Catalan independence referendum, 2017

Nody

Gbear wrote: »

After a certain point, if Catalunya becomes independent, it's relationship with everyone else will be normalised.

Yea good luck with that; esp. with them being outside EU and trying to survive with all the companies fleeing the region (in the last decade over 3.500 companies have already left and more are constantly leaving).

Gbear

Nody wrote: »

Yea good luck with that; esp. with them being outside EU and trying to survive with all the companies fleeing the region (in the last decade over 3.500 companies have already left and more are constantly leaving).

Even with the whole economy going down the toilet and no EU, they'd probably still be better off than 90% of the countries in the world. They could manage.

It'd be a looooong way down the road to reach recognition though.

First of all they'd have to be allowed to leave implicitly by Spain (ie, no troops in the streets). Then they'd have to slowly build concensus that they're a real country.
Then they might be allowed back into the EU.

We're nearly 20 years on from the war in the Balkans and still only half the countries in the UN recognise Kosovo, and Serbia isn't one of them.

Within the context of the European project one would've hope that larger nation states would become less and less relevant. It's probably too early for that though.

v638sg7k1a92bx

Gbear wrote: »

Even with the whole economy going down the toilet and no EU, they'd probably still be better off than 90% of the countries in the world. They could manage.

It'd be a looooong way down the road to reach recognition though.

First of all they'd have to be allowed to leave implicitly by Spain (ie, no troops in the streets). Then they'd have to slowly build concensus that they're a real country.
Then they might be allowed back into the EU.

We're nearly 20 years on from the war in the Balkans and still only half the countries in the UN recognise Kosovo, and Serbia isn't one of them.

Within the context of the European project one would've hope that larger nation states would become less and less relevant. It's probably too early for that though.

I think you've jumped a few steps ahead. First they could start by getting consensus from the majority of people living in Cataluña.

v638sg7k1a92bx

Gbear wrote: »

Your statement is utterly false.

At best you're guessing. At worst you're lying through your teeth.

You can't advocate the suppression of a vote to determine the mandate of the people re. independence on the one hand and then ignore the result when it goes against you while your suppression might have skewed the result.

Anyone who is still citing last months referendum as a mandate for independence at this stage in the debate shouldn't be taken seriously.

v638sg7k1a92bx

Avatar MIA wrote: »

If you keep saying it do you think people will start to agree with you.

I'm sorry if people don't agree with facts because that what the figures show. Of all the people advocating separatism in this thread none have provided any evidence to suggest that a majority of people in Cataluña want independence other than the phoney referendum last month. They can't even get a majority of votes in their own parliament which is why they broke their own Catalonian parliamentary rules to call the referendum in the first place.

What part of these facts do you refuse to accept?

v638sg7k1a92bx

FrancieBrady wrote: »

I think the least Varadkar could have done should have been to play the neutral, given our road to independence. He should have been calling for the EU to act as mediator here.

Spain is a Western European democracy that we have a very good relationship with. Why would LV jeopardise that relationship by sticking his nose in and p***ing off 45 million Spanairds because a group of volunteers decided to have a slumber party and call a referendum while they were at it and are now trying to break up the country of Spain as we know it?

FrancieBrady

Celia Late Troop wrote: »

Spain is a Western European democracy that we have a very good relationship with. Why would LV jeopardise that relationship by sticking his nose in and p***ing off 45 million Spanairds because a group of volunteers decided to have a slumber party and call a referendum while they were at it and are now trying to break up the country of Spain as we know it?

It's a little more than a slumber party.

45 million Spaniards need to realise that genuinely neutral countries would always wish to avoid violence or suppression.

You can go on about illegalities all you wish btw, most independence acts start with illegalities and we are long past the point where that matters.

flaneur

Madrid basically caused this mess by blocking the referendum.
We now have no idea what the unsuppressed result might have been. In all likelihood it might have been against independence.

They’ve also now caused a major upsurge in support for independence by doing what they did.

The way the PP handled this is probably the largest part of the problem and why the situation is now probably changed for ever. The referendum was just a referendum and would have been a beginning of some kind of negotiation if the result has been in favour of independence. Instead they’ve just laid the foundations for what looks more like a civil war.

