Spain Will Remove Catalonia Leader, Escalating Secession Crisis
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
If this happens civil disobedience will grow.
There won't be a civil war (we are peaceful people and have no guns), but we won't obey what comes from Madrid.
[0] http://www.elperiodico.com/es/politica/20171020/encuesta-cat...
Nonetheless I find that most sources lack my trust. There's campaigning from both sides, but the unionists have a huge influence on all the national media.
There's also the big probability that some new elections will have the effect to provide a new Catalan parliament with the same number (at least) of pro-independence elected members.
Then that would "solve" nothing.
So it'll be a massacre?
I don't believe that everyone owning firearms is even remotely close to the answer, but nations get super fucking stupid and desperate when folks try to break away from them, even if the break away process is democratic and peaceful.
Myanmar has gun controls too. That’s really working out for its populace /s
The ignorance and naïveté in this statement is astounding.
> We are peaceful people and have no guns.
You're either entirely wrong, or Catalonia is an extreme statistical outlier when it comes to gun ownership in Spain.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_guns_per_c...
It's increasingly clear that the only two possible outcomes are either abandoning the idea altogether (possibly with an overall reduction in autonomy or proscription of the pro-independence parties); or violence.
You can see even in this thread that nobody in the rest of Spain is even going to consider the possibility of peaceful secession. It's going to end up like 70s Belfast if people go down this route.
Did you know that it's impossible to have your children study in Spanish at public schools... in Spain? There were sentences from the Supreme Court and Tribunal Constitucional condemning this situation. Regional government ignored them and central governments did nothing for decades.
Other propaganda sources are not going to be controled either. There are a couple of associations, the ones whose leaders are now jailed, that play a central role and, unless illegalized (that I seriously doubt will happen) will still be receiving lots of money from the very same State that they're fighting. Why? Because cutting the financing would mean reforming laws that allow national parties to give money to their own fundations in other parts of Spain.
Public funded tv and radio would get new heads, but replacing the fanatics that produce the contents would need dismantling them, that most likely won't happen either.
Do you know why this situation seems so confusing? Because spanish governments have done nothing for a very long time. This has allowed nationalists to create the ilusion that they're really almost independent and they only need a little push to get there. Then our current prime minister is known for its "do nothing until there's no other option" style, that made the thugs think it's the moment to make their move.
I was in Barcelona 4 days ago. At least 25% of the people there is clearly not independentist.
So stop talking the "sentiment in the street" like there is only one "Poble" in Catalunia that wants independence. If there is a fight it is not going to be against Madrid, but Catalans over Catalans.
Most are pro-independence, and they are always full of people. Unionists are few and with not that many people (except the one on the 8th of October).
The "the fight will be catalan VS catalan" is an unionist mantra. People want to vote, not fight.
Unionists would love an armed or belligerent pro-independence group, so they could repress us while giving the illusion of being right. That's why our movement will be pacifist.
Anti-secession supporters has been afraid of Catalan government. Not anymore.
>Unionists would love an armed or belligerent pro-independence group
No, that's BS. By the way, such group has existed before (Terra Lliure) and nothing changed.
The Constitution, you mean?
Good luck when, in your newly forged Republic, some citizens don't want to obey the Rule of Law, because
we won't obey what comes from Barcelona
There's still hard questions, though. How do we split the national debt? What about various government assets? Who has a choice about what nation to join? And so on.
All hard questions, but none of them seems to undermine the idea that people should be allowed to decide to be separate.
V.g. Barcelona can't propose a secession from Catalonia.
So then you find that all government is illegitimate? or is your 99% requirement only valid for separation?
Most likely the independence vote would have lost, people felt they expressed their rights and Spain would move on to deal with their economy and other matters. Squashing referendums with violence made them look bad and lose the moral ground on the international scale and just embolden the separatists (who wants to live under an oppressive regime anyways).
Also the EU is coming out as a loser in this case. They demonstrated that they basically don't give a fudge about their citizens (which Catalans are), and just want to preserve the political status quo.
If secessionists lose an election, they'll keep asking for another, and another.
Fromer Yougoslavia broke off, as the separate states wanted their own countries. Somewhere was peaceful (Slovenia), and very bloody, (the rest of the states).
They are much much better off by themselves right now. Things change, and if Catalonia wants their independence they should.
