Hacker News Reader

Comment by professorTuring | Hacker News Reader

Tsunami Democratic is being investigated by Spanish authorities for promoting public disorders and criminal activities. So Spain is making what is need to to prevent criminal activities and (further) public disorders in Catalonia.

I don't know how some Catalonian citizens are letting themselves be influenced by some corrupt politicians trying to enrich theirselves and avoid prison.

Check out democracy index in Spain (ranked 19th): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index that is a better score than France, USA, Japan...

For people outside Spain, don't let yourself be fooled by the name of this group. There is nothing democratic in "tsunami democratic".

View on HN

Better stick to the facts rather than partisan polemics and distortion. They made Github take down an app for spreading information on and organizing demonstrations. These demonstrations have been by and large peaceful.

Like it or not, freedom of speech and assembly are fundamental and human rights under the international commitments (ECHR, EU Fundamental Rights Charter etc.) Spain has entered into. What this looks like, unfortunately, is abusing their anti-terrorism laws to quell any protests. EU Commission should take a hard look on Spain and probably launch a rule-of-law review.

> Like it or not, freedom of speech and assembly

Completely agree, but the investigation goes toward how this group is using this assemblies to promote disorders, chaos and unlawful activities.

Each of the manifestation in Catalonia and in Madrid have been approved and we have been able to see hundred of people fighting for their beliefs.

We will agree that promoting criminal activities doesn't help Catalonian cause, and that should be investigated.

> We will agree that promoting criminal activities doesn't help Catalonian cause, and that should be investigated.

The American Revolution was a criminal activity. Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela were all deemed criminal and jailed. The protests in Hong Kong right now are considered criminal activities.

So no, we will not agree that "promoting criminal activities doesn't help" a cause.

I have no opinion on or interest in Catalonian independence, but if you want to make a case against it, you'll need to try a different approach. It's neither surprising nor informative when ruling governments call independence movements criminal.

But professorTuring did not say a cause, he said "Catalonian cause".

You are right in that promoting criminal activities can help a cause in very specific cases, but I don't think is relevant here. Gandhi, MLK, etc had legitimate reasons to break the law. Unless the Catalan independentist movement can convince the international community that they also have a legitimate reason, taking the law in their hands will not help them with their objective.

By the way, the ruling government has never called the independence movement criminal. It's perfectly legal to support independence, demonstrate, create, fund and promote independentist political parties, try to change laws to achieve self-determination... All that is perfectly legal in Spain. Disobeying court orders or mishandling public funds, however, it is not legal in Spain or any other country I know.

You ask for a different approach to make a case against Catalonian independence, but I do not think this is fair. The burden of proof is not on those who think they should not break the law, but in those who think they should. If you want to form an opinion by yourself I suggest you to try to find the reasons they have to want independence, from their own sources, but crosschecking any "historical facts" you find. If after that you think they have a legitimate reason to break the law, I'd like to hear it.

I think the burden of proof in the discussion here is on those advancing a position, but neither the allegations nor the evidence presented here are convincing.

As I said I have no particular knowledge of or interest in the cause, I'm just commenting on what I've read here. It seems to me that you and professorTuring would like to convince us, and if so, you should present stronger evidence of more serious crimes than disobeying the very government whose legitimacy the independence movement is challenging.

I told you how you could make your own opinion based on sources from the independentist movement because I think that would be fairer than me trying to convince you, but I perfectly understand that you don't want to spend your whole day making a difficult research based on some vague indications so that you can agree with my comment.

Some of the evidence you ask for include the mishandling of public funds, use of personal data for their own benefit, or breaking the laws of their own regional government such that they could pass new laws without the required number of votes (because they only had a very tight majority). Plus disobeying court orders, which is something that I insist can only be accepted in very special circumstances and this is not one of them. I know these are not the most serious crimes in history by any means, that's why they will be on the street early next year.

But what I really hate about this is the image they spread of my country. I do not mind if you sympathize with their movement, or even actively support it, but I mind if you agree with their view of Spain as an authoritarian country just for not letting them to do whatever they want ignoring their own laws and a large portion of Catalan people. I do not mind if they want to fight for independence, even if I find it terribly stupid, but I do not like feeling insulted. And I constantly feel insulted by these people.

> but I mind if you agree with their view of Spain as an authoritarian country

There's a very ugly side to Spain, just as there is a very ugly side to Japan, France, the USA, Russia, Australia (my own country) and, I'm sure, the Catalan independence movement too. There is an ugly side to any entity when it feels its power is threatened and when it tries to suppress people's freedoms in response.

Viewing this story from abroad and following it fairly well I have been disgusted and sickened by certain actions taken by the Spanish government, the corrupt Spanish judiciary, and the support shown by a percentage of the Spanish people for those acts. So yes, my view of Spain as an authoritarian country has strengthened based on real acts that have taken place. If you don't want people to form that view then you should be doing what is necessary in your country to call out that bad behaviour from your own side (presuming you are for the Spanish state remaining in its present form). That is the stance I take when I see my own country behaving badly. (It should also be the stance that Catalan independence supporters should take against any bad behaviour by their own movement too).

Yes. You are totally right. The ugly side of Spain is quite big and very ugly. We have to fight that. I have already written in other comments that I absolutely reject the violence of the police during the referendum, for example, and that all Spanish governments have made big mistakes with this topic. We need reforms in our justice and electoral systems. We have horrible politicians (Catalonia is not exception here). But Spain is not, by any definition I know, an authoritarian country.

Moreover, I think we have to condemn the governments, the institutions, the citizens with bad behavior (there are indeed many of them in both sides, and therefore obviously many more in the non-indpendentist side). But when they constantly talk about "Spain" as if it was something external to them and refer to it as some banana republic, I feel insulted.

I quite often see the same thing happening with the USA. Sometimes people do not criticize their administration, but they criticize the US, or "the Americans". I would understand if the US people complained about that. I would specially understand it if this criticism came from inside the US.

The democracy index for Spain has been on the free fall for some years now. Whether Spain will return to a democratic approach to resolving civic and political issues rather than the current authoritarian approach that curtails civil freedoms for all Spaniards--not just Catalans--remains to be seen.

As for Tsunami Democratic, I'm afraid news reports haven't been fair. The disorders and criminal activities--which by the way the Spanish courts are labeling as "terrorism" despite any evidence--have been, by and large, carried out by infiltrated police agents. There is plenty of video footage online demonstrating case after case of police agents dressed as demonstrators, emerging from police vans in a side alley, joining a demonstration and engaging in deplorable behavior.

Can you support your statements with evidence? The data I provided is from 2018 and you are making assumptions based on a bunch of people in a country (2MM vs 50MM).

What is happening here is that some independentists patrons are paying for PR around the world and you, guys, are only getting one part of the story.

You don't know nothing about they teaching fake history to kids, stating Colon is Catalonian, stating that the American flag is based on Catalonian flag... These guys are ridiculous and they have been brainwashing their population for decades.

We even have Junqueras (one of the leaders of the movement) telling that genetically, the Catalonian people are better than Spanish people so they need to separate.

Today, you have a lot of young people defending what they have been taught without knowing they are defending a bunch of lies.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com