The solution to this has to be diplomatic and both sides are going to have to sit around a table and talk.

The other big issue is the Catalans really don’t have a clear mandate for this because or what Madrid did. They need to allow a proper referendum in maybe a couple of months (after the dust settles) and have independent, international observers to get the true opinion of Catalonia.

The whole thing is an absolute mess and Madrid made it 10000 times worse than it would have been.

v638sg7k1a92bx

FrancieBrady wrote: »

It's a little more than a slumber party.

45 million Spaniards need to realise that genuinely neutral countries would always wish to avoid violence or suppression.

You can go on about illegalities all you wish btw, most independence acts start with illegalities and we are long past the point where that matters.

I'm glad you know what's best for 45 million citizens of Spain.

You keep saying that but what are you suggesting that we just do away with the rule of law because a minority of people refuse to accept it? 155 has been enacted and regional elections will be held in December. People can decide if they want to elect a parliament on an independent platform and they can hold a referendum on independence if they have the parliamentary numbers. Your suggestion to just give them independence because a minority of people shout loud enough isn't to be taken seriously.

FrancieBrady

Celia Late Troop wrote: »

I'm glad you know what's best for 45 million citizens of Spain.

You keep saying that but what are you suggesting that we just do away with the rule of law because a minority of people refuse to accept it? 155 has been enacted and regional elections will be held in December. People can decide if they want to elect a parliament on an independent platform and they can hold a referendum on independence if they have the parliamentary numbers. Your suggestion to just give them independence because a minority of people shout loud enough isn't to be taken seriously.

Where did I say 'just give them independence' ?

v638sg7k1a92bx

flaneur wrote: »

Madrid basically caused this mess by blocking the referendum.
We now have no idea what the unsuppressed result might have been. In all likelihood it might have been against independence.

They’ve also now caused a major upsurge in support for independence by doing what they did.

The way the PP handled this is probably the largest part of the problem and why the situation is now probably changed for ever. The referendum was just a referendum and would have been a beginning of some kind of negotiation if the result has been in favour of independence. Instead they’ve just laid the foundations for what looks more like a civil war.

The solution to this has to be diplomatic and both sides are going to have to sit around a table and talk.

The other big issue is the Catalans really don’t have a clear mandate for this because or what Madrid did. They need to allow a proper referendum in maybe a couple of months (after the dust settles) and have independent, international observers to get the true opinion of Catalonia.

The whole thing is an absolute mess and Madrid made it 10000 times worse than it would have been.

Why is it that every time there is a problem in Cataluña it's Madrid's fault.

Your health system is a mess? Madrid is robbing you

Your schools are a joke and indoctrinating kids with anti Spanish propogandan? Madrid is robbing you.

Your have a budget deficit? Madrid is robbing you?

Pharmacies won't honour public medical cards for prescription medication because the Catalonian government hasn't paid them in 3 years? Madrid is robbing you?

This whole issue is completely self inflicted all because local politicians decided to step outside the law because a stack of them are up on serious fraud investigations and wanted to call this phoney referendum as a smoke screen. Just look at the existing minority government made up of two diametrically opposed political ideologies who can't get a majority of votes in their own parliament.

v638sg7k1a92bx

FrancieBrady wrote: »

Where did I say 'just give them independence' ?

You keep harping on that the genie is out of the bottle and legalities are a moot point so what are you contributing to this thread other than posting blurbs that sound like life quotes from an Instagram post "legalities are moot" "the genie is out of the bottle"

It's the rule of law that is being enacted to restore order and call elections in the region. What alternative are you suggesting?

Samaris

Celia Late Troop wrote: »

Why is it that every time there is a problem in Cataluña it's Madrid's fault.

Your health system is a mess? Madrid is robbing you

Your schools are a joke and indoctrinating kids with anti Spanish proponga? Madrid is robbing you.

Your have a budget deficit? Madrid is robbing you?

Pharmacies won't honour public medical cards for prescription medication because Catalonia government hasn't paid them in 3 years? Madrid is robbing you?

