It's not democratic, it's illegal and the justice system has ordered its dismantling. Think what you will, disagree with the law if you want but at this point the government is forced to apply the law. They don't have a choice.
Surely part of the democracy is the rule of the law, isn't it? I'm sure you can point to laws in the past that made a farce of democracy, but most of them aren't in modern democracies. You can think this one is particular is anti-democratic but most countries actually have similar laws against unilateral secession of a single region.
> I'm sure you can point to laws in the past that made a farce of democracy, but most of them aren't in modern democracies.
I can point to a HUGE number of laws that make a farce of the democratic process in almost any modern democracy. A short list that applies mostly to the USA but some to other countries also:
* Gerrymandering (the act of designing districts along demographic lines to influence an election outcome)
* First past the post voting (where voters can't vote for who they really want, they have to vote 'strategically' for the person they think will come first or second)
* Voter ID laws that seek to disenfranchise certain demographics by requiring hard(or expensive)-to-acquire ID they are less likely to have
Sure but unless you are extremely radical, those are the exception not the rule. Most of the laws, that regulate murder, theft, libel, etc. are all right. At least I like to think that most first world countries are approximately democracies, otherwise what's the measure of democracy we can have? because as I said, no unilateral secession is a pretty universal coded law in the first world.
I'm not disagreeing, but just a semantic argument here. The referendum is absolutely democratic. But it is also illegal under the Spanish constitution. The problem is that the Spanish constitution and the judge's interpretation (which is straightforward but unfortunate) patently would disallow self determination through a referendum, which to me is democracy in its purest form. The only reason it's illegal is because the law is undemocratic.
I agree the Spanish central government seemingly had no choice but escalation. But that escalation is tragic and will only make Catalonia's independence inevitable, whereas it was not at all clear cut before this.
There will be people here with more knowledge about international constitutional law but I’m pretty sure almost every state has rules in place to prevent it from disintegrating. Otherwise, what would stop oneself to declare one’s own little piece of land as independent (with yourself voting for it) and stop paying taxes?
Without an army to defend your borders the government from which you claim independence could just remove you by force... You would have problems to trade so you would have to be completely self sufficient with food, energy etc.
You kind of need to reach some critical mass to be able to organize a functioning nation. Getting to city-states could be viable, but I don't think it can go much farther.
The world is not a libertarian tax fantasy of that degree, no. But it should be possible for groups that have a significant cultural claim to vote on these matters. And it should be possible that if a significant amount of this cultural group agrees on the subject that a mutual understanding can be obtained between the main state and the group they govern over.
It seems to me this constitution article was put in place to specifically specific regional identity issues that the country of Spain was built on. Spain is moreso a collection of regional identities than a firm national national identity.
As a counterexample, the Dutch constitution does not identify what the unity of the Dutch state actually means or that breaking Dutch unity is against the law a priori [1]. Historically speaking, this has not been a great concern despite historical [2] and modern [3] seperatist movements, because the Dutch "identity" has historically been synonymous with the Dutch nationality to a very large degree. The same cannot be said for Spain.
As a disclaimer, I'm not advocating identity politics here. I'm just trying to give a historical explanation.
[1]: The Dutch constitution does define treason but what constitutes treason is left rather vague and therefore up to a judge to decide. Would/should the same Spanish judge have deemed this referendum treason in the absence "state unity" laws? Not a rhetorical question.
> But it should be possible for groups that have a significant cultural claim to vote on these matters. And it should be possible that if a significant amount of this cultural group agrees on the subject that a mutual understanding can be obtained between the main state and the group they govern over.
Why? I agree that people who want to secede should be able to but I see no reason to restrict it to “groups that have a significant cultural claim”. That’s just leaving it up to those in power.
I don't see it as at all a given that just because 51% of the voting population in some geographic region wants to form their own country that they should always be allowed to do so. In general, I favor self-determination but, especially when a large portion of the population in the region supports the status quo, it's by no means an automatic process.
Why is the referendum democratic? is it your opinion that unilateral secession of any region, under any circumstances is democratic by definition? I find that very strange. I don't agree.
Brexit was a democratic decision. People may hate the results and call it bullshit, say the vote shouldn't matter, etc. But it's still democratic.
