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Comment by pera | Hacker News Reader

I am trying to follow the situation in Catalonia, and I have one question: Is any kind of publication (done by private citizens) about the referendum actually illegal in Spain? Thanks.

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No. It is though illegal that a public institution (using of course public founds from ALL Spaniards) promote in any way an illegal action. The Spanish term is "prevaricación" (perversion of justice), is commonly used when a public servant use his power to make knowingly an illegal action.

Note: This is what I read recently regarding this issue, but I am not a law expert, so take this with a grain of salt.

Edit: typos.

it is illegal for privately owned publications to publish government calls for the referendum. They receive threatening letters asking them to comply, and many pulications thus refuse to publish these calls.

Not about the referendum, but about what happened last days:

https://elpais.com/elpais/2017/09/20/inenglish/1505917320_78...

That seems to be in reference to the referendum website operated by the local government (http://www.referendum.cat/), but I read several reports of private citizens with no affiliation with Catalonia's govt being raided by the police just for mirroring websites.

It is mirrored, without problem: https://onvotar.garantiespelreferendum.com/on-votar/index.ht...

I don't know if the EFF is aware that the site has citizen personal information without permission. Who protects us as citizens against rebel regional government putting online private information against the rule of law?

The mirrors I checked didn't include that section (@1506104335). Instead they said:

> Shortly the Government will release the details on the polling stations to be used for the 1st October Referendum.

The mirror includes all the data and it gives you the place to vote after entering your NIF and age.

Time to denunce to AEPD

That article is excellent. It explains pretty well the lies of the rebel regional government.

the article is severely biased

To be fair, it is very difficult to find unbiased and knowledgeable people writing about this. It is best to not rely on only one kind of source if you want to form an opinion.

I do not think the article is so biased. Puigdemont has totally ignored the law and used his position in power to organize a referendum without any kind of warranties with the only intention to provoke a police intervention from Madrid's government and thus increase the support to his cause.

If the real intention was to organize a referendum, it could have been done with preparation, lawfully and negotiated with other regional political forces who are also supporting it.

Agreeing with you first part, I don't agree with your second paragraph.

It has been tried for years, not only in Catalonia, but also in Euskadi.

The Spanish law was changed en 2006 to make those referendums ilegal

A newspaper that's biased against independence doesn't sound like a very good source. Unless you are fine with the clear bias, of course.

ElPais, as most of newspapers in Spain have a position regarding the celebration of the referendum, and they have been very biased before with other information, but in this case the content is spot-on.

That said, the law is just a tool used by the people to live peacefully in a society. If people are not happy about it, the law needs to be changed.

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