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Comment by oliverx0 | Hacker News Reader

Why should anyone downvote you? You are absolutely right. The sovereignty of a nation resides in all citizens of that nation. That’s definitely the case of Spain as it is the first article of their constitution. What happened in Catalonia was treason, and they were jailed for it. In my opinion, the sentence was actually a soft one. Violence was involved trying to take over, public funds were used illegally to help with the rebellion attempt, and the 50% of Catalans who are against separating from Spain had to live through such chaos.

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I'm pretty sure you don't live in Catalunya. There was no violence, and a sentence with charges of 'sedition' and not 'rebelion' is the main difference. There's not caos in the streets as TV try to picture it, so they can justify sentences like this. nonsense.

I live in Madrid, and I am disgusted by the image that this whole event is giving about Spain.

I knew.

If you want to retain your image, perhaps give the secessionists a real sanctioned vote about who to belong to. Like the election about Scottish independence that were held in UK. Stonewalling the secessionists and then complain that they are not taking it through your parliament is not a good way to handle it.

(and it feels weird to put UK up there as a positive example with regards to mature handling of elections..)

One of the differences is that the scottish vote was legal. In spain, the only legal vote would be of all spain at once; and either catalonia voting alone, or seceding after a country-level pro-independence vote, would entail rewriting the whole country structure set forth by the constitution, in order to become a confederation. Which, looking into the current political climate, would probably leave us in a deadlock much worse than brexit for years.

Regarding stonewalling, they already have a much bigger representation than what their relative headcount would guarantee. It’s just that the rest of Spain, and more than half of Catalonia, don’t want the second richest region to leave with all the wealth that we all together have concentrated there throughout the years.

There was lots and lots of psychological violence against the rest of Spain, all days in the news for more than five years and without pause. It was totally insufferable.

The rest of Spaniards had been called all kind of nasty things from this people, from fascists to thiefs, pigs, dumbs, violators, abusers and even dirty people that does not wash themselves.

Not to mention the reverse David-Star that where in fact the yellow ribbons. You don't wear it, you're harassed and called traitor and botifler. Friends of my parents, elder people that could suffer an infart, were assaulted with some people entering in their bus, crying slogans, calling them fascists and harassing them pushing banners and yellow ribbons under their nose. All of this just because they were in a holiday in the wrong part of the country and had commit the crime to hire a local bus to make an excursion. The driver didn't even tried to stop they.

Journalists doing their job were trown bottles with piss and water in direct. All in the name of peace.

Entire families are angry and split today because this snakes and child-emperors wanted to suck-suck-suck even more money

See the newspaper archives.

"The rest of Spaniards had been called all kind of nasty things from this people, from fascists to thiefs, traitors, pigs, dumb, violators, abusers and even dirty people that does not wash themselves."

You could say the same things are said from the 'other side' of the debate, I'm sure people say all these things from both sides, you cannot control everyone on such a big movements/issues. What I'm sure is that I haven't seen any leader say all that adjectives to anyone.

"Not to mention the anti-David-Star that where in fact the yellow ribbons".

Well... 'anti-david-star' what a nice way to describe the same ribbons (with different color) that people wear on the world cancer day.

The independence movement has always talked about the State/Government not letting people decide. It's not about hating someone because they think different than you. It's about an exercise of democracy.

> You cannot control everyone on such a big movements/issues. What I'm sure is that I haven't seen any leader say all that adjectives to anyone.

Please do not dare try again to take us for idiots. We are not talking of anonymous people, we are talking of all main independentist leaders acting as victims and light beings whereas saying things like those of spaniards:

"Scavengers, vipers, hyenas. Beasts with human form, however, that distil hate. A disturbed, nauseating hatred, like moldy dentures, against everything the tongue represents. They are here among us. They are disgusted by any expression of Catalanness... Beasts have names and surnames. We all know somebody"

Not, is not the nazi party in 1933, is President Torra spreading love in 2012.

