651–660 of 785 posts
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I see I have been down voted. As someone born in Barcelona, with dual Spanish/British nationality, all I can say with certainty is that I’m deeply saddened to lose not one, but possibly now two connections to my European neighbours.
Crazy. Even just expressing my own feelings on the matter is worthy of someone down voting. So very peculiar. Someone doesn’t agree I am deeply saddened?!
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…
The key point for me was when Spain announced that they were going to remove Catalonia's autonomy and dissolve its parliament. What did they expect Catalonia to do? This seems like an iconic example of what NOT to do when faced with an independence referendum. Compare the situation in Scotland or Canada, where AIUI the central government grudgingly permitted the referendum, campaigned on the issue locally, and offere…
It's not true, they haven't declared independence. This is a resolution proposal, which means it's not a law and it has no legal value (I mean, not even from the point of view of a pro-independence judge/lawyer). It's a proposal asking the Catalan government to declare independence. But it's fulfilling its purpose, which is to escalate things in a political sense while maintaining the status-quo in the legal realm: i…
Nothing that they do has legal value. The Catalan government has been acting outside the law for several weeks already.
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The claim that matters is that people want independence at all. Why isn't important, self-determination is.
The context in which things have been happening matters. Catalonia asked for fiscal special treatment like the one that other regions have for historical reasons (whereas they don't have such history). So the context is important.
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> it seems can either turn into a civil war When only one of the sides have weapons, there can not be a civil war, only a genocide. I am convinced that there is a limit on the violations of Human Rights that Europe will be able to tolerate from a state member.
"civil war", "genocide". Come on people, don't throw these words willy-nilly, leave that to bad news outlets. Yes, the spanish government was quite brutal in its attempt to stymie the referendum (probably unnecessarily so) but we're not on the verge of a catalan genocide in any way, shape or form. If you keep abusing words they end up losing their meaning.
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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? ;- )
Because they were planning to spend millions of euro in an illegal thing. Money directly stolen from people like you and me.
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Not true. People came to the polls wearing Spanish flags. No violence. The Catalan process has thankfully been extremely peaceful. People did not vote in the referendum because it was not officially recognized as such. Because the Spanish government refused to agree on the terms. The referendum was a sad exercise of democracy, in which the voice of lots of Catalans was not heard. But it was the only one that could be…
I guess the point is that given that the spanish government considered the referendum illegal, people not in favor of independence would probably not have wanted to caution it by participating. Clearly in these conditions the results can't be trusted. It's more like "90% of the people who thought the referendum was legitimate are in favor of independence". There's obviously a big selection bias. As for the question o…
There are many examples of self determination in 20th and 21st century, and normally only region/area that wants to become independent votes. Most recent example is independence referendum in Scotland. Entire UK did not vote, only Scotland voted.
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this is true for many countries. as an example, the US constitution does not allow secession either. many countries had civil wars for unification long time ago, hence why secession is not allowed constitutionally in a bunch of them.
You have to keep in mind that the civil war was over 150 years ago and the mood is quite different now. As a US citizen, I couldn't really tell you whether a state seceding would be met with war as in the past or if they would be allowed to quietly leave the union. There is always one state or another where some people think about it, and it seems like these discussions are never met with the hostility that Spain has…
Very fascinating, I think.
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Once again, vague accusations with no concrete examples. I'm not convinced. Sounds like you just have a bias against Catalonia.
I do have a bias against independentism/nationalism because I've lived through it. I cannot give concrete documents about this because there aren't such. Contrary to police violence of which there are. You don't have to be convinced, I'm just trying to express my opinion, not trying to convince anyone of who is better or worse here. But I can confidently assert that there are no "good and bad" in this story, just a w…
I have a hard time otherwise understanding the downvote, unless is someone downvoting anything that doesn't defend the Catalonian independentist movement downright.
Sorry, there are social circumstances which are very difficult to see and document, believe it or not.
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Nothing that they do has legal value. The Catalan government has been acting outside the law for several weeks already.
But I mean that, even under the Catalan separatist view of legality, this resolution is not a law.