A non-democratic option would be the government breaking off without consulting the residents. Or a government saying people who live in a region aren't allowed to have a vote to decide their fate because politicians from other regions forbid it.
Yes, it was agreed and allowed under local law. Catalonian's referendum was not. It's not legal. Needs to be agreed upon.
Additionally, to see why a group of people wanting to secede might also be unethical, think about this case. A country finds unobtanium in its land. Decides to build an unobtanium factory there, which costs 20% of GDP but it pays off with awesome employment growth and tax revenue. Now the inhabitants of that region don't like that their tax gets used mainly in poorer areas of their country and want independence. Fair? I don't think so. So voting to leave is not always a natural right. Only under agreed conditions with all the national territory is ok. Barring ethnic cleanses, war and stuff like that but nothing like that has happened in Catalonia's case.
It's easy to construct a Venn diagram of fairness for all and democracy.
O O
Very few independence movements are "fair". There are regions of every country in the world that generate a disproportionate amount of wealth relative to the others. There are regions with unique local identities that feel they're unfairly being squished out by others. There's no way to please everybody, and so countries essentially never respect independence votes and prefer conflict.
There are few countries today where people would say, "you know, let's undo our independence." There are a lot of people who say "we can't let them become independent because it's bad for the people in the other regions." People thought America's independence was an ass-backwards and illegal decision because those fools were trying to get a free ride off of England while keeping all the resources to themselves. They, just like nearly every country that opposes secession, decided war would be a good idea to end it.
> Yes, it was agreed and allowed under local law. Catalonian's referendum was not. It's not legal. Needs to be agreed upon.
There is no way Catalans could organize a legal referendum. That's something which is not going to change in the foreseeable future, specially having seen how the Spanish government has been behaving the last 15 years.
Whenever you say to Catalans: this is not a legal referendum, you loose all legitimacy if you do not suggest how this can be made legal. And by that I mean a serious, well intentioned proposal, not simply a way of kicking the problem down the road, as the often repeated "let's change the constitution to allow for a referendum". This is positively never, ever going to happen, so it can be considered a joke.
You seem to conflate 'democratic', 'legal' and 'desired'.
Something can be democratic and illegal - when laws are enacted to prevent certain applications of democracy, as it appears to be the case here. Something can also be democratic and undesired - many on here that Brexit is an example of that.
But words have meanings. A referendum if held under basic voting and independence rules is by definition democratic. Even if it concerns unilateral secession.
> is it your opinion that unilateral secession of any region, under any circumstances is democratic by definition? I find that very strange. I don't agree.
Definitely not, not under any circumstance. But if backed by a big (60%?) part of the population, then yes. Referendum are dangerous beasts, but not allowing popular opinion to be heard once in a while is even worse.
So, as happens with democracy, which is "the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time", a referendum is the worst option, except for all the rest.
We used to have that. It took years of negotiation to dismantle that. I don't think we'll fall down that path again. Not our generation, at least. Can't speak for the next ones.
Of course it would look bad if 95% of Catalonian voted for independence but I wonder if there are legal reasons stopping the Spanish government from just letting the vote go through and then simply ignore the outcome. It seems to me Catalonian independence can only really happen with support from Madrid anyway.
The judiciary ordered the dismantling. It had to be done. We can argue about the execution, I won't disagree it's being poor but in a country with separation of powers, the executive needs to obey the law.
Anyway, the referendum specifically doesn't have any anti-fraud guarantees and people who don't want independence aren't going to vote so the "yes" is going to win 9X% most likely.
They could have responded with a lighter touch but if the referendum is suspended, conducting it is illegal. If a judge orders seizing voting booths, they need to attempt to do that. For example, the local police did exactly what you said, paid lip service to the judge and left people to vote. Guess what there are already 6 judges investigating them for negligence. Personally I expected an smarter police action plan.
It's not hard to understand why police and others choose to implement the decisions made by the national government, that is not what I am asking about.
I simply wonder why the national government decided to try to stop it in the first place, instead of letting it go ahead and then ignore the outcome.
I agreed until "forced to apply the law". Many laws are changed after first the approval goes away, then the enforcement is phased out, and only then the actual act is written. Law is very often applied in the context of current situation / people involved. Government is not forced to do anything really.
