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>I'm against the Catalonian independence, so everyone knows where I'm coming from The question is if a democracy can be called democratic if it's impossible/un

>I'm against the Catalonian independence, so everyone knows where I'm coming from The question is if a democracy can be called democratic if it's impossible/unlawful for minorities to secede. I also think that a secession wouldn't be the smartest choice, but that's a totally different matter. A functional democracy implies that the whole has to arrange itself democratically with the parts it consists of, if not it risks degrowth, parts that split off from the whole and form their own units. Enforcing unity therefore can't be democratic because it lacks democracy at the lowest level. A functional democracy regulates itself through trade offs and common sense. If the outcome of that is something you're opposed to you still have to accept that if you want to live in a real democracy, not just a hypocrite simulation of it.

cfv 7y ago
It's neither impossible nor unlawful though, they just need the rest of the country to agree with them leaving. The fascist dictator who formed modern Spain made it so its constituent lands can expel a part of it but no one part of it can choose to leave. This is the root of why the procés is illegal, and why they are being charged as violent agitators. They are seen as young kids trying to leave their parent's house and taking their bedrooms and console with them. If they amended the constitution, changed the rules, THEN left, that would change things. Problem is, that's even harder to do, in a country where the aforementioned military dictator died free, of old age, and he and his legacy are greatly revered by a whole lot of people.
- romaaeterna 7y ago
  Right to exit is an important foundation of legitimate rule. Plato's Crito has Socrates make the point that, even sentenced to death, he was bound to respect the laws of Athens as he was someone who had made the voluntary choice to remain in the city all of his life until then and under those laws.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - xyzzyz 7y ago
    Right to exit is an important foundation of legitimate rule. For individuals, sure, and I'm quite sure Catalonians are free to leave Spain and go somewhere else.
    - romaaeterna 7y ago
      Good, I'm glad that we're agreed on the individual right. Now what is the right of the group? What rights does Spain as a nation have and what right to do the Catalonians have as a people, and where do such rights come from? The answer to each question will have a lot to do with how much you love each one. Someone who hates Spain and the Spanish would certainly suggest that their course is to be a grubby landlord, trying to get every cent out of a tenant before kicking them out the door. Someone who loves them would hopefully never think of them as the sort of nation that would wish to impose on a free people or steal anything from a people, especially not land or property. Lovers of Spain, properly, will think of their rights as rights of attraction, and free association, and from the governors to the governed. Haters will think of the Nation's rights as something to be imposed, and their duties as something to be extracted from their subject peoples. What do you think of Spain? Is it love or hate?
      - xyzzyz 7y ago
        Now what is the right of the group? What rights does Spain as a nation have and what right to do the Catalonians have as a people, and where do such rights come from? The nation of Spain certainly is sovereign on the territory it occupies, so it is bound only by the rules it imposes on itself (and of course, external powers which might impose other rules upon it). The nation of Spain chose to specify the rights extended to its people through the constitution, and through specific laws. From that, Catalonians, as part of the Spanish nation and subject to its sovereignty for as long as they reside under its jurisdiction, stem the rights Catalonians have as people. Look, I'm not a lover or a hater of Spain, but what I learned so far about how the world works is that it is divided into countries, which set the rules, called law, on their territories, and get to enforce it. If you don't like the rules, usually there's a mechanism to change those, but if you can't make it work through that mechanism, your only option is to assert your own sovereignty, and hope to prevail over the existing contender. So far, the separatists in Catalonia hasn't been successful neither the former nor the latter. I might sympathize with them, but certainly I do not think that they have any right whatsoever to secede.
- rndgermandude 7y ago
  >It's neither impossible nor unlawful though, they just need the rest of the country to agree with them leaving. Why do they need the approval of people living elsewhere?
  - SiempreViernes 7y ago
    It's a tightly integrated part of the economical and political system, the people elsewhere would also be severely affected. Why is it obvious that they get to break the system unilaterally?
    - not2personal 7y ago
      >Why is it obvious that they get to break the system unilaterally? Thomas Jefferson I believe explained this best: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. Without the consent of the governed you do not have a legitimate government, what you have is despotism, no matter if you held a vote or not. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority
    - rndgermandude 7y ago
      The UK is tightly integrated into the EU economical and political system. They are breaking away unilaterally. The reason they can do so is that they wouldn't have entered in the first place if there was no instrument to leave again like this (Article 50). The Catalans never voluntarily agreed to be part of Spain as far as I know. They were essentially annexed a long time ago. And yet Spain says they have to stay no matter what. This doesn't sound right to me.
