Guess the country: Spain and the struggle of Catalonia for freedom

[Skybird]

It is claimed that 42.3% of the Catalunyans eligible to vote, have gone voting. Of these, 90% voted Yes for independance. No information was given on how reliable and trustworthy these numbers are in the light of the massive interference by the Spanish police. - The biggest unions have called for a general strike in support of the independence movement. - 90% sounds like much, much more than I would have expected. If real, one can call it the Rajoy-bonus for sure. And news on the police action spread over the day, possible that many people over the day changed their opinion and voted Yes where before they wanted to vote No. - What's next? Military occupation and martial law? - And what is about the 57% who did not voter: are they desinterested and do not care, did they resignate and thought their vote would not mean anything? Those who do not care, can be ignored, for they indeed do not care. But those who may have voted Yes or No and just were afraid or intimidated, may make the differenc ein the mathemtical legality of the outcome. Because in the end the result means this: no real majority of the Catalunyans voted for independence. By ballots and explicit Yes-votes they have only 38% of those eligible to vote behind their idea of secession. Possible, maybe even likely that the missing 13% would be gotten if the 57% of the people who did not vote, would be asked. But fact is: they did not vote. - The result is unlikely to end the standoff between Barcelona and Madrid. Both sides can interpret it on behalf of their cause. And Madrid is set to ignore it anyway. Certain are just two things: the independence movement in Catalunya is very strong (much more so than I would have imagined), and since yesterday it has become even much stronger. seen that way, the battle yesterday had a very clear winner and a very clear looser. - If those numbers are trustworthy and reliable, one must repeat that.

[Nikita]

I do not need to say anything: Skybird has said everything for me. Fortunately, I was one of those who could vote in freedom. But not everyone could. The state police and the Civil Guard stole votes and attacked defenseless people inside the polling stations. The Madrid press says people attacked the police. How? Disarmed? With the ballot? For the heirs of the Franco regime a vote is a weapon of mass destruction

[Nikita]

Originally Posted by Onkel Neal

Should we amend the title of this thread to re reflect the topic more accurately?

Neal, a country that funds a foundation dedicated to a dictator is Spain, not Catalonia. Should I amend the title to correct this? Thank you

[hauangua]

A state that sends the police in war against their own population ...
It is the farthest thing we can be from the word "Democracy"

[Nikita]

Spain, a state that has gone from absolutist monarchies to dictatorships wants to give lessons of democracy. Are there any Russian people reading this? Do you know that this Spanish government decorated members of the Blue Division (División Azul) in 2013? Yes, the troops sent by Franco to help Hitler invade the Soviet Union. And to humiliate us, they did it in Catalunya, a country highlighted in the anti-Franco struggle. Read it here (sorry, only in Spanish) http://www.elperiodico.com/es/politi...torica-2397027 https://elpais.com/ccaa/2013/05/16/c...85_692728.html

[Nikita]

Scottish National Party (SNP) justice spokeswoman Joanna Cherry has reported that on Sunday, in addition to police charges, there were sexual assaults by agents. https://mobile.twitter.com/joannacch...92035633582081 http://www.lavanguardia.com/politica...html?facet=amp

[Nikita]

This girl the Spanish police broke her fingers one by one http://www.lavanguardia.com/politica...endum-1-o.html

[Nikita]

They did not respect the elderly http://www.lavanguardia.com/politica...eferendum.html

[STEED]

The Spanish government is a bloody disgrace and what happen yesterday proves it.

[Skybird]

You cannot give freedom to man. You can only withhold freedom from man, by the use of force. Thats why you should never accept to be given freedom, because that implies that the other has ever had a right to own you, and you owed to bow your knee to him. You pick your freedom yourself, and by that take what was rightfully yours from all beginning on. Nothing speaks against a voluntary union of partners. But if one partner says that it is over, then there is nothing the other can rightfully do about it.

Its really is revealing how suspiciously silent EU leaders are.

Nikita, I take it that you are Catalunyan. In your view, is the region economically strong enough to survive by itself, or do your people count on the EU paying? I read your unem,ployment rate is still three times as high as before 2007 and higher than in Spain, and that your debts are amongst the highest debt burdens in the EU.

[Catfish]

^ Ok you want to give the decision of "freedom" of belonging to a greater state to the people, along with all other decisions.

It has been a long struggle of egomanic monarchs and other donkeyholes to unite their small patches, and improve and increase the territories, but imho it is indeed a bit better than in the stone age.

Giving certain kinds of freedom to all will be the end of nations, but the result will not be a united world, but lots of small kingdom states or other smallish governments of all kind. Also different currencies, trade laws and so on.
You will then soon have the death penalty back, you will have burning of witches in some states, creationist ones, religious barbaries, and you will have guns everywhere (freeeedom!) and you will soon have those small states fighting each other again. No exchange of science, all for themselves. Germany for example will then have the new NSDAP in its former East, and Bavaria fights all others.
Ok this will at least be the end of this bloody bavarian football club.

The US already seems to embrace this bs with Trump, i guess those suns and the milky way will again be only strange lights in the sky, in a hundred years.

You take one small example going wrong and build a conspiracy and world philosophy out of one event?

