Spain will prevent “digital republic” in Catalonia • Hacker News Board

Re: Spain will prevent “digital republic” in Catalonia

#121

Post by justin66 » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:29 PM UTC

enriquto wrote: post #118

ahachete wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you read me wrong. I'm not denying that cultural reasons might be valid to support secession. I'm saying that having a different culture or language does not imply that you want or need to secede. Indeed, in my opinion, it is the opposite and leads to a richer and more diverse country.

> having a different culture or language does not imply that you want or need to secede. Indeed. But in spain this is just impossible. As a staunch pro-independence supporter, I'm not for that option as a matter of principle, but of practicality. If the spanish state saw catalan language as a legitimate part of its own culture, I would feel comfortable being spanish. Yet, it seems to me absolutely impossible and utop…

> The only feasible way that I see to avoid the complete disappearance of the catalan language is by having our own state, and thus I fight for independence.

In your view, if the central government let Catalonia have independence in terms of language, including what children are taught in public schools and what appears in public forums and so on, would the independence movement come to an end?

Re: Spain will prevent “digital republic” in Catalonia

#122

Post by yiyus » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:30 PM UTC

ikurei wrote: post #96

buboard wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok the catalans may be arrogant, but did something significantly change in recent years? Usually these bravado-led movements are a result of stagnant economy like in Italy.

Politicians have been leveraging this for years, using this division to their benefits. And these applies both to catalonian politicians using independence and blaming everything in Madrid, and national parties in Madrid demonizing Catalonia. They've been making a huge snowball of this, and it's starting to be too much. From talking to some catalonian people, I think the last economic crisis, its management, and the…

> the corruption scandals in Partido Popular (the party that govered Spain from 2011 to 2018, but is always extremely irrelevant in Catalonia) had a lot to do with it

I understand they are the perfect enemy and have zero sympathy for them, and I agree with you this is the feeling of many people in Catalonia, but I find this argument very weak, taking into account that corruption scandals affected their regional government too (https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caso_3%25).

Re: Spain will prevent “digital republic” in Catalonia

#123

Post by yiyus » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:50 PM UTC

gumby wrote: post #108

BTW Spain doesn’t have a “president” as the article says — Pedro Sánchez is the acting prime minister. Spain is a monarchy. I assume this is a translation error.

In Spain, Pedro Sánchez is the president of the government, we do not have a prime minister. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_(government_title)

Re: Spain will prevent “digital republic” in Catalonia

#124

Post by gumby » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 4:13 PM UTC

yiyus wrote: post #123

gumby wrote: post #108

BTW Spain doesn’t have a “president” as the article says — Pedro Sánchez is the acting prime minister. Spain is a monarchy. I assume this is a translation error.

In Spain, Pedro Sánchez is the president of the government, we do not have a prime minister. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_(government_title)

Thanks! I think it's an unorthodox enough usage in English that IMHO the article should have had a clarification.

Actually I would have preferred that the article should have used the "English" term (as it does with, say, President of China) but such procedure is highly inconsistent. Merkel is referred to as "Chancellor", which is literally the English version of for Kanzler though in English "Chancellor" now means something quite different). Likewise the President of Iran is called President even though there is an executive agent above him/her (less powerful than the Spanish President).

Re: Spain will prevent “digital republic” in Catalonia

#125

Post by enriquto » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 4:23 PM UTC

justin66 wrote: post #121

enriquto wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> having a different culture or language does not imply that you want or need to secede. Indeed. But in spain this is just impossible. As a staunch pro-independence supporter, I'm not for that option as a matter of principle, but of practicality. If the spanish state saw catalan language as a legitimate part of its own culture, I would feel comfortable being spanish. Yet, it seems to me absolutely impossible and utop…

> The only feasible way that I see to avoid the complete disappearance of the catalan language is by having our own state, and thus I fight for independence. In your view, if the central government let Catalonia have independence in terms of language, including what children are taught in public schools and what appears in public forums and so on, would the independence movement come to an end?

I don't know, I just stated my personal reason for wanting independence, but I think it's not very representative.

Regarding your question, it seems to me that it's too late now. First, the spanish public opinion would not accept any kind of "concession" to Catalonia. Second, any such concession would likely be dismissed as insufficient by independence supporters.

The only realistic way out that I see is an escalation of the conflict until it becomes unsustainable economically for spain.

Re: Spain will prevent “digital republic” in Catalonia

#126

Post by UserIsUnused » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 4:38 PM UTC

yiyus wrote: post #120

AllegedAlec wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how it's selfish. If you believe that something is wrong, it's your moral imperative to try to rectify a situation, regardless of what others think about it.

> regardless of what others think about it This is why it is selfish.

