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Catalan referendum: preliminary results show 90% in favour of independence

theguardian.com

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Re: Catalan referendum: preliminary results show 90% in favour of independence

#71

Post by plaintext-cat »

farresito wrote: post #28
randiantech wrote: post #2

There are reports of people voting from two to 4 different schools. Wondering what methods authorities used to ensure there was no fraud on these referendum.

I voted. I can't talk about all the schools, but the ones I checked made sure (electronically) that you didn't vote twice, but of course there's a chance that some people did indeed vote more than once if for some reason they manually wrote down the name.

Do not disinform. Names were NEVER written down. Either you voted because you were on the list, or the system validated you were a voter who didn’t vote yet.

Re: Catalan referendum: preliminary results show 90% in favour of independence

#72

Post by lacaza »

farresito wrote: post #64
lacaza wrote: post #46

I feel a little bit disappointed with hacker news having this superficial and anti-analytical article in the front page. As a Spaniard id like to address some points brought up here in the comments. I've read people comparing this with Crimea, thoughts on self determination, thoughts on the repression by the government, etc. The first thing is to question the referendum itself: there was no census, there are people f…

The only two autonomous communities I could see leaving are Catalonia and Basque Country. Madrid, despite being rich, has many more privileges than Catalonia. What makes you think less than 15% of people voted? Did you by any chance get these numbers from the extremely objective and impartial newspapers abc, el mundo, or la razon? I don't feel like arguing at 3am, so I will leave it at that, but reading things like o…

More privileges? Madrid has a higher gdp per capita but a lower gpd (fewer people), despite of having a lower gdp they contribute with twice the money: http://m.eldiario.es/politica/Madrid-deficit-fiscal-millones... (Leftist source)

What makes me think about the real percentage of people that voted is not any newspaper but things like this: https://twitter.com/key_opinions/status/914529367543382016

https://twitter.com/juanmalamet/status/914448261964029957

https://twitter.com/yuyudecai/status/914577981812674566

And finally, I'm very sorry if I offended you, I'm just saying that the difference between someone from Madrid and someone from Barcelona es less than someone from Madrid and Cadiz or many other cities. There is no special identity nor history compared to other regions. Your claiming the crown of Aragon, which was pretty much half of Spain... I don't think you could claim independence just because you belonged to something else (as every region before the formation of Spain) in the past... The only real argument is to say: a lot of people want it. I stated my points on that in my comment.

Re: Catalan referendum: preliminary results show 90% in favour of independence

#73

Post by lacaza »

justin66 wrote: post #63
lacaza wrote: post #46

I feel a little bit disappointed with hacker news having this superficial and anti-analytical article in the front page. As a Spaniard id like to address some points brought up here in the comments. I've read people comparing this with Crimea, thoughts on self determination, thoughts on the repression by the government, etc. The first thing is to question the referendum itself: there was no census, there are people f…

> This referendum is illegal and unconstitutional. There are millions of public money and public space used in order to carry on with "crime of sedition", using the political force against the law in order to rebel against the institutions. Since the referendum doesn't have any legal force anyway, why did your government send out cops to use force to keep people away from the polls?

I'm not defending the government here. I agree they over reacted.

Just a couple of things: it was the judicial institutions the ones ordering the repression. And the repression wasn't as big as the international press says, 96% of the schools were opened.

Re: Catalan referendum: preliminary results show 90% in favour of independence

#74

Post by sgc »

bjterry wrote: post #8
sgc wrote: post #5

Yeah ... if you are willing to take a boot to the face to vote, you probably want to change the status quo. But the boots to the face then validate the results and the rest will be history.

Game theoretically, the fact that the Spanish government was so dead set against the vote implies that they thought there was a significant probability that it would be over 50% regardless. It seems like if a government resorts to violence to stop separatism movements, that violence is prima facie evidence that the separatist sentiment potentially represents the majority of a region. I have actually been surprised by…

I don't know if you have spent much time in Spain, but they have a tendency to be pretty heavy handed even when they don't need to be. It is a large contributor to the Basque separatist movement for example. I am still waiting to get better numbers on how many people voted etc. since the reports are wildly disparate, but I wouldn't be surprised if the move was more to send a message to other separatist movements than to deal with today in itself.