[Skybird]

Strange, some people attack me when I talk in defence of national states due to culturally grown identity, and the same people attack me when I argue against national states when they corrupt their power against the will of the people they submit. What is the correct line for me to argue, I wonder? For national states or against national states? Bah, I think I stick to my plotted course through all the arguments and see it a bit more differentiated like I used to do since long time.

Read my lips, Catfish: if partners in a union, for example different people of different cultural origins living in one state, agree to do so voluntarily, fine. If one partner no longer wants to live in that union, then so be it: divorce. The emerging of a separate Catalunyan identity goes back to the times of the falling Roman empire and the mass migration of the Visigoths, and since then Catalonia/Catalunya formed several different alliances or was part fo these, with Aragon, Castilia, France, sometimes voluntarily, sometimes not so voluntarily, but forced by blackmail or force. The modern creation of all-united Spain holds quite some inner contradictions, which were payed attention to by giving different regions and recognised (!!) separate cultures varying degrees of relative autonomy, more than federal states have in germany, as I understand it. Still the question is whether Catalunya and Spain ever were meant to indeed form one united national state at all. A question I do not claim I can or should answer for the Catalunyan people - this is what they have to find a shared position on all by themselves .

Yesterday's numbers only show that many, but no substantial majority of all Catalunyan people want independence, you have 90% Yes-votes of only 42% people going voting. That is quite some distance away from the magical 50+ percent mark, the claim of theca talon leader that they have now earned the right for stasteghood is as misled and propagandistic as is Rajoy'S claim that nothing happened and no referendum ever took place. It seems to me both thes emen are a huge poart of the problem, they must get removed from the formula, I think. But again: that is a thing the Catalunyan people must come to term with, an internal affair of theirs it is. It is no Spanish issue! Spain only gets affected by it, but own interest founded on unjustified claim does not give you any ethically justified or legal claim. You just invested your interests in the wrong way then - and that is your fault. Its not a Spanish thing to decide for the Catalonians, nor should the EU, or me or you or anyone else. It takes two to get married - and it takes two to continue marriage. Trweaties imply that they can be cancelled, any paragraph that cancellation is unavialable, necessarily musta nd should be seen as a mockery of sane reaosn, and should be ignored. No third party has to lecture the two actors here. And whether or not the EU likes local independence movements considering that it is busy with wanting to install a new Soviet Union system and kicking identities around like it wants and de facto already does, I really could not care less for what the EU wants. To hell with it.

One thing is clear, however. The Catalunyans have to live with the consequences good and bad from their decision, whatever it might be, and they are not independent at all if they can only exist in separation when others pay their economic bills. In this case, Germany would foot most of that bill again, and I am strictly against that. In this regard, they have no claim to make to other European people. I recommend they make sure and check it twice and three times whether they really can afford independence, or not.Becasue whatever they find out: they find out at their win - or cost.

[Rockstar]

A few people desire power so convince the mob secession is in their best interests because the grass is greener on the other side. Which it never is

[Rockstar]

Oh and according to the title its a 'struggle for freedom'. What exactly is the oppression they are facing and what would change if they got their way?

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Rockstar

Oh and according to the title its a 'struggle for freedom'. What exactly is the oppression they are facing and what would change if they got their way?

Fiscal drain in the national financial structural equalization scheme (or whatever the correct english word is for "Finanzausgleich", I do not find it in the dictionaries). They are thew wealthiest region in Spain and the most industrialised, but after the past ten years found themselves now being quite abused in order to make other regions in Spain growing again. They now have the highest unemployment rate and t he highest debt rate in Spain, and amongst the EU's nations and regions in general. Unemplyoment is three times as high, debts are amongst the EU's worst.

Finally, for many it seems to be a cultural identity thing. They simply are not just simply Iberian Spaniards, you see. Even the Spanish national constitution recognises that and talks of a status of a separate culture not in the meaning of nation (poltical), but identity, history and language. Two or three other regions hold such a status as well. Its no homogenic one-size-fits-all population.

But all that does not really matter and is not needed to decide whether their wish is okay or not. If they really do not want anymore: that they do not want to be governed by Madrid anymore, that is the only thing that counts. In this case, and in any other comparable case. People are not property of states, parties, politicians, governments. Obedience to the latter must be fully voluntarily, it if gets blackmailed and enforced by brute power, then it is tyranny.

I only wonder whether indeed a real majority of them indeed wants to split. I don't think they have a majority for that. They want more autonomy and want to keep more of their labours' fruits for themsleves instead of getting pushed into poverty while the others benefit from their labour and success. I read some media articles about the economical changes there in the past 10 years, the decline of the education because the money in it got sucked out by Madrid, and found that I can understand their anger there. The others rise, while they fall. And this although they are the industrial and business powerhouse of Spain. One fifth of the Spanish GDP, gets produced in Catalunya alone. Now compare that to terriorial size and population size! Catalunya as a state and industry, would rank I think around place 48 in the world. Not bad for a country of that small size.

You here have the motive why Madrid most likely will never let them go without setting up a fight. Maybe even war and a military dictatorship, I would not completely rule that one out.