I agree. but I want to add that selfish doesn't mean wrong. Or even ethically wrong.

Re: Spain will prevent “digital republic” in Catalonia

#127

Post by yiyus » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 5:22 PM UTC

gumby wrote: post #124

yiyus wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Spain, Pedro Sánchez is the president of the government, we do not have a prime minister. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_(government_title)

Thanks! I think it's an unorthodox enough usage in English that IMHO the article should have had a clarification. Actually I would have preferred that the article should have used the "English" term (as it does with, say, President of China) but such procedure is highly inconsistent. Merkel is referred to as "Chancellor", which is literally the English version of for Kanzler though in English "Chancellor" now means s…

In your defense, I would bet that changing "president of Spain" to "president of the government of Spain" has been one of the most common corrections not only for foreign journalists, but also Spanish ones.

Re: Spain will prevent “digital republic” in Catalonia

#128

Post by kiliancs » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 6:49 PM UTC

charlysl wrote: post #91

OP here. Given that I posted this, I think I that I should share my opinion. I am Spanish and against Catalonian independence, so hopelesly biased, I fear. I want to keep this short and cut to what I believe is the essence of the problem and how I think that all this will play out. Given the power assymetry, hugely favourable to Spain, the only chance for Catalonian independence is to get external support that will t…

Thanks for sharing your opinion and being open about your bias and reasoning. Thanks also for pointing out the power asymmetry, as this seems to be often left out from the equation and is IMHO a key point.

I think we can analyze the same problem from many different points of view and depth, but ultimately for me it boils down to it being immoral for some groups of people to prevent other groups of people from attaining a status of equal --it implies superiority.

If the moral solution (embracing self-determination) poses an existential threat to a country (Spain in this case), I think the sensible thing to do is to explore possible solutions such as a gradual application of this right that allows everyone to adjust.

Anything else is just asserting the immoral superiority of a group of people over another, and if this legitimized as an existential need, this only strengthens the argument that independence is also an existential need. Because both sides could pull the argument of of "as with all complex problems, there are trade-offs to be made, one can't aim for absolute democracy at the expense of everything else, we should be careful with absolutes because they are not realistic" to justify any mains of attaining their goal. I think this is a very dangerous and destructive point of view.

And to clarify, I didn't mean to pontify about what's moral and what isn't. This is just my point of view, though I do think it's fair.

Re: Spain will prevent “digital republic” in Catalonia

#129

Post by repolfx » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 6:56 PM UTC

charlysl wrote: post #91

OP here. Given that I posted this, I think I that I should share my opinion. I am Spanish and against Catalonian independence, so hopelesly biased, I fear. I want to keep this short and cut to what I believe is the essence of the problem and how I think that all this will play out. Given the power assymetry, hugely favourable to Spain, the only chance for Catalonian independence is to get external support that will t…

Spain would just cease to exist.

Spain will cease to exist anyway given the trajectory of the EU. I don't know why anyone in Spain seems to care about Catalonian independence. They seem to want to immediately turn around and (re)join the EU, which is rapidly taking over more and more areas of governmental policy. EU forbids different regions from being more "competitive" than others (see their demands to the UK) and implements large wealth transfers from richer to poorer areas, so, the rest of Spain would end up being subsidised by Catalonia still.

If you care about Spain existing you should be campaigning for Spain to leave the EU, rather than being distracted by whether Catalonia does or does not possess whatever trivialities the EU leaves behind to member states as it grows.

Re: Spain will prevent “digital republic” in Catalonia

#130

Post by repolfx » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 7:01 PM UTC

kuu wrote: post #52

AllegedAlec wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your reply shows your manipulative and dishonest nature. There are very good reasons why the Catalans would not go for a push to amend the constitution. - They believe it's a lost cause, since they are heavily outnumbered and the rest of Spain would be insane to just accede to losing 30+% of their wealth - They know that the government of Spain will never let this happen. - They do not accept the authority of the gov…

And your reply shows how selfish you are. As the majority does not want to do as I want, I take my way, without any other consideration. Even the catalan people is not supporting this as a majority, you're ruling without considering the 50% of catalonian people.

NB: The Scottish independence referendum did not allow the rest of the UK to vote. It was considered a matter for the Scots alone.

Arguably this wasn't fair. Splitting a country in two affects everyone, so why couldn't everyone vote? But if the rest of the country could vote then there'd not have been even a tiny hope the SNP would have accepted the results. In fact, they did not accept that they lost anyway, even when voting was restricted to Scotland. But it's easy to understand why the referendum was designed the way it was.

Ironically it might be that these days the rest of the UK would kick Scotland out, if they were given a vote. It's not necessarily true that everyone cares about the Union.