution.

Please, don't try to rewrite History.

The Spanish Constitution is based in a very broad agreement, from Communists to the Far-Right Wing.

Then that agreement (the Constitution) was voted by all the Spanish People and received an immense support.

See the table here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_constitutional_referen...

The Spanish people voted yes to democracy, not to the constitution. The communist party supported it because it feared continuing to be illegal otherwise, and it is an issue that still causes them a lot of division.

My generation did not vote for the constitution, and many of us dislike it. I agree that it is a conservative constitution made out of fear, with a flawed electoral system, a king, etc. The same fear that the party in power, lineage of the dictators, uses to address our aging population.

"Mejor malo conocido que bueno por conocer" (Better a known bad than the good that is jet to be known) is the worst Spanish saying.

I am Andalusian and pro-referendum.

The Spanish people voted yes to democracy, not to the constitution.

Please don't spread misinformation.

You're confusing the referendum for politic reform of 1976 with the constitution of 1978. BOTH were voted in national referendum by free, direct and secret vote.

If you were suggesting that people didn't vote freely because fear, you are wrong.

My generation did not vote for the constitution, and many of us dislike it.

That's OK. There are, in the constitution itself a sort of ways to ammend it. If you have enough votes, you can do mostly everything.

I don't see a contradiction with GP post. As part of this broad agreement, the right and center-right forces request of indivisibility of Spain was included in the Constitution.

After Franco death, the first party to win a free election, and by majority, was a center party (UCD).

Every major party wanted indivisibility of Spain, including the PCE or Communist Party of Spain.

So please don't try to sell the territorial indivisibility as a right or center-right thing.

Secession is a crime? Tried Scotland or Quebec to commit a crime? Czech Republic and Slovakia are criminals?

I'm not opposed to the referendum, but those places are not under the rule of the Spanish constitution.

Secession is a crime?

You are confusing two meanings of the word. There is the meaning of breaking a country for whatever reasons. Like Sudan, or the USSR or Yugoslavia. There is another meaning: the crime of secession that tries to break a country by force and against its legitimate authorities, that often ends in a blood bath.

First meaning is not the same as the second.

You're missing the case of trying to break the country by force against its illegitimate authorities, otherwise how would you classify East Timor?

OK. The thing is there's nothing illegitimate in this case. Spanish authorities have full legitimacy. We are a standard democracy, integrated in EU and NATO since the eighties, our ellections are clean and our 1978 constitution was widely praised at the time for being a cornerstone of national reconcilliation.

The national government is held by PP, a right-wing party where a lot of corruption cases surfaced recently. There is much pressure about this, but the reality is that the prime minister was voted by a majority of parliament, so...

On the other hand, the referendum organizers voted it in an illegitimate regional parlament session. The regional president's party has been also corrupted to the roots. They were trying to hide it all behind all this adventure.

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