- droithomme 7y ago
  > they just need the rest of the country to agree with them leaving I wonder if the American colonies which seceded from Great Britain in 1776 received the agreement of King George or of the people of Great Britain in general. Secession without consent of the sovereign was not part of their law, so the action was clearly illegal and unethical and the colonists simply in the wrong, do you think? Also there is the matter of them using violence and acts of terrorism as part of their secession process. Clearly wrong, correct?
  - t_rope 7y ago
    Well, talking about the US, a group of states tried to secede from the union and there was quite a large war to stop them. It's not legal for a state to secede from the US at all without other states agreeing to it.
  - david-gpu 7y ago
    The comparison is flawed because Catalonia, like all other regions of Spain, is represented in the Spanish parliament through a democratic election process. In contrast, the US was a colony of the UK with no direct representation. Also note how, just like in Spain, the US Constitution today does not allow for a state to secede, and in fact there was a civil war when some states tried to do just that. The potential independence of Catalonia is a complex matter and these simplistic comparisons are unhelpful.
    - droithomme 7y ago
      > the US Constitution today does not allow for a state to secede This is completely untrue. The US Constitution has no such clause. Let's have a wager. We both transfer $10,000 to an independent bookie. Then we each submit our evidence that the US Constitution prohibited secession in 1861. An independent panel of judges rules and winner takes all. I'll give you 30 minutes to accept the wager and transfer your contact info. The War between the States was an illegal war. Because the Northern Aggression won and wrote the textbooks of course they justify their illegal actions, just as the US currently justifies its illegal war crimes in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. Disagree? Under what legal theory does the US have the right to seize Syrian oil fields as it is currently doing? That's the latest action this week. There are similar absurd and illegal claims of the US government going back centuries. What legal theory do you think the US claims for their seizure of native american lands and parallel mass genocide? Are you aware it's not the Doctrine of Conquest, but the Doctrine of Discovery that the US Supreme Court cited as legal justification? That the first Christian to eye lands held by non-christians permanently and irrevocably has sovereign ownership of the lands, as well as the right to enslave and kill the "pagan" populace. Do you believe this Doctrine of Discovery is a valid legal principle? Or do you agree the US has no legitimate legal claims whatsoever over the much of its territory, which it seized through genocide and deceit and spurious insane pseudo-legal principles. The Doctrine of Discovery has as much validity as the spurious claim that there was anything questionable or illegal or especially unconstitutional about southern secession, and as much rational basis as the european and puritan claims that witches can be detected by attempting to drown them, pile stones on them until they asphyxiate, or that werewolves are responsible for crop failure.
- maximente 7y ago
  it would be ridiculous to expect a colony of a monarchy to be expected to overthrow the government in order to "legally" split off. i'm not sure why this is any different - if they win, then the new country obviously won't be held to whatever rules the old one had. this is sort of the nature of the game - successful nations splitting off get to "live to tell the tale".
- JetSpiegel 7y ago
  Not to mention the current Prime Minister (he's only PM because the support of the pre-independence parties) dragged his feet for months instead of start discussing a federal Spanish state or some other solution. Radio silence until the procés.
nl 7y ago
The section on "Self-determination versus territorial integrity" on https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination addresses the different arguments here.
iagovar 7y ago
> The question is if a democracy can be called democratic if it's impossible/unlawful for minorities to secede. I also think that a secession wouldn't be the smartest choice, but that's a totally different matter. I don't think I'm in position to have a long discussion about this in english, but I thought about it and reached no conclussion. If I'm against the Catalan independence it's basically because of practical reasons. I don't think it will solve any problem, but create many more, make many people from Catalonia and from outside miserable and it's also the question of how this momentum has been achieved, which actors have been involved, and in what way. Currently the independence movement is probably, and for the most part, outside the control of PDCAT and ERC, which are the two main independence parties. But I can't just erase my memory and forget how it got here, and on what arguments. I have Catalan friends and relatives, as well as two ex-girlfriends, so I don't live in a television reality (exclusively), and the situation hurts me a lot, and I can understand how the Catalan perception of events develops, and I am perfectly aware of the failures of the Spanish state, but I can only be in favour if I do a very selective memory exercise. All this without forgetting that there is a legal way, which is to reform the constitution. But it is difficult and requires a political capital that the parties that (now) are idependent have burned long ago. And I can imagine what a politician sitting in his office thinks when he observes that he has never had better material and symbolic conditions, and that if he wanted support from other regions he would have to recover the capital lost in the last, I don't know, fifteen years.
- ErneX 7y ago
  Constitution reform is the only way and yet lots of people keep pointing to other things, this is the reason we are stuck in this situation now. That road is long and requires actual politics, what they have done is taking a shortcut to nowhere.