This whole issue is completely self inflicted all because local politicians decided to step outside the law because a stack of them are up on serious fraud investigations and wanted to call this phoney referendum as a smoke screen. Just look at the existing minority government made up of two diametrically opposed political ideologies who can't get a majority of votes in their own parliament.

While all of this may be true (I don't know) and if it is, it sounds a bit like the British media and politicians blaming everything on the EU, Madrid's actions have undoubtedly made the situation worse here too.

This really is a both sides problem, but the more visible problem was Madrid from an outside perspective. Both inside and outside the country, the visuals were of peaceful voters (with the odd clash, as would be expected), and a violent police force (with the odd exception, as would be expected).

It's no wonder that that stirred the Catalonian people, even those that did not want independance.

recedite

Rajoy has delegated his deputy Ms. Santamaria as the new Boss of Catalonia.
She has unfortunately become rather hoarse due to all the stress recently, which might explain why we haven't heard much from her since.

The sacked Boss, Puigdemont, had the good foresight to arrange for all civil servant salaries to be paid early last week, before the end of the month.

So we are looking at a short breather period now.

Pretty soon though, Puigedemont is going to have to make a move to assert Catalan sovereignty, firstly by appointing/reappointing Catalan leadership of the Mossos police. But the Mossos won't be able to keep the Spanish national security forces out, so he'll also have to organise a peaceful general strike/civil disobedience within Catalonia.
Also he may have to go into hiding, or beef up his security, if he wants to keep his ass out of jail.

v638sg7k1a92bx

Samaris wrote: »

While all of this may be true (I don't know) and if it is, it sounds a bit like the British media and politicians blaming everything on the EU, Madrid's actions have undoubtedly made the situation worse here too.

This really is a both sides problem, but the more visible problem was Madrid from an outside perspective. Both inside and outside the country, the visuals were of peaceful voters (with the odd clash, as would be expected), and a violent police force (with the odd exception, as would be expected).

It's no wonder that that stirred the Catalonian people, even those that did not want independance.

All over Catalonia, in the majority of cases, either people participated in the "referendum" or police removed the ballot boxes without any incident. In some parts of Catalonia police clashed with protesters which everyone agrees shouldn't happen. However, many of the images we've seen have been proven to be fake, not all of them but many of them. The problem is that people are allowing these incidents to cloud their judgement and are basing their opinions on their emotions rather than facts and rather than dealing with the facts they keep referring back to these incidents to justify their ill informed opinions. So when people say that the majority of people both in Spain and Cataluña don't want independence or that the Minority Catalonian government broke their own parliamentary rules to call a referendum in the first place, pro independence advocates scream outrage at the brutal Franco regime in Madrid suppressing democracy or some other exzaggerated claims as if people in Cataluña we're living in some type of apartheid regime.

Every other Western European democracy would have done exactly the same as the Spanish government did by implementing 155. What other country would allow a minority of people try to impose their ideology on the majority and break up their country?

recedite

Whats the official Irish position since the UDI?
A lot of countries have come out to say they don't recognise the Republic of Catalonia, but I don't hear anything from RoI?

On the one hand, we don't want to go against Juncker and our EU masters.
On the other hand, if we don't recognise it, we will be complete hypocrites. We may as well go back to the UK and say we're sorry...

v638sg7k1a92bx

recedite wrote: »

Rajoy has delegated his deputy Ms. Santamaria as the new Boss of Catalonia.
She has unfortunately become rather hoarse due to all the stress recently, which might explain why we haven't heard much from her since.

The sacked Boss, Puigdemont, had the good foresight to arrange for all civil servant salaries to be paid early last week, before the end of the month.

So we are looking at a short breather period now.

Pretty soon though, Puigedemont is going to have to make a move to assert Catalan sovereignty, firstly by appointing/reappointing Catalan leadership of the Mossos police. But the Mossos won't be able to keep the Spanish national security forces out, so he'll also have to organise a peaceful general strike/civil disobedience within Catalonia.
Also he may have to go into hiding, or beef up his security, if he wants to keep his ass out of jail.