Also, the law most often mentioned - Spanish constitution - mentions that Spain cannot be divided. This is just a referendum. The goal is the division of course. But the referendum itself is not changing anything.
To say that a region trying to forge independence is illegal is true by definition because wherever you are the law will enshrine the status quo, but it's not a meaningful statement.
And to say that there's no choice but to apply the law isn't true, when it comes to questions this big the system of: make law=> judicial system interprets=> police enforce breaks down, because it's a political question not a legal question. Eg. how Uber in London is implicitly political, it's too big to be held by courts and keep politicians out. Spanish politicians absolutely had some leeway in how they dealt with this.
We can surely discuss the implementation of a very clear judicial order but at the end of the day those things are difficult and doesn't change that in principle that referendum wasn't democratic and needed to be stopped and the forces of the state employed in that.
Women's suffrage used to be illegal. Black movements in the US used to be illegal. Fight against apartheid used to be illegal. Now we have Spanish police beating ordinary people in the age of Internet. This is beyond Streisand-effect stupid. They should have done British style referendum, almost surely "Independencia" would have lost, and then could stick the result to the faces of local population for the next two decades. Now they basically made people there realize their opinion doesn't matter and convinced undecided people they're better on their own. At best they end up with a velvet-divorce in Czechoslovakian style, at worst... Well, a can of worms. It's a complete BS to also mention Catalonia would be out of EU; as the 2nd most advanced region of Spain EU would be more than happy to quickly accept them than to risk Russia/China making a foothold there. Oligarchs there should have played it the same way as in EEU, where they kept control of local economy and gave people meaningless concessions to keep them happy, and continued medial control of population. I am wondering if they really became so stupid or if they did actually plan Catalonian independence. Both alternatives are sadly likely.
All great movements of the past were illegal; that's what made them great in the history books, even if they were carefully planned by Machiavellian types in the background. One very popular past dictator in Germany was democratically elected though. If Spain wants to stay united, they really need to start talking to Catalonia instead of literally kicking their butts and smashing them on the ground, or they risk an abrupt end (maybe not today, but in 20 years when a new generation remembering this comes to full force and resentment can't be contained any longer).
You have already godwin'd me :) Anyway, imho this is still just fallacious. You are attaching to the Catalonian independence movement the adjective of "great". Then you say great movements are "illegal", etc. etc. Too much of a fact-less reasoning for me.
It might be great from the point of view of Catalonians, horrible from the point of view of Castillians; it might be meh from the point of view of Balearians. Like all those *stan countries splitting from Soviet Union, I am sure they are super happy celebrating it and Russians looking sad, embarrassed and upset back at those events. What I was trying to point out is a simple historic observation that once population's perception of benefits is lost, inevitably a dissolution in a few decades comes (unless you do Stalin's style mass murders/transfers of nations to remove the issue completely, which I hope post-Franco Spain doesn't mediate at all).
I don't presume that, although I think legal strongly signals democratic in a democracy. What I say is that this referendum is illegal and not democratic.
What? A group of people getting together to vote to make a decision in no way violates democracy. It's the very essence of democracy. Telling people "you aren't allowed to vote because this decision belongs to us, and so your actions are illegal" is anti-democratic.
A government saying that voting in a specific circumstance is illegal doesn't make the voting anti-democratic. That simply makes it illegal.
Another example is that under 18s can't vote in most countries. If 17 year olds decide to get together and vote anyways, what they're doing isn't anti-democratic. They're just doing something illegal. They're violating a restriction of democracy.
The 17 year olds aren't even doing anything illegal so long as they're not misrepresenting their age. They're simply taking a vote that has no force of law behind it.
The organization of the referendum and its law have been automatically suspended, there's no ruling as wether they are constitutional or not.
There's nothing in that suspension that implies beating people who want to participate. Spain brought police and paramilitary police in the thousands in preparation for this.
There's clearly a lot more going on that just a government trying to follow the law. The 9N 2014 voting was similarly suspended and this didn't happen. Also check out how the population in several Spanish cities sent their police and paramilitary police to Catalonia with chants of "a por ellos" (roughly, "go get them") https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA1Sw-szU6w
How do you morally justify that a people who according to all recent polls has a 80+% support for an independence referendum is governed by those who are happy using violence against them, their children and their elders to suppress a peaceful attempt to decide about their own future? In my opinion they have lost all legitimacy to govern or tax these citizens.
