The central government pressed for permission to take over control of Catalonia. Meanwhile, secessionists in Catalonia faced bitter recriminations from Catalan foes who called the move for statehood a coup and a huge historical blunder, a month after a referendum that backed a split from Spain.
The impasse has left little middle ground in Spain for possible compromises and has spilled over to the European Union, whose leaders fear another internal crisis after major upheavals such as Britain’s exit from the bloc and the financial meltdown in Greece.
Spain passes article 155 which suspends Catalan autonomy.
16% of Spain’s population live in Catalonia, and it produces:
25.6% of Spain’s exports
19% of Spain’s GDP
20.7% of foreign investment
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
This is a revolution. Politicians who don’t fullfill the law. Politicians who have the media for their illegal interests. it is normal they all are going to the jail!
1. Test.
Vic
The paid Russian trolls here will try to justify Russian occupation of Crimea by using these unrelated and totally different events in Spain. This is what the Russian government controlled media does. So here are some facts from Crimea.
“In March 2014, Russia forcefully and illegally annexed the Crimean peninsula from the territory of Ukraine. Crimea’s residents have since faced increasingly grave civic, political, and human rights violations. At the same time, the Kremlin has sought to suppress reporting of many such abuses. It highlights the Kremlin’s repressive policies against three groups in particular: ethnic, religious, or national groups that opposed the annexation, especially members of the indigenous Crimean Tatar community; independent voices seeking to report on the situation in Crimea (journalists, civil society activists, and members of NGOs); and holders of Ukrainian passports.
Commissioned jointly by Freedom House and the Atlantic Council, the report provides a window into the lives of Crimea’s residents in the year since Russia’s occupation began.” https://freedomhouse.org/report/special-reports/human-rights-abuses-russian-occupied-crimea#.WfUT1-hlC2
Good info in the link. I have friends in Crimea and the support what is in this report.
The paid Russian trolls here will try to justify Russian occupation of Crimea by using these unrelated and totally different events in Spain. This is what the Russian government controlled media does. So here are some facts from Crimea.
“In March 2014, Russia forcefully and illegally annexed the Crimean peninsula from the territory of Ukraine. Crimea’s residents have since faced increasingly grave civic, political, and human rights violations. At the same time, the Kremlin has sought to suppress reporting of many such abuses. It highlights the Kremlin’s repressive policies against three groups in particular: ethnic, religious, or national groups that opposed the annexation, especially members of the indigenous Crimean Tatar community; independent voices seeking to report on the situation in Crimea (journalists, civil society activists, and members of NGOs); and holders of Ukrainian passports.
Commissioned jointly by Freedom House and the Atlantic Council, the report provides a window into the lives of Crimea’s residents in the year since Russia’s occupation began.” https://freedomhouse.org/report/special-reports/human-rights-abuses-russian-occupied-crimea#.WfUT1-hlC2c
The native population of Crimea are tatars and they clearly decided to be with Ukraine not Russia. News flush for you, the Soviet Union is history and no matter how much Putin tries it is not comming back. Russia is no more inheritor of the Soviet Union than any other of its former parts. Tartars came out in thousands and said we want to stay in Ukraine but Putin send armed special forces/terrorists to take over the Crimean parlament and at gunpoint force the lawmakers to split from Ukraine. Crimean tatars have since been prosecuted and discriminated against and their leaders exiled from Crimea. Ukrainians in Crimea have also been discriminated against, prosecuted, forced out of Crimea and forced to speak in Russian only. This are the facts.
“The native population of Crimea are tatars and they clearly decided”
To vote in favor of reunification.Might have something to do with recognition of their language as a state one,amnesty for landgrabs and a few dozen other things.
Not that even all of them voting against would’ve changed anything.Being ten percent of population and all.
“Russia is no more inheritor of the Soviet Union ”
It’s the ONLY inheritor.Nobody notable disputes this.Shut it.
“Tartars came out in thousands and said we want to stay in Ukraine”
And they stayed in Ukraine by emigrating there.Fortunately,HUNDREDS of thousands remained.