Absolute nonsense. What fantasy land did you pull this from. This is exactly what I am referrring to. One of the good things to come out of this political crisis is that it shines a light on how baseless the claims for Catalonian independence really are? Spanish people are extremely frustrated by the international reportage on the crisis in Cataluña but as time goes by the facts are coming through rather than this portrayal of Cataluña being a type of oppressed people who are having their human rights trampled which couldn't be further from reality.

Where exactly is Pushthemoney going to operate this new sovereign state considering that he only got 60 votes in a Parliament of 135 delegates?

Does that mean he is not going to participate in the Catalonia elections that have be called for the 21 December.

Maybe he should appoint appoint himself head of his new sovereign state in Andorra and anyone who wants to live under his new government can join him there. I'm sure plenty of the top brass will join him as they already have their bank accounts setup there.

Akrasia

Celia Late Troop wrote: »

All over Catalonia, in the majority of cases, either people participated in the "referendum" or police removed the ballot boxes without any incident. In some parts of Catalonia police clashed with protesters which everyone agrees shouldn't happen. However, many of the images we've seen that they have been proven to be fake, not all of them but many of them. The problem is that people are allowing these incidents to cloud their judgement and are basing their opinions on their emotions rather than facts and rather than dealing with the facts they keep referring back to these incidents to justify their ill informed opinions. So when people say that the majority of people both in Spain and Cataluña don't want independence or that the Minority Catalonian government broke their own parliamentary rules to call a referendum in the first place, pro independence advocates scream outrage at the brutal Franco regime in Madrid suppressing democracy or some other exzaggerated claims as if people in Cataluña we're living in some type of apartheid regime.

Every other Western European democracy would have done exactly the same as the Spanish government did by implementing 155. What other country would allow a minority of people try to impose their ideology on the majority and break up their country?

If they know its only a minority, why not do an officially sanctioned referendum without the police repression and opposition boycott?

v638sg7k1a92bx

recedite wrote: »

Whats the official Irish position since the UDI?
A lot of countries have come out to say they don't recognise the Republic of Catalonia, but I don't hear anything from RoI?

On the one hand, we don't want to go against Juncker and our EU masters.
On the other hand, if we don't recognise it, we will be complete hypocrites. We may as well go back to the UK and say we're sorry...

By not recognising a group of volunteers who don't represent a majority in their own region we would be hypocrites how exactly?

First Up

recedite wrote:

Whats the official Irish position since the UDI? A lot of countries have come out to say they don't recognise the Republic of Catalonia, but I don't hear anything from RoI?

We don't recognise it and rightly so.

recedite wrote:

On the one hand, we don't want to go against Juncker and our EU masters. On the other hand, if we don't recognise it, we will be complete hypocrites. We may as well go back to the UK and say we're sorry...

Your thinking on this point eludes me.

Gbear

Celia Late Troop wrote: »

I think you've jumped a few steps ahead. First they could start by getting consensus from the majority of people living in Cataluña.

I have jumped a few steps ahead, purely for the sake of debate.

Celia Late Troop wrote: »

Anyone who is still citing last months referendum as a mandate for independence at this stage in the debate shouldn't be taken seriously.

It isn't a mandate, but you can't impede referenda and then try and claim there's no mandate because a proper referendum wasn't held.
It'd be like having to submit your accounts and then the government comes along and burns all your records and then fines you for not being able to submit your accounts.

Even if it was a clear majority but, for example, 51/49 in favour of independence, I still don't think that's a clear mandate.
Referenda are far too casually used to apply massive constitutional changes on the basis of one snapshot of public opinion.
For something like independence (or Brexit) I think you should need 2/3 or something like that, or else more than one referendum over a period of a few years to at least ensure that you're not making the change based on the temperorary whims of a subset of the population.

What I took issue with was the lie that there's a maximum of 38% support for independence.
If you're being honest you'd have to admit that there's probably a mandate for independence in the sense that a majority are in favour of it, but at best, it's IMO too narrow and probably isn't good enough anyway.

v638sg7k1a92bx

Gbear wrote: »

I have jumped a few steps ahead, purely for the sake of debate.