> La soberanía nacional reside en el pueblo español, del que emanan los poderes del Estado.
(The national sovereignty resides in the Spanish people, from which emanate the powers of the State.)
It should be modernised.
Thomas Jefferson said something along those lines. I think every generation might be a little extreme. Every other generation, certainly.
You would also want to note that many constitutions in Europe aren’t that old many were rewritten following WW2 and those which weren’t are often modified and ratified.
There is no legal difference between adding or removing parts of a constitution and voting on a new one.
You still need to approve a new constitution and ratify it. If you start from scratch it means that you either didn’t have a codified constitution or it was really shitty but those are pretty unique cases.
I really don’t see a problem of revising a constitution once every 25-50 years.
What is then exactly now the difference if you compare Spain with other countries?
It was to satisfy banks, but for the sake of your argumentation, they changed it.
For them, not being beaten by the police for speaking Catalan, was a huge step forward in terms of human rights.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract
The Spaniards seem to love Rajoy, as they give him the majority in every election. Rajoy's party, "Partido Popular", is voted by less than 8% of the Catalans.
So, the question is, why the Catalans need to be governed by a political party, that not only rules against them, but that does not represent Catalan society?
There are more than 2 million people that do not accept the government of Madrid. How will Madrid rule over all this people without transforming Spain to a full-blown dictatorship again?
I'm not going to ban you because you've used HN as intended before this recent political crisis. But it's dismaying that I had to look back through hundreds of comments to determine that.
I understand how emotional these topics can be, but would you please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and not post like this to HN again?
I definitely don’t know enough to judge the whole thing. However, from what I know, as a European, the secession movement bewilders me. It strangely feels very un-European. How can we unite the continent if we start separating countries? Can we not all just get along together and not care so much about the details of our passport? Which problem is independence solving?
Sorry but these stories ring untrue, given that Barcelona is both a huge touristic destination and most servers speaking Spanish as a rule.
Edit: Ok, is impossible to have a conversation when secessionists are downvoting every comment. Fine. I prefer to post arguments, and sources.
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/talktojazeera/2017/04/ba...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/spain/11643...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/01/barcelona-anti...
Barcelona's major wants to make tourism more manageable because it is considered that too many tourists kill the spirit of the city, increase rent for the citizens too much and, depending on their upbringing, bring fights and low quality tourism to the city.
There's also a civil movement against tourism, specially AirBnB, that has made some actions.
But that movement is separate from the independence movement. There are people of all factions in that movement, and it's quite smaller than the independence one.
The partly is that, at least on the other times this topic has come to hacker news, the brigading was from unionists.
So they went to a restaurant that had a server that not only was Catalan, but was an independentist, detected your friend by her accent, isolated her making she alone speak Catalan and the manager was OK with that?
Sorry, does not compute.
Have you looked for their arguments, or are your questions rhetorical?
Saying this is about "the details of our passports" is a bit disrespectful. Being part of Spain is about much more than that - as I think both sides would agree. And I don't see why the separation of countries would prevent the union of the continent.
Thus, no, my question was absolutely not rhetorical. Happy to hear which problem their trying to solve.
I have always found it fascinating how strongly people believe "the rule of law" to be the ethical and correct position. To uphold the rule of law no matter what. That the rule of law itself if the goal. No matter what those laws are, no matter if those laws are unethical, immoral, unjust. The rule of law itself is the goal. Not a moral society, not a just society, not a ethical society, but a society of law.
Why?
Almost every major atrocity in human history was legal under the laws governing the geographic zone they were committed in so why is there such strong support for this concept of "Rule of law"
I don't know the source of your fascination if you don't understand that.
Really? I suggest you study more history if you believe that
Along with the rule of law I am fascinated by the difference people give to "democratic" society, as if that is the best, or some how perfect
1. Slavery
2. Trail of Tears / Native American Reservations
3. Japanese internment camps
Those are 3 from just American History that everyone should agree on, Then there are others from other Democracies, plus things that happen in War Time in like Vietnam,
I could compile I huge list, the idea that democracies are some how pure as the driven snow free from any unethical or immoral action is so wrong I question how anyone to could believe that
You are simply grasping at straws to defend the "golden standard" for Authoritarian Government... democracy. where all unethical actions can be justified as long as the "majority" agrees
As you can tell I am no fan of democracy, and believe people that refuse to acknowledge massive ethical problems with democracy treat it almost like a religion, replacing the traditional Omnipotent God with "will of the majority"
Universal suffrage is a separate concept, and it's not necessary that a government have it in order to be considered a democracy. It's certainly how we all (one hopes) think a democracy ought to work, but that's a separate issue.