“Crimean tatars have since been prosecuted”
Only members of terrorist organizations that were stupid enough to remain.
“forced to speak in Russian only”
You dumb,lying swine.
Ukrainian language is a state language in Crimea.So is Crimean Tatar language.So is Russian.
“It’s the ONLY inheritor.Nobody notable disputes this.” Actually nobody even takes this seriously. Soviet Union is gone and doesn’t have inheritors. Everything I said about Russia abusing human rights of Tartars and Ukrainians in Crimea are the facts spelled out in the report to UN. And the only lying swine here is you Putin’s prostitute.
And there were no legitimate voting in Crimea. UN law specifically prohibit any secessionist referendums in countries while foreign military forces are present on their soil you dumb fhck.
“Crimean population were UNIONISTS.They were separated,opposing their will,from the base country.”
No such legal entitiy as base country exists but if you had to come up with one for Crimea it would be Turkey.
“No such legal entitiy as base country exists”
Oh,that would be Soviet Union and Russia as it’s inheritor in this specific case.
Wanting to reunify with it can be expected sometimes.
“it would be Turkey”
Greece,actually.Unfortunately,population decides the base country,and these are neither Greeks nor Turks.
The native population of Crimea are tatars and they clearly decided to be with Ukraine not Russia. News flush for you, the Soviet Union is history and no matter how much Putin tries it is not comming back. Russia is no more inheritor of the Soviet Union than any other of its former parts. Tartars came out in thousands and said we want to stay in Ukraine but Putin send armed special forces/terrorists to take over the Crimean parlament and at gunpoint force the lawmakers to split from Ukraine. Crimean tatars have since been prosecuted and discriminated against and their leaders exiled from Crimea. Ukrainians in Crimea have also been discriminated against, prosecuted, forced out of Crimea and forced to speak in Russian only.
This is the topic where Putin’s troll will try to draw nonexistent analogies to Russian occupation of Crimea. Paid troll under username scaryjello is once again impersonated me. Big mistake the paid troll gang might just start to come clean one by one.
That would be,of course,stupider than average Igor’s post.
Crimean population were UNIONISTS.They were separated,opposing their will,from the base country.
So they took the first available opportunity to reunify.
Catalonians are separatists.Separatism is usually bad.
Splitting of countries is only allowed for countries that oppose NATO e.g. Yugoslavia
This is not going to end well…
Just shows how much democracy and the will of the people really matter, none! And not just in Spain.
Not sure 90% of a 40% turnout in an unconstitutional referrendum boycotted by unionist Catalonians who didn’t want to legitimise an illegal referrendum can be said to be democratic.
The Spanish and Catalonian govts have not handled this well.
…they mostly sat it out because Madrid kept telling them it wasn’t going to mean anything anyway.
That and the illegal violence Spanish troops and police inflicted at the polls on election day squarely puts the fault of any voter suppression on Spain’s part.
“…they mostly sat it out because Madrid kept telling them it wasn’t going to mean anything anyway.”
Which is true.
So, if I organise a nationwide vote as a private individual (because the Catalonian govt has the same standing to do that as I do in my country), and basically only me and my family turn up to vote on the day, your saying that this has a democratic mandate and the failure of anyone else to bother to turn up and vote is their problem?
Don’t be absurd.
Spain’s refusal to countenance a vote was stupid, it robbed them of political legitimacy, but legitimacy isn’t a zero sum game. The Catalonian referendum has no legal basis, nor can it have any moral or political basis because we know from the turnout figures that there are likely a majority of Catalonians that don’t want independence [those that do are the ones that are likely to have voted].
So politically then, this creates an absurd situation: What is Madrid to do? Allow a minority of political extremists to strip millions of Spanish citizens of their rights against their will?
No, there is plenty of blame to go around here. The Catalonian government has massively over-reached here and created a crisis that cannot be resolved easily.
