Spain Will Remove Catalonia Leader, Escalating Secession Crisis

No, I'm not. I've made an effort to read and understand the relevant law to the best of my ability. If someone knows more I'd welcome any further information.

>I don't know whether merely voting is illegal or not at the level of individual people.

My understanding is that the constitution simply invalidates the referendum, and I'm certain it doesn't explicitly criminalize it.

Keep in mind that even Madrid has not been pushing any claims that simply voting would be illegal.

>But the issue seems largely moot, as it wouldn't be feasible to prosecute individual people for voting.

It does, yeah. But above I was responding to a commenter describing the voters as criminals, which is an unfortunately common view.

Did you know that it's impossible to have your children study in Spanish at public schools... in Spain? There were sentences from the Supreme Court and Tribunal Constitucional condemning this situation. Regional government ignored them and central governments did nothing for decades.

Other propaganda sources are not going to be controled either. There are a couple of associations, the ones whose leaders are now jailed, that play a central role and, unless illegalized (that I seriously doubt will happen) will still be receiving lots of money from the very same State that they're fighting. Why? Because cutting the financing would mean reforming laws that allow national parties to give money to their own fundations in other parts of Spain.

Public funded tv and radio would get new heads, but replacing the fanatics that produce the contents would need dismantling them, that most likely won't happen either.

Do you know why this situation seems so confusing? Because spanish governments have done nothing for a very long time. This has allowed nationalists to create the ilusion that they're really almost independent and they only need a little push to get there. Then our current prime minister is known for its "do nothing until there's no other option" style, that made the thugs think it's the moment to make their move.

1. They want to preserve their own culture, which is apparently distinct from Spain's.

2. They've some issue with the Spanish government, seems to be around corruption and/or unfair treatment. Don't know enough about this to comment on it though.

How does seceding make sense here? It's not the only solution, it's one of many, and it's probably one of the worst - they're going to torpedo Spain's recovering economy, and have to build a new country of their own. Who's going to run the hospitals? Where's the money/electricity/food/water/fuel etc coming from?

Everyone agrees that there's some requirement. A country of 1 million where 1 person has the vote isn't a democracy. You're right that a dictionary isn't the place to look to find out where to draw the line, but the line certainly has to be drawn somewhere. I'd say most people would agree that a society where people are systematically disenfranchised based on race, property and gender is not democratic.

>It's important to know their history, if for no other reason so you can avoid having boring conversations like this one.

I do know the history, despite your suggestions to the contrary -- which to be honest are a bit patronizing.

>Also, note how ridiculous your use of the term "modern usage" is here.

I mean the usage of the word today, which is what's relevant. Perhaps I should have said 'present usage'. (I have to say though, I think it is quite common to contrast the 'modern' usage of a word with its differing usage decades earlier, even if this isn't strictly consistent with a historian's usage of the word 'modern'.)