The paper says: "Does this mean that Spanner is a CA system as defined by CAP? The short answer is “no” technically, but “yes” in effect and its users can and

The paper says: "Does this mean that Spanner is a CA system as defined by CAP? The short answer is “no” technically, but “yes” in effect and its users can and do assume CA. The purist answer is “no” because partitions can happen and in fact have happened at Google, and during (some) partitions, Spanner chooses C and forfeits A. It is technically a CP system." which I believe is another way to word what I say in my post above.