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Comment by ardit33 | Hacker News Reader

It looks like Spain are coming as the bad guys in the whole ordeal, trying to keep their "vassal" state at any cost. Seems like a throwback to feudal times. They could have made a reasonable deal. Referendum would be valid if there is over 50% participation and a super majority 2/3rds approve it (over 66% of YES, for independence).

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.

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Spanish sovereignty resides in all Spaniards, not just a part of them. It is in the Spanish Constitution.

If secessionists lose an election, they'll keep asking for another, and another.

Lol, no, it resides on the folks that live on those states. Constitutions change. (the last change was in 78, right?).

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.

The article 1.2 of the Spanish Constitution states:

> 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.)

No one under 57 has voted on this constitution.

It should be modernised.

Do you think it would matter? I don't think most of the country supports the Catalonian independence, so it would probably remain as-is on that issue.

So every generation has to vote a new constitution?

Yes.

Thomas Jefferson said something along those lines. I think every generation might be a little extreme. Every other generation, certainly.

And which other country is doing this today?

The US has been amending the constitution about once every generation or so the last amendment was in 1992.

Sure, many countries change parts of their constitution from time to time, usually through a parliament. The question was however: "So every generation has to vote a new constitution?" because earlier someone was questioning the Spanish constitution since "no one under 57 has voted on it".

It’s the same thing.

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.

I don’t think I follow.

What is then exactly now the difference if you compare Spain with other countries?

Spain changed the constitution in August 2011 https://www.theguardian.com/business/2011/aug/26/spain-const...

It was to satisfy banks, but for the sake of your argumentation, they changed it.

Also, when my parents voted for the constitution, the other option what to go back for the dictatorship.

For them, not being beaten by the police for speaking Catalan, was a huge step forward in terms of human rights.

And the sovereignty of the government comes from the social contract. When a big part of the citizens feel that they are not represented by the government, the social contract is broken.

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?

Are you kidding? Do you know how a democracy works?

It works in a manner which encourages secession for regions which generally hold distinctly different political opinions than the rest of the country.

You've been repeatedly violating the site guidelines by posting uncivilly, unsubstantively, using this site for political battle, and generally ruining this and other threads. We ban accounts that do that regardless of how good your cause is or how wrong someone else is. We have to, because otherwise this place will destroy itself.

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?

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