Regardless, I think the bigger take away from these events is that they have made their bed and now must lay in it. Almost any result of this vote could have been more easily dealt with in almost any other way they could imagine.

Re: Catalan referendum: preliminary results show 90% in favour of independence

#75

Post by freech »

lacaza wrote: post #46

I feel a little bit disappointed with hacker news having this superficial and anti-analytical article in the front page. As a Spaniard id like to address some points brought up here in the comments. I've read people comparing this with Crimea, thoughts on self determination, thoughts on the repression by the government, etc. The first thing is to question the referendum itself: there was no census, there are people f…

You specifically mention that the comparison with crimea is wrong. And yet all your arguments apply to the crimea (and any other secession) too.

Re: Catalan referendum: preliminary results show 90% in favour of independence

#76

Post by freech »

trothamel wrote: post #20
coenhyde wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's appropriate to ask the citizens of the rest of the country if they support the secession. To create a simple analogy lets say you have a group of five people. One is a captive and four are the captors. Is it appropriate to have a referendum with all five people to vote on if the captive is allow to go free? No the four captors are always going to vote no. The captive has to escape without the suppo…

I'm sure if you went to any prison and polled the inmates, you'd find quite a bit of support for the inmate's freedom. Without taking a position on Catalonia, I think one has to analyze the reasons they want to hold the referendum and decide if you find them compelling. When the USA seceded from the UK, the Declaration of Independence provided a reasonable list of reasons. By contrast, the main reason the CSA seceded…

I think there's a good heuristic here: Would the reasons justify invading a country, if it had never been a part of "your" country?

Invading a country to abolish slavery is morally justifiable, invading a country because you want to tax them isn't.

Re: Catalan referendum: preliminary results show 90% in favour of independence

#77

Post by seszett »

lacaza wrote: post #46

I feel a little bit disappointed with hacker news having this superficial and anti-analytical article in the front page. As a Spaniard id like to address some points brought up here in the comments. I've read people comparing this with Crimea, thoughts on self determination, thoughts on the repression by the government, etc. The first thing is to question the referendum itself: there was no census, there are people f…

It's a bit late to answer, but still:

> The first thing is to question the referendum itself: there was no census, there are people from Madrid voting, people voting twice, people inserting 4 votes at once, etc. The percentage of Catalan people voting this probably doesn't even get to 15%. And the people how came to vote were the only the ones who believed this referendum was democratic (99.9% of people who want the independence).

If that's the case, this is really only the fault of Madrid for not allowing the referendum to take place in a calm, reasonable and controlled manner. I don't think you can disrupt an attempt at a democratic process (I know it is debatable, but you can not deny that for many people voting yes, they saw that as a democratic action) and then claim it is invalid because it was disrupted. By organising this disruption, the Spanish state has lost a lost of legitimacy in the minds of people who were already defiant.

It's a clear loss for everyone, and as the force that is legally in charge, the Spanish government is undeniably the one responsible for it.

Re: Catalan referendum: preliminary results show 90% in favour of independence

#78

Post by richardknop »

peteretep wrote: post #37
qeternity wrote: post #4

As much as I'd like to see Catalonians have a voice in this, given that the referendum is was ruled illegal it seems unlikely that the "no" vote would come out in droves. One crime in protest of another?

And indeed, turn out was pretty low

Lot of people were stopped from voting though. Police shut down hundreds of polling stations and intervened in other stations trying to stop people from voting. 42% turnout under these drastic conditions when police is beating up people on streets is not low imho.

Re: Catalan referendum: preliminary results show 90% in favour of independence

#79

Post by richardknop »

scythe wrote: post #19

Scottish referendum: allowed, failed Kurdish referendum: suppressed, succeeded Catalan referendum: suppressed, succeeded It's a little too early to call it a pattern, but it has the appearance of one.

Counter example: Brexit referendum - allowed, succeeded

Re: Catalan referendum: preliminary results show 90% in favour of independence

#80

Post by richardknop »

davidcollantes wrote: post #32

A 90% of less than 40% of the voting population is minuscule.

No it's not miniscule. That's 36% of all eligible voters. Donald Trump won election with 26% of eligible voters. Obama and GWB won with around 30%.

Also given the circumstances where police shuts down hundreds of polling stations, seizes ballot boxes, imprisons local authorities and starts beating people on the streets, that's a good turnout.

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