It isn't a mandate, but you can't impede referenda and then try and claim there's no mandate because a proper referendum wasn't held.
It'd be like having to submit your accounts and then the government comes along and burns all your records and then fines you for not being able to submit your accounts.

Even if it was a clear majority but, for example, 51/49 in favour of independence, I still don't think that's a clear mandate.
Referenda are far too casually used to apply massive constitutional changes on the basis of one snapshot of public opinion.
For something like independence (or Brexit) I think you should need 2/3 or something like that, or else more than one referendum over a period of a few years to at least ensure that you're not making the change based on the temperorary whims of a subset of the population.

What I took issue with was the lie that there's a maximum of 38% support for independence.
If you're being honest you'd have to admit that there's probably a mandate for independence in the sense that a majority are in favour of it, but at best, it's IMO too narrow and probably isn't good enough anyway.

No it's nothing like submitting your accounts because the referendum was illegal to begin with. As I've said, the Catalonian parliament needed a 2/3 majority to call a referendum which they couldn't get. They then decided to press ahead with the referendum despite the fact it was illegal and then handed it over to a group of volunteers to organise the referendum who slept overnight in the polling stations and took custody of the ballot boxes. They then used the results of that phoney election which only on side of the debate participated in ,because why would you participate in a vote which you knew was illegal, declared overwhelming support for independence and declared themselves an independent country. At every step in this crisis the Catalonia government has subverted their own democratic instituimos which they claim to represent in order to impose thieir ideology on the rest of Catalonia and yet the narrative is somehow that Madrid is suppressing democracy when in fact it is the central government that is upholding the constitution which 90% of he people of Catalonia voted for.

An Ciarraioch

Puigdemont, unsurprisingly, refuses to accept his removal, so will Madrid have to send in the police to re-assert territorial control?

Itssoeasy

An Ciarraioch wrote: »

Puigdemont, unsurprisingly, refuses to accept his removal, so will Madrid have to send in the police to re-assert territorial control?

Well we've seen how that went to last time. The Madrid government would want to take it handy this time around.

flaneur

Celia Late Troop wrote: »

Why is it that every time there is a problem in Cataluña it's Madrid's fault.

Your health system is a mess? Madrid is robbing you

Your schools are a joke and indoctrinating kids with anti Spanish proponga? Madrid is robbing you.

Your have a budget deficit? Madrid is robbing you?

Pharmacies won't honour public medical cards for prescription medication because Catalonia government hasn't paid them in 3 years? Madrid is robbing you?

This whole issue is completely self inflicted all because local politicians decided to step outside the law because a stack of them are up on serious fraud investigations and wanted to call this phoney referendum as a smoke screen. Just look at the existing minority government made up of two diametrically opposed political ideologies who can't get a majority of votes in their own parliament.

I’ve no idea about day-to-day problems in Catalonia, or the relationship with Madrid, but it’s blatantly obvious that this was grossly mishandled by the Spanish Government.

Instead of trying to rebuild the relationship and come up with a workable solution, they responded with over the top aggressive behavior and suppression, proving absolutely every point the Catalans were making about the central government!

You solve conflicts by talking and compromising not by trying to steam roller people into compliance. That’s not how democracy works.

As an outside observer with no particular view of Catalonia and Spain, the Spanish government looks like something you would expect in a Latin American quasi authoritarian state and not Western Europe. What they’ve done is to create the circumstances for further unrest and potentially even a terrorism issue. It was beyond stupid and looks to me like Spain hasn’t really become a mature democracy. That isn’t really surprising given that it’s only been a modern democracy for a few decades and had a failed military coup in the early 1980s.

It’s very easy to see Spain as sunshine, liberal and memories of fantastic holidays but there’s a dysfunctional political system lurking just beneath the surface that was kind of quietly put into a retirement home in the 1970s but hasn’t quite gone away.

Countries, constitutions and national identity only functions when everyone consensually agrees to it. Trying to force an identity on someone is a bit like trying to force someone to remain in a marriage to someone they don’t love. It’s not going to work and you end up with a disgruntled captive, not a partner.