No, you're not, unless dictionaries have started specifying what percentage of the population should have the right to vote in order to qualify as a "democracy." Though if you use the right dictionary you can look at the etymology and note that the word "democracy" existed well before the concept you are talking about, universal suffrage, existed.
> The modern usage of the word has little to do with
Government, and other human institutions, evolve. It's important to know their history, if for no other reason so you can avoid having boring conversations like this one.
Also, note how ridiculous your use of the term "modern usage" is here. The United States has had women's suffrage less than a hundred years. Narrowing your definition of democracy to the extent that you do in the name of "modern usage" requires us to regard 1919 as not modern... so that's another word that you will have to redefine.
> Athenian system of government (which also excluded large swathes of the population).
Or as people often call it, Athenian democracy.
Everyone agrees that there's some requirement. A country of 1 million where 1 person has the vote isn't a democracy. You're right that a dictionary isn't the place to look to find out where to draw the line, but the line certainly has to be drawn somewhere. I'd say most people would agree that a society where people are systematically disenfranchised based on race, property and gender is not democratic.
>It's important to know their history, if for no other reason so you can avoid having boring conversations like this one.
I do know the history, despite your suggestions to the contrary -- which to be honest are a bit patronizing.
>Also, note how ridiculous your use of the term "modern usage" is here.
I mean the usage of the word today, which is what's relevant. Perhaps I should have said 'present usage'. (I have to say though, I think it is quite common to contrast the 'modern' usage of a word with its differing usage decades earlier, even if this isn't strictly consistent with a historian's usage of the word 'modern'.)
What's funny is that the response you saw was edited for politeness.
> You're right that a dictionary isn't the place to look to find out where to draw the line, but the line certainly has to be drawn somewhere. I'd say most people would agree that a society where people are systematically disenfranchised based on race, property and gender is not democratic.
I think I see what's going on here. There are two different issues, the meaning of the word "democracy" and the norms of democracy at any given time.
I think the accurate thing to say with regard to both of these, and hopefully you'll agree, is that the word, its meaning, and the ideal it defines have been pretty constant over time and the degree to which democracies adhere to the ideal of democracy has changed.
(it seems to me a more interesting question is whether America in 1900 would qualify as an "illiberal democracy" under today's emerging definition)
> A country of 1 million where 1 person has the vote isn't a democracy.
More useful examples abound, with all the countries that did not achieve universal suffrage until the 20th century. I think you're staking out a very strange linguistic position if you think those countries, which self-identified as democracies both before and after the change, and which everyone referred to as democracies both before and after the change, could only correctly be referred to as "democracies" after they enacted universal suffrage. It seems a lot more useful to say that those democracies were functioning closer to the ideal of democracy than they had been previously.
A tangent: there's a satirical Asimov story called Franchise about a country where only one guy has the vote. I don't remember much about it except that it was great, like most Asimov stories.
> I think you're staking out a very strange linguistic position if you think those countries, which self-identified as democracies both before and after the change, and which everyone referred to as democracies both before and after the change, could only correctly be referred to as "democracies" after they enacted universal suffrage.
I think you're staking out a very strange political position if you're suggesting that it wouldn't be undemocratic to disenfranchise women, African-Americans and people who don't own significant amounts of property.
Self-identification is not a reliable guide. The DPRK presumably self-identifies as democratic.
Now, if you think that (say) the USA should still qualify as an 'imperfect democracy' following a massive disenfranchisement of the kind I just described, then I can't really argue with that, since there's no hard and fast rule for deciding when an imperfect democracy stops being a democracy at all. But personally I would not call it a democracy any longer in that circumstance.
But that's not my political position. I assume for the sake of argument that my political position is the same as yours.
> if you're suggesting that it wouldn't be undemocratic to disenfranchise women, African-Americans and people who don't own significant amounts of property.
Of course it would. I wonder if this is tripping you up: a democracy can do undemocratic things. Doing undemocratic things did not cause Athens, the United States, or dozens of other countries to not be democracies.
> The history of the word 'democracy' is irrelevant.