EU is not about democracy or self-determination, it’s about consolidation of power. They’ve been trying to put a sheepskin of innocence and virtue on their whole EU enterprise all these years, but we can see that anyone who puts the EU vision in jeopardy will be dealt with ruthlessly, while Brussels looks the other way. Had Putin behaved this way towards some rebellious section of his country, the EU parliament would be burning him in effigy right now. But because it’s a vital darling EU member state, then we literally see an Orwellian inversion happening right in front of our eyes. The fact that the Europeans don’t even have a presence of mind to take note of such things, says a lot about the European populace as a whole. Where is the European Mark Twain? (Maybe it was Christopher Hitchens, but unfortunately rumors of his death are sadly unexaggerated.)
Your comment would sound good except that NATO and the EU have kept the peace in Europe since WW2. Possibly you were happier with a major war every 20 years with tens of thousands of casualties a day?
Are you a millennial? Because I’m not. EU has been around since WW2? How do you figure that? Sorry, but it hasn’t. The EC (European Community) was a token forum during the Cold War, and later evolved into the EEC (European Economic Community) and then finally, across multiple iterations, bribes, and even forced re-votes (remember Maastricht?) it turned into the EU. Germany was divided for pretty much the duration of the Cold War, and was a non-entity in international affairs – a far cry from its voice today, following its reunification and ascension to EU’s financier. You millennials really have a poor grasp on history – and it’s not likely to improve, given your penchant for tearing down statues, etc. Meanwhile, NATO has been led by the Americans, and the squabbling Europeans are unable to provide alternative leadership. The Europeans have compensated for that by trying to to control Washington politics through entrenched extraterritorialist lobbies. It’s no small wonder then that Trump has them all tearing their hair out.
The US was withdrawing starting under Obama from the old world system it created and propped up to contain the Soviets…the same system that has been running on autopilot since 1992 more or less.
Trump is just speeding the process up and putting it out in the open for all to see, that’s all.
The US world order of free trade and its emulation in the original EEC and later EU promoted the peace while the US dominated NATO and the US prohibition of the return of old European empires is what kept the peace.
And NATO was just to keep the Soviets out. Now that the Cold War is over, NATO has been an anachronism since 1992.
Both were put into place for American Cold War Soviet Containment purposes. No longer is that the case.
NATO is the walking dead already. The EU is coming later on. US no longer has enough skin in the game to prop either up anymore.
How is this about the EU?
Surely the last thing anyone would want the EU to do is involve itself in the constitutional affairs of a member state or facilitate it’s dissolution?
It is rightly not getting involved.
The well-known EU media shills have been busily screaming down the Catalan independence movement. The EU high command are most certainly involved in the Catalan independence debate, by deliberately siding with Madrid against Barcelona – and as part of this, they’re actively downplaying any high-handedness and coercion used by the inept leadership in Madrid.
I’m confused. How is the EU getting involved here? Spain is a member state. The EU has no legal powers, mandate or remit to involve itself in the affairs of a member state in such a situation. It must respect the Spanish Constitution, which expressly doesn’t allow regions to declare unilateral independence.
It cannot act as a mediator, to do so would mean that the EU would be interfering in Spain’s internal political affairs in violation of the membership treaties Spain signed.
Ultimately, the Catalonian question is a political one which must be resolved within Spain, not by external powers.
Seb, first you must understand that Spanish constitution goes against UN international bill of human rights. This means that there’s a contradiction between “accepted rights” in spain and EU.
In this context, it’s not a problem that EU defends unity, the problem is that:
– It did not even denounce clear acts of violence from spanish government against its own people, for trying to do, peacefully, something that’s aligned with the theorical “moral values” (even if not intentions) of EU. This was a clear violation of HR on its own, without even considering spanish constitution. You can’t ask unity to your citizens when you fail to protect their HR.
– Defends spanish constitution when it goes against it’s own “values” (and here we see how EU only tries to protect their own interests and its game of power with their main players, which are the politicians, not the people)
So, in short: they didn’t raise a voice when they had to, and now they raise it to defend spanish *constitution* even when it goes against EU supposed moral values.
Understanding the difference between unity/constitution and intentions/moral values is key here.
I think the EU position here would be that the EU has no standing on whether it was right or not to try and block the unilateral referendum.
Whether violence was excessive or not would need to be individual cases with the victim seeking justice through the Spanish and then European courts.