Spain and Catalonia need to figure this out and come up with a functional relationship. Being locked into positions that are totally inflexible, unnegotiable and dogmatic isn’t going to help either side. It’s time for serious thinking outside the box and I don’t think that looks likely to come from Madrid or Barcelona right now.

I think at this stage, it’s gone beyond the point of no return and there’s a need for a major rethink of what the Catalan - Spanish relationship is going to be. There are other solutions such as a federation, which have worked for other countries and could work for Spain.

jimmycrackcorm

recedite wrote:

On the one hand, we don't want to go against Juncker and our EU masters. On the other hand, if we don't recognise it, we will be complete hypocrites. We may as well go back to the UK and say we're sorry...

You can't compare Ireland to Catalonia. Even the fact that Scotland got to legally hold an independent referendum demonstrates this.

Akrasia wrote:

If they know its only a minority, why not do an officially sanctioned referendum without the police repression and opposition boycott?

In the US there are national laws that determine that states cannot unilaterally decide to secede, so don't expect California to try any time soon.

flaneur

There are comparisons with Ireland but from 100+ years ago. The reaction of the British to Irish independence was what sealed the deal here.

The UK has massively moved on since then and is practically unrecognisable, particularly since the Northern Ireland peace process, which was a journey that I think really made a lot of people rethink dogmatic positions and realise that you have to be pragmatic and realistic about these kinds of disputes and that people can only be governed by consent.

Also neither the UK nor Ireland have a history of dictatorship. Many of Spain’s internal conflicts are wounds from the Franco era, or previous non democratic regimes that were never really healed.

The UK - Ireland conflict was largely one about pure national identity and could be defined far more as class, social and religious and ethnic than about democracy. A lot of it stems from centuries of Ireland being in the wrong side of a class system and an arrogant, mercantile, imperial system that misgoverned quite badly. Spain has a different set of issues but there are common threads.

Spain has a very troubled recent history and I think there are a lot of scars there that you only notice when someone presses on one.

Also it is hard to underestimate the impact of the financial crisis in Spain. There’s a lot of anger and bitterness about what happened and about how the debt was spread around with various regions, including Catalonia feeling hard done by. That crisis was absolutely horrific by modern standards and is probably one of the worst recessions since the Wall Street Crash. To have no political fallout would be very weird.

My view of it is that all of this stuff : Brexit, Trump, Catalonia, the rise of Le Pen in France (even if she didn’t get elected), the AfD etc etc is flowing from people being frightened by systems that have failed.

Various historical fault lines are just opening up as people vent against the establishment.

hatrickpatrick

flaneur wrote: »

My view of it is that all of this stuff : Brexit, Trump, Catalonia, the rise of Le Pen in France (even if she didn’t get elected), the AfD etc etc is flowing from people being frightened by systems that have failed.

Various historical fault lines are just opening up as people vent against the establishment.

I agree entirely except that I'd change "fear" to "anger" in that statement. People are furious, and rightly so.

Personally I see a genuine, real chance that the Western establishment as we know it is in serious trouble and could still collapse from all this fallout.

hatrickpatrick

Celia Late Troop wrote: »

At every step in this crisis the Catalonia government has subverted their own democratic instituimos which they claim to represent in order to impose thieir ideology on the rest of Catalonia and yet the narrative is somehow that Madrid is suppressing democracy when in fact it is the central government that is upholding the constitution which 90% of he people of Catalonia voted for.

If the Spanish government had allowed the phoney referendum as you call it to go ahead without incident, and then simply declared that it was invalid for precisely the reasons you outlined, fewer people would be taking the side of the independence folks and instead telling them to keep campaigning and get a proper majority if they really want to do it the right way. No question.

The minute a state uses violence against non-violent actors in any capacity, that state automatically loses credibility. The context, circumstances, and background are entirely irrelevant. Whoever uses violence against a non-violent actor is escalating, and most people in today's society regard escalating a non-violent conflict to a violent one as a fundamental wrong, a breach of basic societal ethics.

Reversing the scenario, if the Spanish government had taken this peaceful course of action and then the Catalonian independence movement, rather than seeking the majority they need, had resorted to physical violence against the Spanish government, I guarantee you a lot of the people currently supporting the independents would instead be supporting the Spanish government.

