581–590 of 785 posts
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I will just leave this here: https://spanishpolice.github.io/
It's interesting to see how quickly people will downplay and deny the actions of the Guardia Incivil. If the referendum is illegitimate, why suppress it? ;- )
If murder is illegitimate, why suppress it? Brilliant.
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In the US "the government" typically applies to either all three branches (courts, legislature, executive) or occasionally to the latter two only. The latter definition is typically only used in the case of a lawsuit involving the state. This is in contrast to parliamentary systems where the government is formed of the dominant political party or coalition in parliament, and also gets to act as the executive branch.…
> more common This doesn’t sound right. I’d like to see some proof of this. I’m from India and I only use government to refer to the legislature which happens to commingle with the executive branch. I’d love to join the mainstream if my usage is in the minority. Also, Spain is a parliamentary monarchy so in a thread centered on Spanish politics, I feel you should use the word government as used by Spaniards.
I'm really curious as to whether this difference in interpretation is just a linguistic fluke, or if it actually reflects some larger cultural difference in how we in the US view our government compared to how people in India and Spain view theirs.
Do you have a different word which encompasses all governmental bodies and organizations? The State, perhaps? Or would you not consider the courts to be part of the State either? Obviously the courts are involved in governing, since they interpret the law and they have legal authority granted by the constitution. How then are they not part of the government?
Spanish here, I have family and home in Catalonia. 1) You need to read history to understand the situation. But not the history of the last 100 years, but of the last 1000. Catalonia was never independent, it was part of the Kingdom of Aragon. The kingdom of Aragon and the castle kingdom allied in a dynastic way and created what is known today as Spain. There is no 2) Voting is illegal, it is not illegal to vote but…
1) What I understood from reading various sources is that Catalonia was completely independent between the years 987 (death of Louis V of France) and 1137 (Marriage of Ramon Berenguer IV and Petronila of Aragon) [1][2]. Although in my opinion that is not relevant for the current independence movement.
2) The act of voting is not illegal: there is no single article in the Spanish Constitution of 1978 that prohibits citizens to vote something specific. The Catalan independence referendum though was, of course, unauthorized (referendums requires the participation of the King, the PM, and the Congress [3]). I wanted to point out that this idea of voting as something "illegal because of the content of the referendum" probably originates from the Spanish newspaper El Pais, with articles like "Mitos y falsedades del independentismo" which is full of false citations of the constitution (check for instance the articles cited in the paragraph starting with "Además, la ley del referéndum es ilegal por su contenido [...]").
3) This is a valid point actually, although it would be fair also add that the Gurdia Civil, the National Police, and at some level the Mossos d'Esquadra, did everything they could (including violence in some cases) to stop people voting in this referendum.
4) Catalonia have a budget surplus [4], so I would argue that what "they" want is to contribute less.
5) Do you mean because of things like the Fueros of Pais Vasco and the Reino de Navarra? In any case, as you probably know, not everybody in Euskal Herria wanted/wants to coexist with the Spaniard state... I wouldn't be surprised if after Catalunya some other autonomic regions look for independence too.
6) True. The institutional situation in the Generalitat and Parlament is chaotic and unfortunate, and from what I heard from friends even most independentistas think so.
7) Well, this is a very opinionated point. If any generalization can be made about what "the world cannot understand" is why did the Spanish government handle this situation so poorly.
8) I personally agree with you that elections are necessary, but that will not solve the issue: the Catalans and the rest of Spain needs to know what every part wants and then start building some solution from there. And a review of the Constitution of 1978 would be useful too.
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[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Catalonia#Orig...
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Catalonia#The_rise_...
[3] - http://www.congreso.es/consti/constitucion/indice/titulos/ar...
[4] - http://www.minhafp.gob.es/es-ES/CDI/Paginas/OtraInformacionE...