Spain has pushed this to a situation in which the only way for Catalans to have a representative government and have their rights (including that of self-determination) respected is independence. I wonder how many more Catalans have embraced the independence movement today.
Nah, these days the US government would just ignore them. It’s not like they take much of an interest in any of the tribal governments, unless it can get some politician some votes.
A better example would be California or Texas. I’m pretty sure we would not see the preemptive harsh measures Spain has engaged in.
Fully agree. If California put a secession question on as a ballot referendum, think what you will of the current state of the federal government but I have a lot of trouble believing we'd see federal troops preventing people from voting.
Obviously the situations are somewhat different. While I can actually imagine something wacky like that getting on the California ballot, it's not something very many people in California or elsewhere would take seriously.
Hell, a bunch of semi-autonomous US states tried this in the 1860s and got crushed by the full force of the national military for their attempt.
There is clearly no internationally accepted right to self-determination. Maybe there should be, but I'm not sure it can be made fair and practical.
The status quo seems to be:
> According to the Helsinki Final Act of 1975, the UN, ICJ and international law experts, there is no contradiction between the principles of self-determination and territorial integrity, with the latter taking precedence. ¹
Although, even leaving aside issues specific to the Civil War, 2017 is also a lot different from 1860. To the degree that a region of a Western democracy, especially one with a clear historic identity, really wants to separate from the parent country, most would say it's their right to do so. (Although the separating region may not like the terms.) Sending national government troops into Scotland, Quebec, or California to force them to remain would be a pretty unpopular move throughout the Western world.
The violence part is a disgrace and likely extremely counterproductive. But there is not much democracy in the catalan referendum. It's unconstitutional, and there is little guarantee it's fair to the castellano half of the catalan population which is also much more likely to refrain from voting. The referendum will probably not reflect the will of the catalan population.
You can accuse any pool of not reflecting the wishes of the population, with the (poor and fallacious) excuse that some people choose not vote. Now remains the problem of having to make such a choice in case an illegal vote is organized, but there shall be no problem in the first place if the results are ignored.
But even then, you can't recursively deplete the meaning of the word "democratic" by tying it to pre-existing arbitrary constitutions, even more so when said constitutions trivially violates the right of people to self-determination.
Your use of the words poor or fallacious are indeed poor. There is a huge difference between
a) the usual situation where some people don't participate in a regular referendum or election that most of the population and all authorities support as constitutional, and then
b) the situation in Catalonia where the referendum is only considered legal by some of the authorities, where other authorities have told voters to refrain from voting and are actively trying to prevent the voters from voting, and where a presumed 40-50 percent of the "electorate" don't even believe it's constitutional.
Let's not pretend that people that would vote "remain" are likely to participate in a vote they have been told by the some of the authorities not to participate in. Only the "leave" voters who believe the referendum is legal in the first place have a clear incentive to participate in it.
We could set up a poll in HN and call it a referendum, it would still be bullshit. The way the spanish govt acts is indeed wrong and stupid , but this is not democratic process. They could let the vote go through; its illegal anyway and its highly unlikely the international community will consider it valid.
From the shitshow Spain put out on the BBC in their interview the other day this outcome seemed inevitable. The guy basically said "they shouldn't have an election because they'll lose and that's why they shouldn't even bother having this illegal vote at all". People need to remember how shitty Spain's economy is/was after the 2008 collapse. People talked about them in the same breath as Greece, Italy, and Ireland.
People ought to know we're still deep under the rubble of the collapse, and most of us need two, even three jobs, to earn just enough to live by.
They ought to know that Spain government has been siphoning funds out from the pension funds, and under the pretense of solidarity between communities are making the richer autonomies pay for everything that should be paid with the money they're using to further their own agendas, pay lobbies for a position after they retire, and putting people of their families as assistant in a way that reeks of nepotism, just to enrich themselves.
People should know the Government of Spain has declared the millions funneled to rescue the banks as lost without hope of ever getting anything back, all the while kicking people out of their mortgaged houses which they can't pay for thanks to the late laws on working rights passed with absolute majority by this same government without ever consulting the citizens.
