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Comment by baxtr | Hacker News Reader

I’ve been to Barcelona quite often. People are nice and friendly. One time though when I was out eating dinner with a Spanish friend from Madrid something strange happened: the waiter told her she could not order in Spanish, she needed to speak Catalan, which was totally weird since we ordered in Spanish right before she ordered. But our Spanish was of course quite bad with a foreign accent, he was ok with that. We thought that was quite rude and impolite and ended up dining somewhere else.

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?

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Which problem is independence solving?

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.

I did not intend to be disrespectful in any way. I am - as I wrote - judging this with my limited knowledge of the matter, which is probably more or less on the same level of other Europeans watching things unfold right now. Not more, not less.

Thus, no, my question was absolutely not rhetorical. Happy to hear which problem their trying to solve.

Which restaurant? Did you raise a complain?

Sorry but these stories ring untrue, given that Barcelona is both a huge touristic destination and most servers speaking Spanish as a rule.

Barcelona's local government has been pretty aggressive against tourism lately.

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...

You are partly right.

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.

I think the idea was that the server understood she was Spanish and therefore that he was hostile to her, not that he didn't speak Spanish.

Most servers tend to speak Spanish, and quite a big percentage are from South America. Spanish (as main language) speaking people in Catalonia tend not to have a Catalan accent in their Spanish, most Catalan (as main language) speaking have said accent.

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.

It rings as true to me. I've been to small towns in Catalonia, and while most people figures I'm Mexican and treat me as a tourist, a few locals would feign not understanding a word of Spanish and would only speak to you in Catalan, even if you're trying to buy something from them.

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