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It's absurd that in a Western 'democracy' you'd have the national police out to suppress a referendum and attack peaceful voters. Good job Spain, you just legi

It's absurd that in a Western 'democracy' you'd have the national police out to suppress a referendum and attack peaceful voters. Good job Spain, you just legitimised the referendum and gave Catalonia a ton of international sympathy.

freehunter 9y ago
You're right. I've never been to Spain, I know no one from Spain, and I don't really know anything about Spain, but I do know that using a militarized police force to stop an election, even one that is technically illegal, is pretty messed up and will only serve to further prove the separatists right. If you make peaceful protest illegal, you make violent revolution inevitable. Even if it's illegal to declare independence, it should never be illegal to vote on anything. I have no stake in the outcome in any way, but at this point I'm rooting for independence. Spain has really proven that they're not worthy of ruling over Catalans if this is how they're treating them during a simple election.
- hjrnunes 9y ago
  That is ridiculous. There was a court order to stop that action. What sort of democracy is it when you can just ignore court orders? If they wanted to protest then they should've organised protests and demonstrations. If they really wanted to make a point, organise a symbolic voting and have someone face the charges. To go ahead with the whole thing was reckless. The courts cannot afford to allow themselves to be ignored. That's the very opposite of the rule of Law!
  - pako_crack 9y ago
    spot on.
  - freehunter 9y ago
    A court order to stop a vote, to me, is appalling. It should be ignored. A vote is just a protest, it is purely symbolic until it's implemented. Voting should never be illegal, even if implementing the law voted on would be illegal. Marijuana is illegal in many places in the US. It's illegal at the federal level, and even if it's legal in some states, the federal government can still arrest you for having marijuana. But we constantly have votes to try to legalize it at the local or state level, knowing that it's still illegal at the national level. Having that vote is not illegal, even if following through with the results of the vote is illegal. Courts are not infallible and their orders are not always the best course of action. Almost every declaration of independence throughout history has been considered illegal. They were reckless. They were against the rule of law. They still happened. Regardless, a vote is a peaceful action. Responding to that peaceful action with violence is what is reckless and against the rule of law. I guess there are still some freedoms we take for granted in the US that other countries have not yet granted themselves.
jmspring 9y ago
Spain is a relatively "young" democracy by Western standards. It took Franco's death in 1975 for Spain to start the transition to a modern democracy. That said, the Basque region has been trying to separate for awhile. Catalonia wanting to do so just happens to be a bigger fish.
- Mikeb85 9y ago
  It's young, but given the fact it's a fairly integral part of the EU and NATO, you'd expect better from Spain.
jlmorton 9y ago
I wonder, what would happen in the United States if California decided it wanted to secede, the Congress passed a resolution opposing it, the President said it was illegal, and the Supreme Court concurred and ruled the vote itself illegal. Would the US allow the vote to proceed? It certainly is illegal for any US State to secede, and we fought one of the bloodiest wars in the history of the world over it.
- justin66 9y ago
  > Would the US allow the vote to proceed? It'd be unconstitutional to interfere in California's referendum process. The referendum wouldn't have any legal force, so why bother interfering anyhow?
- jessaustin 9y ago
  California probably will have a succession vote, along with several other West-Coast states, after the Rs gain control of 37 legislatures and pass a series of bigoted Constitutional amendments. I hope that such votes are not violently suppressed, and I'm glad we're seeing object lessons in how awful that tactic is. This isn't the 1860s; we don't have a Lincoln.
  - Caveman_Coder 9y ago
    > "...a series of bigoted Constitutional amendments." Any specific amendments you'd care to share? I haven't heard of any such plans.
    - jessaustin 9y ago
      I suspect the first will be related to who may or may not use particular public restrooms, since that is an issue of particular interest to many of their supporters. After that, one could imagine something about police tactics, because after all there's nothing more important than the ease with which our boys in blue may brutalize unfortunates. The details might vary, but this nation is off the leash now, if in fact a nation that gets in so many wars and brutalizes so many different subsets of its people could ever have been said to have been on one. Our rulers have always distracted us from their predations with shit like this, but as the stories get harder to keep straight the distractions have to get bigger.
Y7ZCQtNo39 9y ago
The optics (at the moment) seem to be the most important issue here. Whether or not the vote is legitimate is quite irrelevant in immediate aftermath. This is a government using physical force against its citizens for, of all things, voting -- a core democratic principle. Democracy must be tolerant of peaceful protesting. An "illegal" vote (depending who's lens we are viewing this from), to me, is a form of peaceful protest. Candor, mutual respect, and peaceful organizing are some of a few tools democracies have to solve problems without devolving to unrest and violence. If we assume we highly value avoiding violence (and we should), governments need to tolerate the use of these tools, from time to time. By banning the use of these more moderate options, the national government is essentially promoting dissenters to even less desirable options so they have at least some form of expression. I think we should be surprised the national government chose to use such force when it had far less invasive means for dealing with the consequences of this vote, e.g., courts.
- bassman9000 9y ago
  It was an illegal act, funded by public money. Had the government not acted, it would have set a bad precedent: that constitution doesn't hold weight in real life.
  - Y7ZCQtNo39 9y ago
    Maybe a court should be deciding whether or not it is illegal, not the police. Again, my comment was about using the proper response to a given situation. I don't think the use of public money for the illegal act necessarily sets a bad precedent. The constitution didn't say to go out there and spray rubber bullets at civilians. So how a government can respond to this illegal act is a subjective choice. Spain could have chosen to use less authoritarian methods to deal with the consequences of this ballot without setting any precedents. It could have been declared unenforceable by a court, which is a more appropriate venue.
    - kgwgk 9y ago
      Police was instructed by courts to prevent the (illegal) vote from taking place.