The history of the word is one of several ways (which you are just not hearing) of demonstrating why what you're arguing is not just wrong, it is nonsensical.
> But personally I would not call it a democracy any longer in that circumstance.
At this point, I have to say, you're welcome to your own definition of 'democracy' or anything else. Use it in good health.
You could say the same for the 'D'PRK. Maybe it's just a democracy that does a lot of undemocratic things.
That’s not true. Catalan leaders were given a few days to make it clear whether they had declared the independence or not, because after their joke referendum, they were intentionally vague about what they were going to do. Puigdemont dodged the question again so this is it.
They said they want to negotiate with the central government. In my opinion this is simply racketeering, they want a better deal with taxes. This must not stand.
Nothing of this would have happened if secessionists wouldn't have had full access to the education and the media of that region since forever. They have been blasting propaganda por decades. Of course this was bound to happen. I work in the media and I know there's no way to get a grant for your small paper/radio station if you don't align with their values.
There's a widespread sentiment that Spain "is robbing them". But the truth is that this is just redistributing wealth; many regions of Spain give money and others take. That's how the economy works everywhere.
That doesn't make any sense.
The sovereignty of Spain resides in all Spaniards.
Few individuals such as Puidgemont may very well have violated the law, but supporting them simply isn't against the law.
It's in the article 1.2 of the Spanish Constitution:
> La soberanía nacional reside en el pueblo español, del que emanan los poderes del Estado.
(The national sovereignty resides in the Spanish people, from which emanate the powers of the State.)
In law there isn't something like 'oh it seems this legal precept means...'
All legal precepts have carefully chosen words and a spirit in which they're based.
That's why is illegal a election for secession with only a part of the Spanish census.
The constitution merely invalidates the referendum, it doesn't actually make it illegal. However, obviously it's criminal to spend public money on organizing an unrecognized referendum.
Given that the referendum itself isn't criminalized, it seems ridiculous to argue that simply by participating one would be violating the law.
It's also important to keep in mind that even the Spanish government has not attempted to argue that it's illegal to vote. This is just a meme being spread on online forums by people who mostly don't even understand the difference between the constitution and the criminal law.
No, I'm not. I've made an effort to read and understand the relevant law to the best of my ability. If someone knows more I'd welcome any further information.
>I don't know whether merely voting is illegal or not at the level of individual people.
My understanding is that the constitution simply invalidates the referendum, and I'm certain it doesn't explicitly criminalize it.
Keep in mind that even Madrid has not been pushing any claims that simply voting would be illegal.
>But the issue seems largely moot, as it wouldn't be feasible to prosecute individual people for voting.
It does, yeah. But above I was responding to a commenter describing the voters as criminals, which is an unfortunately common view.
> La soberanía nacional reside en el pueblo español, del que emanan los poderes del Estado.
(The national sovereignty resides in the Spanish people, from which emanate the powers of the State.)
What I was referring to was public opinion polls, I've never seen one conducted that resulted in 50% or higher in favour of full independence.
Except that statement is completely false.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/10/19...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/08/catalonia-demo...
https://elpais.com/elpais/2017/10/02/inenglish/1506943013_99...
There was obviously a plenty of very real violence by GC, anyone watching the live streams saw this for themselves.
And a few days ago el pais fired a bunch of folks for having the wrong opinions on Catalonia, so I'm not sure if they're the best source.
https://elpais.com/elpais/2017/09/25/inenglish/1506323273_06...
https://politica.elpais.com/politica/2017/10/20/aixo_va_de_d...
El Pais & Co. are heavily pushing this lie that there's somehow a very significant amount of "fake news" on the other side.
I believe that they are purposefully overstating the significance of the "fake news" on the pro-independence side, and are simply trying to use the slightest indication of such to discredit the pro-independence side as a whole.
Where their theory really falls apart the most is the fact that all the "fake news" they speak of are in English. It feels fundamentally strange that "fake news" on small English language blogs would significantly affect the political sentiments in Catalonia.
I really hope Catalonia makes it.
I don't think the US would send troops of course but they wouldn't just let California secede either. As far as I know precedent says it's illegal to secede in the first place.
1. They want to preserve their own culture, which is apparently distinct from Spain's.
2. They've some issue with the Spanish government, seems to be around corruption and/or unfair treatment. Don't know enough about this to comment on it though.