You can claim that the police violence was exaggerated or faked, but the Spanish government has officially apologised. That should tell you all you need to know. They f*cked up and they now realise that.

v638sg7k1a92bx

flaneur wrote: »

I’ve no idea about day-to-day problems in Catalonia, or the relationship with Madrid, but it’s blatantly obvious that this was grossly mishandled by the Spanish Government.

Instead of trying to rebuild the relationship and come up with a workable solution, they responded with over the top aggressive behavior and suppression, proving absolutely every point the Catalans were making about the central government!

You solve conflicts by talking and compromising not by trying to steam roller people into compliance. That’s not how democracy works.

As an outside observer with no particular view of Catalonia and Spain, the Spanish government looks like something you would expect in a Latin American quasi authoritarian state and not Western Europe. What they’ve done is to create the circumstances for further unrest and potentially even a terrorism issue. It was beyond stupid and looks to me like Spain hasn’t really become a mature democracy. That isn’t really surprising given that it’s only been a modern democracy for a few decades and had a failed military coup in the early 1980s.

It’s very easy to see Spain as sunshine, liberal and memories of fantastic holidays but there’s a dysfunctional political system lurking just beneath the surface that was kind of quietly put into a retirement home in the 1970s but hasn’t quite gone away.

Countries, constitutions and national identity only functions when everyone consensually agrees to it. Trying to force an identity on someone is a bit like trying to force someone to remain in a marriage to someone they don’t love. It’s not going to work and you end up with a disgruntled captive, not a partner.

Spain and Catalonia need to figure this out and come up with a functional relationship. Being locked into positions that are totally inflexible, unnegotiable and dogmatic isn’t going to help either side. It’s time for serious thinking outside the box and I don’t think that looks likely to come from Madrid or Barcelona right now.

I think at this stage, it’s gone beyond the point of no return and there’s a need for a major rethink of what the Catalan - Spanish relationship is going to be. There are other solutions such as a federation, which have worked for other countries and could work for Spain.

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

If the Spanish government had allowed the phoney referendum as you call it to go ahead without incident, and then simply declared that it was invalid for precisely the reasons you outlined, fewer people would be taking the side of the independence folks and instead telling them to keep campaigning and get a proper majority if they really want to do it the right way. No question.

The minute a state uses violence against non-violent actors in any capacity, that state automatically loses credibility. The context, circumstances, and background are entirely irrelevant. Whoever uses violence against a non-violent actor is escalating, and most people in today's society regard escalating a non-violent conflict to a violent one as a fundamental wrong, a breach of basic societal ethics.

Reversing the scenario, if the Spanish government had taken this peaceful course of action and then the Catalonian independence movement, rather than seeking the majority they need, had resorted to physical violence against the Spanish government, I guarantee you a lot of the people currently supporting the independents would instead be supporting the Spanish government.

You can claim that the police violence was exaggerated or faked, but the Spanish government has officially apologised. That should tell you all you need to know. They f*cked up and they now realise that.

Aside from all the virtue signalling and Orwellian conspiracy theories, just because the police were heavy handed in some instances is not an argument for Catalonian independence. Pro independence advocates have been clinging onto the police violence issue for the last month because it's the only argument they can keep going back to because who can argue against police beating voters on their way to the polling stations?

The referendum was illegal. But the police were bad.

The majority of people in Catalonia don't want independence. But the police were bad.

The Catalonian government broke their own Parliamentary rules to call the referendum. But the police were bad.

90% of the people of Catalonia voted for the Spanish constitution. But the police were bad.

The existing Catalonian government doesn't even have a majority in it's own Parliament. The police were bad.

Everyone accepts that violence is bad, water is wet and in an ideal world we wouldn't need police forces but where was this outrage in June 2017 when police in Hamburg injured 500 people at the the G20 protests. Significantly worse in terms of the use of police force and not a dickybird, but the separatists keep flogging the police brutality argument to death 4 weeks after the events and cannot come up with any other reason as to why Catalonia should be an independent country or how the supposed referendum that took place gives a mandate for independence.