They should know, but very few headlines ever talk about that, because the local media is in debt to the banks who profit from dealing with the government in this fantastic, incorruptible country.
The fact that many politicians still don't know about the Streisand effect never ceases to amaze me. They should have let this slide and no one would have cared, heck most people can't spot Catalunya on a map and now it's all over international news with voters in blood including women and elderly people.
I'm not sure wether that would have actually been a possibility. The referendum ist illegal according to the ruling of the highest constitutional court. The absolute minimum of what a functioning state needs to do is pushing back on all illegal activities.
By not doing anything against an illegal referendum the Spanish state would have made the first step towards accepting that it does no longer have full control over a part of its own territory.
I'm also quite sure that their international reputation is not really that important to them when the state itself is endangered.
>I'm not sure wether that would have actually been a possibility. The referendum ist illegal according to the ruling of the highest constitutional court. The absolute minimum of what a functioning state needs to do is pushing back on all illegal activities.
Utter nonsense. According to the courts referendum is invalid, organizing it in on the ground isn't criminal. Using public funds for it may be.
> By not doing anything against an illegal referendum the Spanish state would have made the first step towards accepting that it does no longer have full control over a part of its own territory.
I couldn't disagree more.
If the referendum is not part of the legal process, then it's not binding, but participating in it should not be illegal, and absolutely should not be suppressed with force.
There's a vast chasm between "we do not recognise this referendum because it was not held in accordance with the constitution" and "we will use violence to stop you doing this thing".
> I'm also quite sure that their international reputation is not really that important to them when the state itself is endangered.
Again, all it takes is to say "no, actually, no referendum was held, as the laws do not permit it. All you did was hold a symbolic protest", and boom, the state isn't threatened. Unless, of course, a majority of the broader state is sympathetic to the symbolic protest. Which, if so, would explain the seeming desperation to prevent it, but at the same time further undermines any moral justification for doing so.
In short, either there was no need to suppress the voting, or there was no moral reason to suppress the voting. The more the Spanish state is threatened by a symbolic, non-binding, unconstitutional referendum, the less the Spanish state is deserving of defence.
> The absolute minimum of what a functioning state needs to do is pushing back on all illegal activities.
This isn’t true. The speed limit in the US comes with the proviso +2 or 3 miles per hour, unless the police officer feels like pulling you over, in Ireland the drink driving laws started being enforced with any degree of vigour in the 90’s despite being much older than that, and the Netherlands’ drug laws as written aren’t much different from its neighbours but it’s enforcement is. Law and legislation are not the same. Prosecutorial discretion is totally a thing. When’s 16 year old gets prosecuted for sexting as a producer of child porn that’s monstrous whether the law as written calls for it or not.
Not sure if you're being naive or ignorant of how governments work but in case you don't know, when it's convenient to do so, governments chose to not apply laws all the time. So I'm not buying the "but this was illegal, they had no choice" argument. Sounds like complete BS.
What the Spanish constitution says is largely besides the point on the matter of the rights of Catalonians to assemble, protest and express themselves. See Chapter I of the United Nations Charter.
The acts of internal or external self-determination such as the Scottish referendum are expressions of fundamental human rights. The significant difference is whether such acts are recognized by the international community.
The sensible thing would have been to let the referendum to go ahead and not recognize the result. Instead the Spanish government uses violence to pro-actively prevent peaceful protest, and makes the situation dangerously unpredictable.
In addition to what many sibling commenters already said, the law of the referendum as well as its organization have been cautiously suspended, which is done automatically whenever Spain brings anything to the Constitutional Tribunal. There's no ruling as to its legality.
Yep, today a lot of people that were against THIS referendum and wouldn't have vote have gone to vote even to vote no.
It has been converted from an independence referendum to a protest.
And we must remember that last polls in Catalonia from Madrid newspapers like El Pais (against secession) say that 82% of catalans want a legal referendum, even the voters of PP and C's, the most vocals against secession
Classic "Atlas Shrugged" moment: the hard-working, tax-paying people of Catalonia are tired of supporting the wealth-redistribution, equalitarianist Spaniards.
A warning for other countries where the tirany of majority is becoming unbearable? That would be pretty much the whole Socialist West at this point, although I am not aware of similar geographical concentrations.