freehunter 9y ago

You're right. I've never been to Spain, I know no one from Spain, and I don't really know anything about Spain, but I do know that using a militarized police force to stop an election, even one that is technically illegal, is pretty messed up and will only serve to further prove the separatists right. If you make peaceful protest illegal, you make violent revolution inevitable. Even if it's illegal to declare independence, it should never be illegal to vote on anything. I have no stake in the outcome in any way, but at this point I'm rooting for independence. Spain has really proven that they're not worthy of ruling over Catalans if this is how they're treating them during a simple election.

hjrnunes 9y ago
That is ridiculous. There was a court order to stop that action. What sort of democracy is it when you can just ignore court orders? If they wanted to protest then they should've organised protests and demonstrations. If they really wanted to make a point, organise a symbolic voting and have someone face the charges. To go ahead with the whole thing was reckless. The courts cannot afford to allow themselves to be ignored. That's the very opposite of the rule of Law!
- pako_crack 9y ago
  spot on.
- freehunter 9y ago
  A court order to stop a vote, to me, is appalling. It should be ignored. A vote is just a protest, it is purely symbolic until it's implemented. Voting should never be illegal, even if implementing the law voted on would be illegal. Marijuana is illegal in many places in the US. It's illegal at the federal level, and even if it's legal in some states, the federal government can still arrest you for having marijuana. But we constantly have votes to try to legalize it at the local or state level, knowing that it's still illegal at the national level. Having that vote is not illegal, even if following through with the results of the vote is illegal. Courts are not infallible and their orders are not always the best course of action. Almost every declaration of independence throughout history has been considered illegal. They were reckless. They were against the rule of law. They still happened. Regardless, a vote is a peaceful action. Responding to that peaceful action with violence is what is reckless and against the rule of law. I guess there are still some freedoms we take for granted in the US that other countries have not yet granted themselves.

jmspring 9y ago

Spain is a relatively "young" democracy by Western standards. It took Franco's death in 1975 for Spain to start the transition to a modern democracy. That said, the Basque region has been trying to separate for awhile. Catalonia wanting to do so just happens to be a bigger fish.

Mikeb85 9y ago
It's young, but given the fact it's a fairly integral part of the EU and NATO, you'd expect better from Spain.

jlmorton 9y ago

I wonder, what would happen in the United States if California decided it wanted to secede, the Congress passed a resolution opposing it, the President said it was illegal, and the Supreme Court concurred and ruled the vote itself illegal. Would the US allow the vote to proceed? It certainly is illegal for any US State to secede, and we fought one of the bloodiest wars in the history of the world over it.

justin66 9y ago
> Would the US allow the vote to proceed? It'd be unconstitutional to interfere in California's referendum process. The referendum wouldn't have any legal force, so why bother interfering anyhow?
jessaustin 9y ago
California probably will have a succession vote, along with several other West-Coast states, after the Rs gain control of 37 legislatures and pass a series of bigoted Constitutional amendments. I hope that such votes are not violently suppressed, and I'm glad we're seeing object lessons in how awful that tactic is. This isn't the 1860s; we don't have a Lincoln.
- Caveman_Coder 9y ago
  > "...a series of bigoted Constitutional amendments." Any specific amendments you'd care to share? I haven't heard of any such plans.
  - jessaustin 9y ago
    I suspect the first will be related to who may or may not use particular public restrooms, since that is an issue of particular interest to many of their supporters. After that, one could imagine something about police tactics, because after all there's nothing more important than the ease with which our boys in blue may brutalize unfortunates. The details might vary, but this nation is off the leash now, if in fact a nation that gets in so many wars and brutalizes so many different subsets of its people could ever have been said to have been on one. Our rulers have always distracted us from their predations with shit like this, but as the stories get harder to keep straight the distractions have to get bigger.

Y7ZCQtNo39 9y ago

The optics (at the moment) seem to be the most important issue here. Whether or not the vote is legitimate is quite irrelevant in immediate aftermath. This is a government using physical force against its citizens for, of all things, voting -- a core democratic principle. Democracy must be tolerant of peaceful protesting. An "illegal" vote (depending who's lens we are viewing this from), to me, is a form of peaceful protest. Candor, mutual respect, and peaceful organizing are some of a few tools democracies have to solve problems without devolving to unrest and violence. If we assume we highly value avoiding violence (and we should), governments need to tolerate the use of these tools, from time to time. By banning the use of these more moderate options, the national government is essentially promoting dissenters to even less desirable options so they have at least some form of expression. I think we should be surprised the national government chose to use such force when it had far less invasive means for dealing with the consequences of this vote, e.g., courts.

bassman9000 9y ago
It was an illegal act, funded by public money. Had the government not acted, it would have set a bad precedent: that constitution doesn't hold weight in real life.
- Y7ZCQtNo39 9y ago
  Maybe a court should be deciding whether or not it is illegal, not the police. Again, my comment was about using the proper response to a given situation. I don't think the use of public money for the illegal act necessarily sets a bad precedent. The constitution didn't say to go out there and spray rubber bullets at civilians. So how a government can respond to this illegal act is a subjective choice. Spain could have chosen to use less authoritarian methods to deal with the consequences of this ballot without setting any precedents. It could have been declared unenforceable by a court, which is a more appropriate venue.
  - kgwgk 9y ago
    Police was instructed by courts to prevent the (illegal) vote from taking place.