FTA The Catalan government said that of the 43% of potential voters who took part in the referendum, 90% were in favour of independence. In a referendum where people who wanted to vote "no" didn't show up, because of fears of violence. This just isn't a reflection of the will of the population.
> people who wanted to vote "no" didn't show up, because of fears of violence. that is just false. They did not show up because they did not want the referedum to take place.
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This federation is only an outside appearance, though. Spanish gvt has the tools (and is willing to, and already did many times) to bend the laws from any of its regions' local governments. And the cancelled laws were not all about independence. They were about protecting the people who can't pay for energy in winter or banning bullfights, among others.
That is incorrect. It might be your impression, but Spain is actually one of the most decentralized countries in the world. Catalonia has something around 5% of their state workers depending on the central government.
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In short, both parties ruling on both sides believe that they benefit greatly from confrontation No, that's wrong. The reason we have the current clusterf * in place has been the conflict-avoiding actitude of 40 years of spanish governments. We have a proportional voting systems and regional parties have been the "hinge", the small parties that helped ruling parties to reach absolute majority, in national parliament.…
> Did you know you can't have your children study in Spanish in Spain? This isn't particularly unusual, it basically works that way in Quebec, unless you use a private school. Unlike Quebec, aren't Catalans almost all bilingual anyhow?
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This mischaracterization is very common. The phallacy is framing the people against nationalism as nationalists. It's the same dirty trick as saying that atheism is just another kind of religion. Of course you add the "extreme-right" insult for good measure. Most people in Spain are not nationalists of any kind. That's just a lie. Nationalist votes are, being most generous under 10% of national grand total. People op…
Not to be a dick about it, but a fallacy is a mistaken belief while phalluses are penises. So a 'phallacy' might mean a mistaken penis, which is oddly self-referential. :P
It's very hard to see a discussion on this topic that does not miss the true point: This "conflict" is the fight between nationalist movements (Spanish and Catalan) which re-enforce each other in every turn for the worse of the majority and of the European Union. On the Catalan side, the Nationalist movement is used by dubious politicians which belong to the richer statements of Catalan society to grab power and "mak…
>miss the true point: This "conflict" is the fight between nationalist movements (Spanish and Catalan) which re-enforce each other in every turn for the worse of the majority and of the European Union. To me, it seems your characterization of "true point" adds layers of abstractions such as "nationalists" and "right-wing movements" . Sure, you're writing text that can be considered "correct" but it actually doesn't h…
From my not so knowledgeable point of view we have: It seems the Spanish government messed up massively here. Instead of embracing a referendum about independence they decided to flatly declare it illegal and attempt to ignore the problem. If they initially embraced the referendum they could have won, I believe that a Yes vote to independence nearly always ends up failing. But instead what happened is, they blankly d…
>It seems the Spanish government messed up massively here. Instead of embracing a referendum about independence they decided to flatly declare it illegal and attempt to ignore the problem. Did they? The EU doesn't support Catalan independence, the US doesn't support the movement, the Catalan independence has 0 backing from any outside source, while most countries see this as an internal affair within Spain. Madrid ev…
When Turkey's coup took place, for example, Western countries absolutely wanted Erdogan gone and Ataturk's values restored. It wasn't until the coup had clearly failed that the vast majority of countries expressed support for Erdogan and his regime.
Who supports who doesn't confer any moral validity to a people's right to democracy and independence, though I understand if you mean the practical advantages of support.
Either way, we may quickly see these international attitudes change as events progress, especially if Spain takes away autonomy in Catalonia.
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The lesson here: allow the Chinese to create a real estate bubble, so your country can have the economic resources to placate and pay off places you've colonized. Within a decade of the Canadian real estate bubble pop, Quebec will be an independent nation. Mark my words.
Would you please stop posting flamebait and/or unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? We have enough trouble with flamewars as it is, and you've unfortunately been doing this quite a bit. If you'd read the guidelines and stick to them when commenting here, we'd appreciate it: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html .