It brings back memories of the old communist regimes of Eastern Europe: you did't like it? Tough luck! Leaving the country was ILLEGAL.
Spain and the EU (who's turning a blind eye) can't let this happen. If every productive region who's fed up of paying for the regions who don't produce much and spend irresponsibly declare independence, this would be the end of the EU and of most of its countries. Can't let that happen. Let's hope at least this will put pressure on non-productive regions to start spending more responsibly other regions money and make their economy more competitive and productive by liberalizing the economy a bit more.
I'm from Spain (Madrid) and I support the referendum, because I'm an economic libertarian and I support the freedom of association and smaller States.
BTW, this is not a real referendum, as there are no guarantees. Of course, the reason why there are no democratic guarantees is because of the actions of the Spanish government. But you can see the "high degree" census control here in this video: https://elpais.com/Comentario/1506857481-5be7eb5d11476b5cac1...
But I also have to say that there is certain hypocrisy in all this. Pro-independence people already have the pictures and excuses they wanted: Catalans voting and the Spanish police exercising violence. But, if Catalonia became independent, they would also have a police, a repressive force. So you can see how the excuse for creating a new State, violence of the State, is hypocritical for an economic liberal like me.
Of course, but they will use violence when something that the Catalan gov doesn't like happens. And it's not an hypothesis, it has already happened in the near past.
Rajoy has made a simple calculation: jackboots in the faces of peaceful Catalans trying to vote equals more votes for the Partido Popular in the rest of Spain.
I find amusing most of The comments about allowing the vote. Voting is only a very small part of a democracy. The strongest pillar in any democratic state is the rule of law and separation of powers.
I would like to ask the Catalan parents that have put their kids in front of charging police if they feel proud. Me personally what I feel is shame and sadnes. Manipulating chilhood in the name of freedom, In a very represeed European region. Well done!
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 49.1 ms ] threadI can point to a HUGE number of laws that make a farce of the democratic process in almost any modern democracy. A short list that applies mostly to the USA but some to other countries also:
* Gerrymandering (the act of designing districts along demographic lines to influence an election outcome)
* First past the post voting (where voters can't vote for who they really want, they have to vote 'strategically' for the person they think will come first or second)
* Voter ID laws that seek to disenfranchise certain demographics by requiring hard(or expensive)-to-acquire ID they are less likely to have
I agree the Spanish central government seemingly had no choice but escalation. But that escalation is tragic and will only make Catalonia's independence inevitable, whereas it was not at all clear cut before this.
You kind of need to reach some critical mass to be able to organize a functioning nation. Getting to city-states could be viable, but I don't think it can go much farther.
It seems to me this constitution article was put in place to specifically specific regional identity issues that the country of Spain was built on. Spain is moreso a collection of regional identities than a firm national national identity.
As a counterexample, the Dutch constitution does not identify what the unity of the Dutch state actually means or that breaking Dutch unity is against the law a priori [1]. Historically speaking, this has not been a great concern despite historical [2] and modern [3] seperatist movements, because the Dutch "identity" has historically been synonymous with the Dutch nationality to a very large degree. The same cannot be said for Spain.
As a disclaimer, I'm not advocating identity politics here. I'm just trying to give a historical explanation.
[1]: The Dutch constitution does define treason but what constitutes treason is left rather vague and therefore up to a judge to decide. Would/should the same Spanish judge have deemed this referendum treason in the absence "state unity" laws? Not a rhetorical question.
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_Revolution
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisian_National_Party
Why? I agree that people who want to secede should be able to but I see no reason to restrict it to “groups that have a significant cultural claim”. That’s just leaving it up to those in power.
A non-democratic option would be the government breaking off without consulting the residents. Or a government saying people who live in a region aren't allowed to have a vote to decide their fate because politicians from other regions forbid it.
Additionally, to see why a group of people wanting to secede might also be unethical, think about this case. A country finds unobtanium in its land. Decides to build an unobtanium factory there, which costs 20% of GDP but it pays off with awesome employment growth and tax revenue. Now the inhabitants of that region don't like that their tax gets used mainly in poorer areas of their country and want independence. Fair? I don't think so. So voting to leave is not always a natural right. Only under agreed conditions with all the national territory is ok. Barring ethnic cleanses, war and stuff like that but nothing like that has happened in Catalonia's case.