I.e. specific brutality might violate human rights, cancelling the election doesn’t.
Police brutality happens lots – the EU doesn’t and cannot use it to systemically criticise an entire state.
What about how they are totally involved in supporting Scottish separatism in a de jure member state? (UK hasn’t left the EU yet, remember).
Sanman is correct. It is all about squashing those who want to leave ‘paradise’. Unless it is parts of a nation that has already declared it is leaving said paradise. Then it is Hypocrisy City.
I don’t really see them as supporting Scottish separatism. A few of the more excitable newspapers seem to be suggesting that but it looks rather worked up nonsense to me.
I rather instead recall that during the Scottish referendum the EU repreatedly made clear that Scotland, if it left the UK, would defacto leave the European Union and would be unlikely to be allowed to rapidly join it (because obviously, Spain and France would block that to set an example for Catalonia and Corsica).
Do you have any good examples of how the EU is supposedly supporting Scottish separatism during Brexit?
As I recall Nicola Sturgeon repeatedly tried to get herself a place in the negotiations, and the EU repeatedly told her that she had no standing and Scotland was part of the UK.
That hardly seems like supporting separatism.
…while the EU has been supporting Scottish independenc as well. Sheer hypocrisy.
You know that all done in Scotland was legal. Here it is not the case. If you support or do something illlegal you become a delinquent or a criminal
The paid Russian trolls here will try to justify Russian occupation of Crimea by using these unrelated and totally different events in Spain. This is what the Russian government controlled media does. So here are some facts from Crimea.
“In March 2014, Russia forcefully and illegally annexed the Crimean peninsula from the territory of Ukraine. Crimea’s residents have since faced increasingly grave civic, political, and human rights violations. At the same time, the Kremlin has sought to suppress reporting of many such abuses. It highlights the Kremlin’s repressive policies against three groups in particular: ethnic, religious, or national groups that opposed the annexation, especially members of the indigenous Crimean Tatar community; independent voices seeking to report on the situation in Crimea (journalists, civil society activists, and members of NGOs); and holders of Ukrainian passports.
Commissioned jointly by Freedom House and the Atlantic Council, the report provides a window into the lives of Crimea’s residents in the year since Russia’s occupation began.” These are the facts.
https://freedomhouse.org/report/special-reports/human-rights-abuses-russian-occupied-crimea#.WfUT1-hlC2c
This is just not going to happen, but it will leave a scar. If Catalonia splits, they’d be out of the EU and their economy will tank before they could re-negotiate trade treaties with all their counterparties. On the other side, the Spanish constitution allows the national government to suspend or take away the autonomy of regions, thus voiding any local decision like a declaration of independence. There are gonna be a few riots, then everything will be back to normal, bitter relationships etc… Then new regional elections, then a new negotiation with the national government, who will make a few concessions, and both sides will claim they have won. Pointless and pathetic.
They would be free from Spain’s crushing debt. Plenty of nations would be eager to sell goods to them.
Would they? A good part of that debt was surely taken on for Catalonia interests, and by all rights should be carried over to them.
What part of Ukrainian debt carried over to Crimea?
What part of Soviet debt carried over to Ukraine?
What part of Serbian debt carried over to Kosovo?
Who knows, but what I do know is that this new wave of Nationalism that is infecting the world can only lead to bad things. It’s been going on for awhile, but it seems to be picking up steam and leading us down a path as a global society that is not good. With the number of alliances that each country has now, and the growth of Nationalism it’s starting to look like 1914 all over again.
That makes sense, because society’s generally only fight wars for the same reason as a previous one when the people that fought the previous war all have died out and no one remembers why they were fighting.
While this is an old conflict, slowly brewing through decades of growing separatism in Catalonia (Francisco Franco crushed such sentiments violently, so they already existed) and not helped by an appeasement/evasive attitude through the years, it’s indeed a curious coincidence that such movement arises at this moment, when there are so many other nationalisms and separatisms emerging through the world.
My hunch this is a reaction to the trends of integration and multiculturalism, which haven’t turned out as it was promised to be, and now amplified or evidenced by international conflicts and terrorism.