How does seceding make sense here? It's not the only solution, it's one of many, and it's probably one of the worst - they're going to torpedo Spain's recovering economy, and have to build a new country of their own. Who's going to run the hospitals? Where's the money/electricity/food/water/fuel etc coming from?
Its main opponents, PSOE, does get decent results there, as does the alternative, PODEMOS.
So they have absolutely nothing to lose, politically speaking, losing us.
Not only that, but they have used, and still use, Catalonia as a ghost whom they fight, in order to gain votes in the rest of Spain.
And lastly, there are active cases against them by justice, all this is casting a smokescreen so people won't notice if they are declared guilty,or when they pardon their friends.
The central Government is not escalating anything, on the contrary, it has been extremely weak.
Imagine that some State in the US declares the president of the US has no decisions over his land, and that you follow your own local laws(made by you on the go) instead of the laws of your country. It will not take more than 5 minutes of that for the country to act.
The Parlament local laws said that you need two thirds of the Parlament in order to do anything serious. Those guys wanted to declare independence with half the seats plus one. Those seats represent less people that those that were not independentists.
In the case of Spain it has taken almost a month to do something, and most of the responsible people are out there free, earning a very good salary for trying to destroy the country.
In China when revolution won everything that Chinese elite did was bad, even if they did some things well, like having hygienic manners. As a result, living in China today is extremely disgusting.
In Spain the same happens with anything Franco dictatorship did. We always have to do the opposite of what Franco would have done.
So because Franco was nationalist and brave(he risked his life over 200 hundred times in battle) politicians believe that democracy needs to be against the nation and weakness the rule. They do not consider that you could be a democracy and take your country seriously.
So they made it legal for politicians that want to destroy the system be part of the System. They gave territories more autonomy, a local tv, local police, the education and health system.
Local police now is acting like a private independentists police(like the SA and SS were private armies of Hitler against Germany army and police). Local TV and radio uses their airtime to put loop videos of Spanish police "brutality" (nothing compared against last Germany action in the G20 summit or Britain with Brexit protests), where the local police has not followed orders by central Government.
The local health system(following also local orders) declared anyone having an anxiety crisis for watching local TV loops to be an officially "injured" by Spanish police. More than 200 "injured" by Spanish police had just watched TV.
We have a strong Federalist Society and I think it would take much longer than 5 mins to act.
While the US Federal Government has gain alot of power after the last 100 years it is still not the Top Dogs, Under the US Constitution the State governments can amend and/or abolish the Federal Government if they so choose.
The US Constitution is entirely about limiting the power and scope of the US Federal Government, a fact that seems to be lost both in international understanding of the US, and sadly domestically as well since we have more and more people thinking the Constitution is about "Giving people rights" or outlining what an individual can do, instead of its original and true purpose of defining what the government is allowed to do
Prime example of this is National Speed Limits, there is no way for the US Federal Government to demand a speed limit so when they wanted to establish said limit of 65, they had to do it by bribes and extortion they tied federal funding for roads to the passage of state laws establishing a 65 speed limit, states that did not pass such a law would lose billions in federal money
So no I do not believe the reaction would be as you think it would be here in the States
A more modern and pressing example is the ongoing conflict between several states and the US Federal Government over Marijuana where multiple states have now openly defied the federal laws on prohibition of this plant.
And on Immigration where they openly resist and obstruct enforcement of Federal Immigration Law.
No in the US the State government are regularly in opposition to the Federal Government
To answer your question no, I have not forgotten about the Civil War and to classify the Civil War as "states trying to go at it alone" is extremely ignorant of the political, economic, and other factors around the Civil War
There will be a parlamentari meeting next week to debate what to do with the application of the 155 and how to respond. Has just said so in a televised speech.
Just with the inaccuracy you started marks all the rest you wrote as "things to doubt".
IDK where are you getting this ideas but is mostly the opposite. PP is disrespectful about everything but that doesn't mean that there's no autonomy, there's a reason why every region has an "autonomous government" and are called "autonomous communities", basically because they have that autonomy.
More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_communities_of_Spai...
Would London have been the de-facto financial hub of Europe, if people knew Brexit was coming?
All European Union leaders support the rule according a higher law.
When it is escalating.
https://twitter.com/LordRennard/status/914434884990652421 Here's one of the international observers verifying too
I myself don’t see any particular reason to question Lord Rennard.