O O
Very few independence movements are "fair". There are regions of every country in the world that generate a disproportionate amount of wealth relative to the others. There are regions with unique local identities that feel they're unfairly being squished out by others. There's no way to please everybody, and so countries essentially never respect independence votes and prefer conflict.
There are few countries today where people would say, "you know, let's undo our independence." There are a lot of people who say "we can't let them become independent because it's bad for the people in the other regions." People thought America's independence was an ass-backwards and illegal decision because those fools were trying to get a free ride off of England while keeping all the resources to themselves. They, just like nearly every country that opposes secession, decided war would be a good idea to end it.
There is no way Catalans could organize a legal referendum. That's something which is not going to change in the foreseeable future, specially having seen how the Spanish government has been behaving the last 15 years.
Whenever you say to Catalans: this is not a legal referendum, you loose all legitimacy if you do not suggest how this can be made legal. And by that I mean a serious, well intentioned proposal, not simply a way of kicking the problem down the road, as the often repeated "let's change the constitution to allow for a referendum". This is positively never, ever going to happen, so it can be considered a joke.
Something can be democratic and illegal - when laws are enacted to prevent certain applications of democracy, as it appears to be the case here. Something can also be democratic and undesired - many on here that Brexit is an example of that.
But words have meanings. A referendum if held under basic voting and independence rules is by definition democratic. Even if it concerns unilateral secession.
Definitely not, not under any circumstance. But if backed by a big (60%?) part of the population, then yes. Referendum are dangerous beasts, but not allowing popular opinion to be heard once in a while is even worse.
So, as happens with democracy, which is "the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time", a referendum is the worst option, except for all the rest.
Anyway, the referendum specifically doesn't have any anti-fraud guarantees and people who don't want independence aren't going to vote so the "yes" is going to win 9X% most likely.
It's not like they would be forced to act on the result, right, or would international law compel them to respect it?
I simply wonder why the national government decided to try to stop it in the first place, instead of letting it go ahead and then ignore the outcome.
Also, the law most often mentioned - Spanish constitution - mentions that Spain cannot be divided. This is just a referendum. The goal is the division of course. But the referendum itself is not changing anything.
And to say that there's no choice but to apply the law isn't true, when it comes to questions this big the system of: make law=> judicial system interprets=> police enforce breaks down, because it's a political question not a legal question. Eg. how Uber in London is implicitly political, it's too big to be held by courts and keep politicians out. Spanish politicians absolutely had some leeway in how they dealt with this.
It's illegal to hold a vote like this in North Korea too and the judicial process would be similarly "forced" to follow the law. Still democratic.
A government saying that voting in a specific circumstance is illegal doesn't make the voting anti-democratic. That simply makes it illegal.
Another example is that under 18s can't vote in most countries. If 17 year olds decide to get together and vote anyways, what they're doing isn't anti-democratic. They're just doing something illegal. They're violating a restriction of democracy.
We already had tons of examples for why this is a very poor criteria. IMO, this vote is just one more example.
There's nothing in that suspension that implies beating people who want to participate. Spain brought police and paramilitary police in the thousands in preparation for this.
There's clearly a lot more going on that just a government trying to follow the law. The 9N 2014 voting was similarly suspended and this didn't happen. Also check out how the population in several Spanish cities sent their police and paramilitary police to Catalonia with chants of "a por ellos" (roughly, "go get them") https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA1Sw-szU6w
How do you morally justify that a people who according to all recent polls has a 80+% support for an independence referendum is governed by those who are happy using violence against them, their children and their elders to suppress a peaceful attempt to decide about their own future? In my opinion they have lost all legitimacy to govern or tax these citizens.
Spain has pushed this to a situation in which the only way for Catalans to have a representative government and have their rights (including that of self-determination) respected is independence. I wonder how many more Catalans have embraced the independence movement today.
A better example would be California or Texas. I’m pretty sure we would not see the preemptive harsh measures Spain has engaged in.
Obviously the situations are somewhat different. While I can actually imagine something wacky like that getting on the California ballot, it's not something very many people in California or elsewhere would take seriously.
There is clearly no internationally accepted right to self-determination. Maybe there should be, but I'm not sure it can be made fair and practical.