  - ivalm 7y ago
    Catalan are not majority of Spain. They cannot themselves change the constitution, yet they do not want to stay in Spain. So it's a fake "way." The majority should not be allowed to bully the minority.
zozbot234 7y ago
> The question is if a democracy can be called democratic if it's impossible/unlawful for minorities to secede. Well, as both Americans and Spanish might say, "we had a war to settle that issue." The U.S. have been a republic (what you call a "democracy") for the entirety of their history as a nation, and yet unilateral secession is clearly forbidden.
- AsyncAwait 7y ago
  I think OP is asking whether such countries, including the US, are indeed democratic, or just called that like Congo is called democratic, (not to the same degree obviously, but the same principle).
  - wang_li 7y ago
    Can a country be called democratic if me and six friends are not allowed to draw a random border around a house and then vote to murder the residents with only our votes counting because only those inside the arbitrary border we drew are allowed to vote?
    - JCharante 7y ago
      Wouldn't the analogy be better if you lived in a dorm building, and your friends voted to draw the border around the dorm?
    - AsyncAwait 7y ago
      Ugh. By your logic once India was conquered by the British, all attempts at independence were six friends drawing a random border around their house.
    - vidarh 7y ago
      Unless the residents you vote to murder are also given the same freedom to secede and draw a border that excludes you because they do not consider your rule legitimate, this certainly would not be democratic. Your analogy illustrates why a right to secede matters: It is the ultimate peaceful (if the right is protected) tool for those who feel disenfranchised, whether by being robbed off the chance to vote or because they are a persistent minority, to ensure that either their rights are protected because the government do not want them to leave, or that they have an escape hatch against a majority abusing their power. It is saying "we no longer accept that this government legitimately represents us," and the right and ability to do that seems to me to be the most fundamental concept of democracy - but only if it is extended to everyone, which takes away the problems of your example; you and your six friends would have no rights to draw a new border that includes other residents without they too having a say, including the right to themselves secede if you do not offer them something they are willing to see as legitimate. As such it provides an important incentive against over-reach and towards negotiated settlements that does not exist when there is no realistic mechanism for a minority to vote for their region to leave. You can mitigate the need for a right to secede by giving sufficient protections for minorities against the choices of the majority; but whenever secession gains substantial support, that is evidence that whatever mechanisms are in place are insufficient. To me, a government that feels a need to deploy police to stop a region from demanding independence is inherently illegitimate. At the same time, I am all four having secessionists be made to understand the consequences, in that if you a house and decides your house should secede, then fine, but you e.g. have no inherent right to then be allowed to cross the border, or expect your new neighbouring state to provide you with any services, and you can expect them to act with force to protect the interests of any of their citizens resident on "your territory" who do not want to secede and who are not offered sufficient protections - including their own right to secede from "your state" and rejoin their preferred state. In practice I think that taking such a right to secede to it's full consequence would minimize actual uses - anyone wanting to do it would need to take into account the problems of whether or not they'd e.g. end up with enclaves, eroded borders, exclaves, and whether they'd even end up with a contiguous territory of significance at all if they have majority support in a region but also lot of resistance, and would be forced to actually negotiate to solve such issues in a way that is not inherently detrimental to both sides. At the same time this would also apply to the state you seek to leave.
dmaldona 7y ago
In order to have a healthy democracy we first need the rule of the law. Constitutions are made to define the foundations of those laws and protect citizen minorities against majority abuses: what if 80% of the population of a region decides to expel the other 20% because of whatever reasons? The fact that the state tries to preserve the integrity of the country is necessary to keep the rule of the law. For if it just renounces to a region, its power to enforce its law is lost in such region. Now let's assume a particular region decides to secede. That region's people, industry and such is the product of a historical process: there has been some migration, investments in the region and outside the region, etc... Thus, in case of secession under what law its decided how that secession is done? Who has legitimacy to define the rules of the law?
- nitwit005 7y ago
  It's not entirely sensible to talk about "rule of law" when it comes to secession. Most countries exist in violation of some earlier set of laws. They were part of some nation and broke away, or they replaced their own government with another form through revolt.
  - ErneX 7y ago
    I think you meant "secession". A really small minority is actually revolting, thankfully. Lots of pro-independence people are protesting peacefully. There's also the other side that don't want to hear anything about seceding that are just looking at these events unfold pretty worried.
    - nitwit005 7y ago
      Yes, thanks. My brain refuses to see typos and I just read back what I intended to write.
