Off Topic Catalonia

whys it understandable that they are pissed at spain? Maybe not but beforehand it makes no sense.

I think it's pretty ridiculous, imagine New York city wanting to go independent.

 

Oh I don't know... Perhaps there's the whole persecution of Catalans by Franco. Attempts in the past to eliminate their language.

Perhaps it's the broken promises of more autonomy. Perhaps it's the fact that Spain won't spend money to improve infrastructure in Catalonia despite them generating a disproportionate amount of wealth. Things like them taking the profits from Barcelona's ports, not to improve roads that meet the port, but instead take that money to improve roads at other ports.

Things like the bullfighting that was mentioned earlier that Catalans find abhorrent and tried to make illegal being overruled.

Spain's reaction to the referendum is bound to upset them too. Plenty of reasons they might want Independence. Not necessarily a smart thing to do, but they have reasons to be aggrieved.



As for NYC. No Independence movement there that I am aware of, but they do have a distinct culture from the rest of the US, financially, the city is wealthier than many nations and they have a larger population than many nations.

Wouldn't be smart for them to break away either but I don't think it would be obscene for them to.


Now California does have an independent movement...

 

I'd bet 150 years from now there will be a lot more smaller states around the world. Places like Catalonia, Bavaria, Kurdistan, East Turkestan, etc

But also a lot more international oversight from confederations like the EU, the AU, etc.

 

I hope you'll apologise if you're wrong.
As for the bullfighting thing - if they find it abhorrent (and I agree with them) then they don't have to go to it, in the same way that I didn't have to tally-ho after the fox when it was legal. If as a group their consensus is that they find it objectionable then they won't be organising any.
As to money, profitable areas are meant to subsidise the infrastructure of their society as a whole, aren't they?
I think the feeling that they have a distinct cultural identity is the main argument for independence, those other things seem less relevant to me.

 

I think owning slaves is abhorrent but I think I would be in negligence if I tolerated it happening and just decided not to have slaves myself.

I agree, the cultural reasons are probably the main factors, but booby (typo but I'm leaving it like that) asked what grievences they had... They do have some legitimate ones.


... And absolutely, I'll apologise profusely in 150 years if my prediction is incorrect.

 

Smaller areas wanting to return to mythical boundaries based on language and "culture" pretty much is the basis of almost all the European wars in last few centuries.

Retreating back to this racialism is behind mist of the right wing movements then and now.

Take Eastern Ukraine as an example.... in fact the Baltic states in general.

Catalonia has never been an independent.


Every modern area in Europe is a mongrel development, no one is pure culturally or linguistically when looked at close enough.

As Saint said earlier in the thread lines on maps are about resource acquisition the rest: culture, race, language is a smokescreen.

Having said all that...even if we buy it, less 50% of Catalans wanted independence before the recent trouble (I'd assume it's gone up slightly as an emotional reaction) but based on the reasons touted beforehand there is no clear majority that wanted it.

 

So, as a result of a constitution made only 2 years after Franco's death which declares the eternal borders of Spain as being sacred - (we don't know the conditions under which it was signed), we declare Catalonia's independence bid illegal - that means we consider it perfectly legal to force a population to go on living in a country against their will, effectively turning Spain into a giant prison. Even if an independence bid is illegal (under the present Spanish constitution) how can a referendum (the results of which were non binding) also be so - is it illegal to ask people their opinions ? Will we have to wait until the Spanish army moves in and people start dying before the EU. finally dares to criticize Spain ?

 

Again...i have no team in this one but

A) it's not and never has been an independent state. It's had more and less autonomy as a region over the centuries but that's it.

B) the last poll had only 42% of the region in favour of independence of those that took part. The result of this referendum is meaningless since "no voters" in general stated they wouldn't participate. Whether that's the case? does anybody know the turnout percentage based on total population of the region?

 

I don't think that you really had nations, in the present sense, before about 1800, but you may like to look at the Principality of Catalonia before declaring that they have never been a state. It doesn't really matter because countries come and go - Germany didn't exist as a nation before 1878, neither did Italy. What I find hard is that so many Europeans support independence movements when they are far away from home - the EU. recognized the independence declarations of Slovenia and Croatia immediately (even though they were against the Yugoslav laws of the time). Nobody in Europe was against the independence declarations of countries like Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania etc. Most Europeans would also have sympathy for the establishment of some kind of sovereign homeland for the Kurds. And the amount of car stickers which you see saying 'Free Tibet' is amazing. But they are/were all far from home - hence the hue and cry when it happens on our doorstep. They will say 'But Spain is a democracy' - is it ? When there is no possibility of a legal way to independence. Is Spain really a democracy when the shadow of Franco's rule still haunts Spain so much that any attempt by relatives to research what happened to the 200,000 missing persons there between 1945 and 1975 is prevented by the authorities, and where human rights violations during the Franco regime can only be tried in Buenos Aires, and not in Spain. Or where Franco's statues were only removed in 2007 ?