The status quo seems to be:
> According to the Helsinki Final Act of 1975, the UN, ICJ and international law experts, there is no contradiction between the principles of self-determination and territorial integrity, with the latter taking precedence. ¹
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination
But even then, you can't recursively deplete the meaning of the word "democratic" by tying it to pre-existing arbitrary constitutions, even more so when said constitutions trivially violates the right of people to self-determination.
a) the usual situation where some people don't participate in a regular referendum or election that most of the population and all authorities support as constitutional, and then
b) the situation in Catalonia where the referendum is only considered legal by some of the authorities, where other authorities have told voters to refrain from voting and are actively trying to prevent the voters from voting, and where a presumed 40-50 percent of the "electorate" don't even believe it's constitutional.
Let's not pretend that people that would vote "remain" are likely to participate in a vote they have been told by the some of the authorities not to participate in. Only the "leave" voters who believe the referendum is legal in the first place have a clear incentive to participate in it.
By not doing anything against an illegal referendum the Spanish state would have made the first step towards accepting that it does no longer have full control over a part of its own territory.
I'm also quite sure that their international reputation is not really that important to them when the state itself is endangered.
Utter nonsense. According to the courts referendum is invalid, organizing it in on the ground isn't criminal. Using public funds for it may be.
I couldn't disagree more.
If the referendum is not part of the legal process, then it's not binding, but participating in it should not be illegal, and absolutely should not be suppressed with force.
There's a vast chasm between "we do not recognise this referendum because it was not held in accordance with the constitution" and "we will use violence to stop you doing this thing".
> I'm also quite sure that their international reputation is not really that important to them when the state itself is endangered.
Again, all it takes is to say "no, actually, no referendum was held, as the laws do not permit it. All you did was hold a symbolic protest", and boom, the state isn't threatened. Unless, of course, a majority of the broader state is sympathetic to the symbolic protest. Which, if so, would explain the seeming desperation to prevent it, but at the same time further undermines any moral justification for doing so.
In short, either there was no need to suppress the voting, or there was no moral reason to suppress the voting. The more the Spanish state is threatened by a symbolic, non-binding, unconstitutional referendum, the less the Spanish state is deserving of defence.
This isn’t true. The speed limit in the US comes with the proviso +2 or 3 miles per hour, unless the police officer feels like pulling you over, in Ireland the drink driving laws started being enforced with any degree of vigour in the 90’s despite being much older than that, and the Netherlands’ drug laws as written aren’t much different from its neighbours but it’s enforcement is. Law and legislation are not the same. Prosecutorial discretion is totally a thing. When’s 16 year old gets prosecuted for sexting as a producer of child porn that’s monstrous whether the law as written calls for it or not.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law,_Legislation_and_Liberty
The acts of internal or external self-determination such as the Scottish referendum are expressions of fundamental human rights. The significant difference is whether such acts are recognized by the international community.
The sensible thing would have been to let the referendum to go ahead and not recognize the result. Instead the Spanish government uses violence to pro-actively prevent peaceful protest, and makes the situation dangerously unpredictable.
It has been converted from an independence referendum to a protest.
And we must remember that last polls in Catalonia from Madrid newspapers like El Pais (against secession) say that 82% of catalans want a legal referendum, even the voters of PP and C's, the most vocals against secession
A warning for other countries where the tirany of majority is becoming unbearable? That would be pretty much the whole Socialist West at this point, although I am not aware of similar geographical concentrations.
It brings back memories of the old communist regimes of Eastern Europe: you did't like it? Tough luck! Leaving the country was ILLEGAL.
BTW, this is not a real referendum, as there are no guarantees. Of course, the reason why there are no democratic guarantees is because of the actions of the Spanish government. But you can see the "high degree" census control here in this video: https://elpais.com/Comentario/1506857481-5be7eb5d11476b5cac1...
But I also have to say that there is certain hypocrisy in all this. Pro-independence people already have the pictures and excuses they wanted: Catalans voting and the Spanish police exercising violence. But, if Catalonia became independent, they would also have a police, a repressive force. So you can see how the excuse for creating a new State, violence of the State, is hypocritical for an economic liberal like me.
This video tells you nothing, those ballot boxes don't seem to be in a polling station. Why assume they'll ever be counted?