- vidarh 7y ago
  In order to have a healthy democracy, we first need legitimacy. In other words, those who are part of the entity need to consider it to have authority. Nobody should be surprised if an entity you can not leave if the majority oversteps their perceived bounds ceases to have legitimacy in the eyes of those who are forcibly prevented from leaving. By all means seek to ensure all interests are taken into account, but you don't do that by holding people against their will. [My favorite discussion on the topic of democratic legitimacy is Robert A Dahl's "After the Revolution? Authority in a good society" (Yale University Press) that goes through this issue in a very approachable way]
ErneX 7y ago
91% of the people of catalonia voted for the current spanish constitution back 1978, these are the rules of play for all us. Any change to that constitution should be made by the mechanisms it itself provides, and even in the case a new one is made, it'd have to be voted by the whole country in a referendum. This crisis has been provoked by irresponsable politicians that have taken shortcuts clearly out of the law in order to secede a whole region of Spain from it, and we also need to keep in mind half of the people from or living in Catalonia do not want to split from Spain. My 0,02.
- snvzz 7y ago
  >91% of the people of catalonia voted for the current spanish constitution back 1978, Many of these people are dead. There was no alternative to this constitution as it happened in a very unstable climate after the death of the dictator, where the constitution was seen as the one way to stabilize the country and advance towards a democracy. >This crisis has been provoked by irresponsable politicians that have taken shortcuts clearly out of the law These "irresponsible" politicians exhausted all avenues and did what they did because they had no alternative left to actually act on what their constituents, the people who voted for them, put them in place for. And the fact people want this is in no way unrelated to what happened to the Estatut d'Autonomia, which defines the relationship between Catalonia and Spain. The current version of the document was written in Catalonia, revised and cut several times until Spain was OK with it, then voted in a referendum in Catalonia and put into effect, only to be cut down dramatically shortly after by the constitutional court, acting on the behalf of a Spanish nationalist political party which gets almost no votes at all in Catalonia. This was perceived as a massive insult to Catalan people. Not only the situation was not repaired, but Spain's attacks on Catalonia's self government continued. This is the main reason why independence took a hold, perceived as the only option going forward. >and we also need to keep in mind half of the people from or living in Catalonia do not want to split from Spain. I have to ask for the source of this data. Certainly not a referendum, nor an election. At best, some newspaper poll. My 2¢.
  - ErneX 7y ago
    Data is actually the Catalonian government statistics office (Centre d'Estudis d'Opinió): https://elpais.com/ccaa/2019/07/26/catalunya/1564132750_826665.html https://elpais.com/ccaa/2019/07/26/catalunya/1564132750_8266... This and all the recent catalonian parliament elections, you clearly see the split between pro independence parties and not pro independence. The 1978 constitution is the current rule of law, it can be changed, but that needs political support in the spanish congress. If you want to simply ignore the rule of law because you don't like the constitution or "many of the people that voted for it are dead" that's your problem (sorry to be blunt, but that can't be a serious argument).

cfv 7y ago

It's neither impossible nor unlawful though, they just need the rest of the country to agree with them leaving. The fascist dictator who formed modern Spain made it so its constituent lands can expel a part of it but no one part of it can choose to leave. This is the root of why the procés is illegal, and why they are being charged as violent agitators. They are seen as young kids trying to leave their parent's house and taking their bedrooms and console with them. If they amended the constitution, changed the rules, THEN left, that would change things. Problem is, that's even harder to do, in a country where the aforementioned military dictator died free, of old age, and he and his legacy are greatly revered by a whole lot of people.

romaaeterna 7y ago
Right to exit is an important foundation of legitimate rule. Plato's Crito has Socrates make the point that, even sentenced to death, he was bound to respect the laws of Athens as he was someone who had made the voluntary choice to remain in the city all of his life until then and under those laws.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- xyzzyz 7y ago
  Right to exit is an important foundation of legitimate rule. For individuals, sure, and I'm quite sure Catalonians are free to leave Spain and go somewhere else.
  - romaaeterna 7y ago
    Good, I'm glad that we're agreed on the individual right. Now what is the right of the group? What rights does Spain as a nation have and what right to do the Catalonians have as a people, and where do such rights come from? The answer to each question will have a lot to do with how much you love each one. Someone who hates Spain and the Spanish would certainly suggest that their course is to be a grubby landlord, trying to get every cent out of a tenant before kicking them out the door. Someone who loves them would hopefully never think of them as the sort of nation that would wish to impose on a free people or steal anything from a people, especially not land or property. Lovers of Spain, properly, will think of their rights as rights of attraction, and free association, and from the governors to the governed. Haters will think of the Nation's rights as something to be imposed, and their duties as something to be extracted from their subject peoples. What do you think of Spain? Is it love or hate?
