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Comment by zmb_ | Hacker News Reader

I have worked with half a dozen Catalans both in and outside Catalonia. All highly educated. All in favor of independence.

As far as I have been able to see, they are not in any way xenophobic, or greedy, or anything else you're accusing them of here. What they do seem to be is very distinctly Catalan with their own culture, history and language, and significant grievances towards the Spanish state.

I don't have an opinion on their independence, but I do find it very hard to justify denying them a right to vote on it. I do suspect the optimal way would be to negotiate a new relationship with Catalonia inside Spain, but that's just my mostly uninformed two cents on the issue.

(This is just to give the other side of the argument here.)

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While I might agree with the right to vote, there are some issues that the secessionist don't say ( IMHO they somehow suffer extreme confirmation bias, I won't say that they are stupid or uneducated ).

The region of Catalonia has a lot of independence inside Spain, similar to a federal state. They however say that "Madrid oppress them"; that is simply nonsense, all Catalan citizens, as Spanish citizens, and as EU citizens, has the same rights ( and obligations ) as Madrid citizens.

The constitution they disregard openly, has a section that explicit protects their language as part of our collective culture ( source in spanish: http://www.congreso.es/consti/constitucion/indice/titulos/ar... )

The referendum they are pushing, has not guaranties, they even don't have an official census, so anyone can vote several times in different places. Even if I were pro-independence, I wouldn't like a referendum like that.

They say openly all the time that the rest of Spain steal from them. Yes, they pay taxes ( as all the Spanish citizens ), and seems that paying taxes ( using the same laws as the rest of Spain ) is stealing. I won't say this is xenophobic or greedy, but there something clearly wrong with that argument.

I am not accusing them of anything. I am stating a fact: slogans like "Madrid ens roba" (Madrid steals from us) were central to the political campaign in favour of independence. I could also link you to interviews of representatives of all catalonian parties were they make xenophobic statements. This is specially notorious against Andalucia (which happens to be one of the poorest regions of Spain, and many andalusians emigrated to Catalonia to become part of their workforce in the 70s)

Spain is (in practice, not in theory) a very asymmetric federation of states. Catalonia has its own police, prison system, education, healthcare and a big long list. What it does , it's not control over its budget. The threat of independentism has been used as leverage against the government for decades. When the catalonian government was investigated for corruption, they party in power (until that moment, unionist) became the "Leader" of independentism.

Spanish central government is not free of blame (quite the opposite). First, it has always: a) Caved to the demands of catalonian politicians in exchange for their support for the central government b) Attacked catalonians as a way of winning votes against the most conservative voters.

This was all theater, as all parties in power were extremely similar. Now the situation has spinned out of control by a series of different factors: - Disenchantment with the corrupt central government (though the catalonian wasn't better)

- Very biased education about the history of Catalonia

- Catalonian conservatives using it as a smokescreen to hide corruption.

- Left wing parties not minding this (as independence seems to be an issue above everything else)

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