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Protests planned in Madrid against amnesty for Catalan secessionists
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2023
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Fucking weirdos. Let people determine their own fate. That's the essence of democracy.
It's really a complicated issue. They broke the law. They knew they were breaking the law. As far as democracy goes, there is a legal path for them to take but it is a much higher bar (similar to the bar of adding an amendment to the constitution). They chose not to. They were warned. Now they are being held accountable. That being said, the heavy hand that the national government used also made things worse.
This amnesty isn't for the average separatist. It is for the politicians who broke constitutional laws. I live in another region of Spain and hold no strong feelings about the amnesty either way. My biggest worry is how the whole thing plays out and if it gives vox(super right wing party) a boost within the national politics. We are a literally just like 3 parliamentary seats from having them hold massive sway over the government here.
Honestly this whole country, Catalunya included, would be better off if all that shit hadn't happened. For them it would've been worse than Brexit. Regardless of what they think. And once it happened, it certainly gave a rallying cry for Vox and their ultranationalism.
I also really want this current government to stay in so they can maybe spend another four years trying to fix that bullshit gag law that they failed to do this term. I am not a fan of PP and I cannot imagine the damage they will do when they are held hostage by Vox.
No, it's not a complicated issue. If the constitution/laws don't allow to hold a referendum about it without the uninvolved party having to allow it first, then they're just shit laws in opposition to basic principles of democracy.
You have not thought about this deeply. In this case your "uninvolved party" is the nation of which many inhabitants of the "involved party" consider themselves members. The premise of your argument is that all people living in Catalonia consider themselves exclusively Catalonian. In reality some of them don't even consider themselves Catalonian, let alone exclusively Catalonian. What's your answer to them? "Tough shit"? This is not England and France, this is a nation within a nation. It is indeed a complicated issue.
How do you know if the people in Catalonia consider tgemselves Catalonian or Spanish without a referendum?
Conflicts about the belonging of countries or ethnicities and regions to a country are far from unique and in every case you will not have 100% being on on side.
Sure. But saying "this is not complicated" is just wrong. Some situations are not (particularly) complicated, for instance when there's an empire and a bunch of discrete nations whose people speak separate languages and are somewhat agreed about their identities. For example. eastern Europe pre-WWI. This situation is relatively messy by comparison. That's all.
What kinda weird point is that and how is that the premise of my argument? This is exactly why you hold a referendum to find out whether enough people actually support it. I'm arguing for the ability of people to choose their own fate in a democratic manner. Not pro or contra independence.
I'd say you're actually arguing for the rights of peoples, rather than people, i.e. groups rather than individuals. Which is fine when the people in question is a monolithic block. But here the people concerned are in fact arguably not a people at all, if you go by the identity surveys and election results. So, next step in your view: an independence referendum for every region and district, and if a simple majority wants out then the the others get dragged out of their own country? Maybe it could be gerrymandered to shut up the whining minorities? Yes, it's complicated.
An independence vote should maybe not just be a simple majority, I think at least more than 2/3 like what is usually required for a change in consitution would make sense. But other than that, you're just describing how democracy works. Just about no western country is a homogenous group. There are always people of wildly different background and with wildly different views and they often get rules imposed on them they don't like. This is already happening right now. So are you against current countries running democratically as well? You're arguing that a presumed minority of non-independence voting Catalonians will feel disenfranchised, but you're at the same time perfectly fine with the presumed majority of Catalonians feeling disenfranchised right now? How does that make sense? If you're arguing for minimizing disenfranchisement, your point is clearly inconsistent.
The only way to minimize those frictions for a society that can only function in organized groups is to make the units of self-determination relatively small. So yes, I absolutely think that every geographical region that wants to hold an independence referendum should do so. Why not? There's nothing speaking against that. If your concern is that many people might have rules voted on them they don't like than you should be for each individual's votes counting as much as possible.
Also, there's nothing saying that if a country goes independent, there can't be some transitional rulesets, where people can potentially switch nationality, lived by mixed rules for a while etc. I absolutely think that in such cases there should be some rulesets in place to ease the transition and give people some choice. But all that only makes sense if we have some consensus about where the majority of a region wants to go. Which Catalonia isn't even allowed to officially find out where they stand and start negotiating about that.
How do you gerrymander a region deciding about its independence? If the regional borders for a referendum are "arbitrarily" drawn (all borders are) in a way that 95%+ or whatever support independence, that just means that you just minimized the amount of people who would feel disenfranchised by that decision, which is what you made your main point of concern. Gerrymandering only can be done (maliciously) when te seats/votes for a plurality of administrative units is determined in a first past the post voting system. None of that has any relevance for or applies to an independence referendum.
Actually, I agree with all your points here. If individual rights are protected then I have nothing against every town and village declaring independence, especially if a supermajority wants it. And my gerrymandering argument was terrible for the reason you give. I basically share your viewpoint.
Really I was pushing back against what I thought to be your uninformed understanding of the Catalonian situation, which is in fact complicated. This is not an oppressed people - come on, let's get real - and in fact a big chunk of this sort-of-nation hardly sees itself as Catalonian at all. Economic interests are at stake. And as the other poster says, the local politicians behaved completely recklessly when they didn't even have a proper majority. A lot like spoiled self-absorbed children.
In response you'll probably say that that's because they're treated like children, and the solution is to give them the power to secede. And you'd be right. And like Scotland they would probably choose not to, and the whole subject could at last be put to bed, for a while at least.
Also, "If people vote on something, some people will also vote against it and have choices enacted they don't like" isn't a sign of something being anti-democratic. It's how democracy works. So I'm pretty sure that my point is consistent here.
So basically any time a group of politicians decide they don't like the laws then they don't have to follow them and can do whatever they want? Big Trump supporter huh?
And there is an entire legal process for which those politicians could have had a legal referendum. They just decided that was too hard.
It is a complicated issue, because forming a functioning society is a complicated process. And Catalunya has entered into agreements from which they can't just act like little Timmy on the playground and say it didn't count because it was reverse day when he said it.
And again. I don't have strong feelings about the amnesty other than the external problems it could cause like an ultra right government coming into power next election. I don't even have major feelings about whether they should be allowed to leave. I do think it would be disastrous for them. They would essentially become a landlocked country, outside of the EU, lose freedom of movement to anywhere but Andorra probably, just holding the illegal referendum caused them to lose so much business and for what purpose?
This isn't the same as the issues in Basque country that predated the EU. It isn't Ireland. This is much closer to Brexit where a minority of politicians are pushing an ideology of Us vs Them. And I'm aware that there are legitimate complaints that Catalunya has. But there are much easier and more practical ways of trying to fix those complaints.
What's happening here is more similar to Milton county Georgia begging to be annexed by Fulton county (Atlanta) when they were broke, but now that things are good they want to leave and no longer be part of a system that has certainly benefitted them in many ways.
You are being an ideologue. You should give pragmatism a try.
I didn't say anything like that and I don't think it's that hard to get my point. There's a difference between any random law and laws that obstruct democratic self-determination or violate human rights. I'll engage with the rest of your comment if you take back your dumb strawmanning and calling me a Trump supporter for no good reason. I think any discussion should be based on a basic commitment to sincerity.
Spain has never cared for democracy.