 

You make a decent argument, but my opinion is that fragmentation only brings trouble further down the line. It's devolution in both senses of the word.
Regions can retain their cultural identity within the framework of a larger entity. Creating a border will only cause conflict over where it's drawn, and who goes on what side of it. Most wars throughout history are about territory and/or tribalism - isn't it time we outgrew this?

 

But when can you ever say that the borders are final ? Portugal began it's life with a unilateral independence from Spain yet relations between the countries are now good. Maybe the nation state has become too small to compete on the World stage yet too large to be democratically accountable to all it's citizens - it is abundantly clear that Catalans do not feel represented by the organs of government in Madrid. Maybe the future of Europe lies in a community of regions which, through their reduced size, are more democratically accountable to their citizens.

 

All decent points.

Although principality means exactly that and they then agreed to join one side of feuding monarchys if I remember right?

I would point to one of my first questions though? People are talking as if this is a United aim of the Catalan people.. it never has been. Some are racists wanting to purify their region, some don't actually want complete separation but great autonomy specifically on tax and have used independence as a bargaining tool. And even then last poll said that added up to only 42%.


And again as Saint alludes earlier.. .who qualifies for a vote? Residents? Plenty of what pure bred Catalans consider spanish citizens live in the region...

On double standards I totally agree. An interesting comparison would be I can bet many supporting the Catalans would have been against NI unionists. Yet same thing. Bloc of people in one geographic region who do not identify themselves as culturally the same as the rest.

Personally I think we should be striving for a global citizenry. Basic citizen rights should be a global norm.

Borders, flags and all the nationalist mythology is inherently xenophobic ...it always leads to one feeling superior to the other and deciding to impose their will.

Even if the Catalans somehow got independence on paper they would still be under intense pressure from the bigger nations around them.

I mean look what's happened North v south with the existing countries within the EU.

 

I agree that prior to the referendum Catalans were probably divided on the issue, though I think that has now changed due to the hard line stance which Spain has taken. However divided they may have been on independence, according to opinion polls 80% of them were in favour of conducting a referendum on the subject. Through acting on this the Catalonian Parliament has simply drawn a line in the sand in defence of Parliamentary freedom. I do not know how many Spanish people live in Catalonia - I would guess at quite a large number, but there has not been any sign of Catalan anger being directed in their direction. I agree on the idea of global citizenry in principle, without nations, but is this possible without a World government ? My feeling is that a 'World order' of this type would be far too dominated by neo liberal values for my liking.

 

We're a long, long way off anything like a concept of global citizenry, but if we aspire to it we have to move in the right direction, and imo devolution is a backward step.
We should be looking to our similarities, not our differences.

 

History tells us smaller states are gobbled up by bigger ones

If Europe continues to fragment into tiny ****hole states then some like prussia will roll.over them


Italy... unified then a few decades later fascism eises.

Spain... yeah...

Germany yup same.

If you fragment and allow extremes arise the inevitably the biggest fragment will start eating up the smaller ones...

After all I would.

 

That's not been the modern trend in the globalized world... Nor has it always been the case. Empires have grown and then splintered.

What happened to Rome, Persia, The Mongol empire, Charlemagne's kingdom. Big countries swallow little ones... But then they split apart.

In the last few decades we've seen a lot more splitting then we have conquering. East Timor, South Sudan, Split of Yugoslavia, Slovakia...

In the era of the UN and major nations invading other nations that misbehave, you can't get away with being a conquerer anymore. Look what happened to Iraq for invading Kuwait.

Not necessarily a permanent state, but I really do think we're heading for a future of many small nations confederated together under international bodies like the EU. Eventually we'll all be confederated under one world government rulling over 500 micronations.

 

Yeah.
The history of humanity is of small groups getting together and forming bigger ones - occasionally voluntarily and peacefully, but more often through violence. Fragmentation just seems to me to be asking for the whole bloody cycle to start over again.

 

Although it won't admit it officially, Spain is to all intents and purposes a federation of autonomous states anyway. If some don't like that now, how will we ever see it spread across the globe?

 

Sorry milk but you are wrong. Kuwait was a case of you've a major super power wanting the oil.

Timor indonesia is interesting but an issue of legacy colonialism. Nobody has fone a thing about tibet and china.

Yugoslavia was a ww2 construct under one man who died and hit imploded almost immediatrly.

My point is if theres lots of weak small nations someone will roll over them.

I said nothing about the other side of history which clearly shows that empires disintegrate inevitably. Nazis, ottoman, Roman whatever you like... they implode.

And that's the cycle. Maybe this is the end of the era of the democratic empire and we will see within 20 year the rise of far right European hawks eyeing north Africa and the rest. Right across Europe those parties are growing

 

Empires fade but it takes decades and it's always from within. People see the external ramifications for example the likes of US, India etc but it was long before that.

Empires get fat lazy and comfortable and over extend and start looking inwards.

But there will always be an empire to fill the void. Look to countries that encourage separation into smaller states....encourage the split up....theyre the ones to watch.

And those that send "companies" out to "invest"


So Russia and China.