Another example:

"Mrs. María Llanos de Luna devotes more time to her hairstyles than to the culture of the country where she lives... No, it is not natural to speak Spanish in Catalonia"

Not to mention this silly 2010 video from CIU party: "Spain steals from us". Has been 10 years hearing this victimism all the time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QdyOSgbIVY

If you had being harassed for not-bearing a cancer ribbon, please don't hesitate to tell us your experience.

The GP manages to talk about facts surrounding the issue, yet you continue to attack them with little substance. You don't provide counter examples, you simply continue to attack. This helps no one find more truth. Please stop.

> elder people that could suffer an infart

(hum, just see now that "infart" is not an english word, heart attack is the correct term)

I'd argue the sentences are harsh at least compared to many if not most European countries. Where I live, for example, the offence related to serious seditious activity (Endangering the sovereignty of Finland) carries a penalty range of 1 to 10 years imprisonment (generally, the upper range is rarely applied) and additionally requires at least a credible threat of violence or foreign state financial/military involvement.

Both Germany (10y to life) and France (30y to life) are harder, for example. Source (sorry, spanish): https://www.abc.es/espana/abci-alemania-y-francia-entre-pais...

Didn't bother to check France, but with respect to Germany, you must be talking about (serious) high treason. Give me a break.

Edit: Your reference is talking about rebellion. Not relevant?

Article talks about both rebellion and sedition. Laws in each country differ so you need to compare them by more than the name, which I understand that is what the article does. But please provide a more accurate source for the benefit of all, perhaps? Im not german, sorry.

https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stgb/

It's hard to find anything very close to sedición, particularly given that I've understood that the Spanish Supreme Court has now found that threat of force or violence was not involved, apparently (?) basing their decision on the very broad sounding "outside of legal means" part. Please correct me if I'm mistaken.

Here you go: https://m.eldiario.es/catalunya/politica/tribunal-extradicio...

To my understanding, a German judge ruled that there are no corresponding laws in practice. The ones considered to be similar by the letter are handled differently: the German highest court has put a much higher hurdle to their application then the Spanish court did.

Thanks! But that only talks about rebellion, not sedition. Someone else has pointed out that this is akin to treason, and requires violence. The only place the word “sedition” is mentioned is in a literal quote from Puigdemont’s defense lawyer.

The translation of sedition is "Volksverhetzung", which is a crime in Germany, but it has to be s call to harm people, not "violence against the state".

And much less in the "they should expect that it might result in violence, when we send our armed riot police in" kind of violence, but the "people will use violence against people because of their religion/skin/sexuality/..." kind.

As I understand it, it was never even considered and thrown out right away.

It was not treason, according to spanish law. The sentence is public (about 500 pages), if you can read spanish. Otherwise, an independent english reporter based in Spain, Matthew Bennet, has given very thorough coverage of it through twitter in english, for international followers. He uses Patreon if you are interested in his work.

>Violence was involved trying to take over

This is a lie, only the cops were violent.

E: If you think I'm wrong then post evidence and a bitcoin address, I'll gladly pay you $500 if you can show substantial evidence that there was violence involved. You won't be able to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNoPJWLQrDw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=klSib4rhdLs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svGsNGOpxsQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyE0DtVd4Q8

I don't think this is relevant for the judgments in question if there was no incitement to violence or comparable from the convicted.

Good point! That was one of the things that were at stake at the trial.

I don't think your single chair-throwing video is anywhere near enough to paint the entire independence movement as the violent aggressors.

Compare those clips to these https://spanishpolice.github.io/

> substantial evidence that there was violence involved.

This was your original claim. You are implicitely withdrawing it and moving the goalpost to "evidence of substantial violence"(which is ok, but it was so easy to rebate in its original form that couldn't resist). BTW, states have the monopoly of violence which makes the comparison complicated to asses to anyone who believes in representative democracy and the separation of powers(policemen were trying to execute a court order, no less and no more).

You can keep your 500$, I already knew you were bluffing.

Regarding the issue you are bringing. Yes, the police intervention was a massive clusterfuck. It was impossible to stop the so called "referendum" without the complete cooperation of catalan police and the civil guard and national police cops were sent to an impossible mission. Some of them misbehave, probably out of frustration and fear/anger. This is something a policemen should never do.

If that's your point I could agree.

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