And in the case of Europe, by the growing fear and unrest with the African and Middle East immigration. The natural reaction to such conflicts is to pin the blame on the foreigners regardless of their actual individual behavior, and embrace the local, your nation and culture. Disguised as “self determination”, it is just a big “get out!” banner.
Given such human reactions are considered unutterable in the respectable political sphere nowadays, but being very real, they can mostly find expression in sublimated representations, like breaking up from the evil central block or power (ergo EU or Madrid), with the idea of making “their own destiny”, that is, one free from those pesky foreign influences.
Of course, there are those that don’t want to pass these sentiments for something else and say it straightforwardly, hence the French FN and other “far right” parties, which are “far” not just because they say this with all its words, but because of the actual extremism of their ideas.
But given expressing the discontent with foreigners in question is already unacceptable to say, it’s not surprising that those already outside of acceptability say it use them, which may gain them favor and acceptability with voters, who can choose whomever they feel represents them.
From this, the historical risks of fascism and totalitarianism, which are extremist movements chosen at certain moments of time when people was merely discontent with some aspects of society and not necessarily agreeing with all the other extremist ideas.
tchernik, I agree with your analysis for many cases in Europe, but I don’t see how catalan “nationalism” belongs to that group (if you are suggesting that)
Well, I think talking about “new wave of Nationalism” is very vague if you don’t define which kind of nationalisms are you talking about, and we can’t put everyone in the same bag. The situation in catalonia is pretty complex, but in a few lines, I can tell you that despite catalan independentism having a long history, what triggered it again so strongly in the last years has been (mainly) the contraposition of political and moral positions. PP, the right-wing party currently in power in Spain has an extremely low support on Catalonia. Their corruption, media manipulation, work against the separation of powers and disrespect for catalan culture is what fed up catalans. Catalonia along with the Basque Country is practically the only autonomous community in Spain where the political tendencies don’t favor right-wing parties. “Law” and use of policial violence have been the only answers to independentist movements when the independentist groups in the catalan parliament have had majority (even though by the bare minimum).
Under this scenario, many catalans feel that the respect, human rights and democracy standards in Spain are shamefully below what’s expected from a developed country. It also doesn’t help that the government and PP have members who simpatize with franquist ideals, and that PP has failed to rotundly condemn the dictatorial regime after all these years. It just smells. People are not fighting for their “nation”, they have simply had enough of Spain indiference and repression (when everything scalated and they couldn’t just pretend nothing was going on anymore). Economy, catalan independentist politicians, catalan media, etc. are just variables, not what caused this situation.
Unionism isn’t that bad,usually.
But nationalistic separatism…leads to BAD things for everybody involved.
Look at Germany for former and at USSR for latter.
How is it that they will be out of the EU? They are already part of the EU. Whenever an existing country breaks up, the successor states get to choose which treaties to stay in, usually, It’s a common international legal standard ever since the Treaty of Westphalia. The break up of the USSR and Yugoslavia are examples of that…it is how Russia stayed in the START treaty, United Nations, etc. even though its parent state the USSR was the original party.
They will be out of the EU because Spain is a member of the EU, and Catalonia isn’t. There is no treaty between the other EU member countries and Catalonia, ipso facto, no membership.
“Whenever an existing country breaks up, the successor states get to choose which treaties to stay in, usually”
Yes and no. Firstly, Spain would be the legal successor, not Catalonia. So Spain would carry all the obligations and benefits by default. Secondly, particularly with the smaller entities, it’s normally a negotiation. Recall the negotiations in the break up of the USSR over the status of the smaller countries with regard to the NPT – for many it was a no brainer: they lost their status as nuclear states as they had no nukes there anyway. Ukraine was subject to a new treaty to de-nuclearize it.
In any case, the EU commission has made their position clear in previous discussions – regions that leave an EU member-state are not members, they must apply to become members.
For that to happen, that requires that all EU members agree. Spain will not agree to this. So Catalonia is out.
I suppose Catalonia could try their case out in the ECJ. Seems unlikely they will win.