    - xyzzyz 7y ago
      Now what is the right of the group? What rights does Spain as a nation have and what right to do the Catalonians have as a people, and where do such rights come from? The nation of Spain certainly is sovereign on the territory it occupies, so it is bound only by the rules it imposes on itself (and of course, external powers which might impose other rules upon it). The nation of Spain chose to specify the rights extended to its people through the constitution, and through specific laws. From that, Catalonians, as part of the Spanish nation and subject to its sovereignty for as long as they reside under its jurisdiction, stem the rights Catalonians have as people. Look, I'm not a lover or a hater of Spain, but what I learned so far about how the world works is that it is divided into countries, which set the rules, called law, on their territories, and get to enforce it. If you don't like the rules, usually there's a mechanism to change those, but if you can't make it work through that mechanism, your only option is to assert your own sovereignty, and hope to prevail over the existing contender. So far, the separatists in Catalonia hasn't been successful neither the former nor the latter. I might sympathize with them, but certainly I do not think that they have any right whatsoever to secede.
rndgermandude 7y ago
>It's neither impossible nor unlawful though, they just need the rest of the country to agree with them leaving. Why do they need the approval of people living elsewhere?
- SiempreViernes 7y ago
  It's a tightly integrated part of the economical and political system, the people elsewhere would also be severely affected. Why is it obvious that they get to break the system unilaterally?
  - not2personal 7y ago
    >Why is it obvious that they get to break the system unilaterally? Thomas Jefferson I believe explained this best: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. Without the consent of the governed you do not have a legitimate government, what you have is despotism, no matter if you held a vote or not. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority
  - rndgermandude 7y ago
    The UK is tightly integrated into the EU economical and political system. They are breaking away unilaterally. The reason they can do so is that they wouldn't have entered in the first place if there was no instrument to leave again like this (Article 50). The Catalans never voluntarily agreed to be part of Spain as far as I know. They were essentially annexed a long time ago. And yet Spain says they have to stay no matter what. This doesn't sound right to me.
droithomme 7y ago
> they just need the rest of the country to agree with them leaving I wonder if the American colonies which seceded from Great Britain in 1776 received the agreement of King George or of the people of Great Britain in general. Secession without consent of the sovereign was not part of their law, so the action was clearly illegal and unethical and the colonists simply in the wrong, do you think? Also there is the matter of them using violence and acts of terrorism as part of their secession process. Clearly wrong, correct?
- t_rope 7y ago
  Well, talking about the US, a group of states tried to secede from the union and there was quite a large war to stop them. It's not legal for a state to secede from the US at all without other states agreeing to it.
- david-gpu 7y ago
  The comparison is flawed because Catalonia, like all other regions of Spain, is represented in the Spanish parliament through a democratic election process. In contrast, the US was a colony of the UK with no direct representation. Also note how, just like in Spain, the US Constitution today does not allow for a state to secede, and in fact there was a civil war when some states tried to do just that. The potential independence of Catalonia is a complex matter and these simplistic comparisons are unhelpful.
  - droithomme 7y ago
    > the US Constitution today does not allow for a state to secede This is completely untrue. The US Constitution has no such clause. Let's have a wager. We both transfer $10,000 to an independent bookie. Then we each submit our evidence that the US Constitution prohibited secession in 1861. An independent panel of judges rules and winner takes all. I'll give you 30 minutes to accept the wager and transfer your contact info. The War between the States was an illegal war. Because the Northern Aggression won and wrote the textbooks of course they justify their illegal actions, just as the US currently justifies its illegal war crimes in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. Disagree? Under what legal theory does the US have the right to seize Syrian oil fields as it is currently doing? That's the latest action this week. There are similar absurd and illegal claims of the US government going back centuries. What legal theory do you think the US claims for their seizure of native american lands and parallel mass genocide? Are you aware it's not the Doctrine of Conquest, but the Doctrine of Discovery that the US Supreme Court cited as legal justification? That the first Christian to eye lands held by non-christians permanently and irrevocably has sovereign ownership of the lands, as well as the right to enslave and kill the "pagan" populace. Do you believe this Doctrine of Discovery is a valid legal principle? Or do you agree the US has no legitimate legal claims whatsoever over the much of its territory, which it seized through genocide and deceit and spurious insane pseudo-legal principles. The Doctrine of Discovery has as much validity as the spurious claim that there was anything questionable or illegal or especially unconstitutional about southern secession, and as much rational basis as the european and puritan claims that witches can be detected by attempting to drown them, pile stones on them until they asphyxiate, or that werewolves are responsible for crop failure.
maximente 7y ago
it would be ridiculous to expect a colony of a monarchy to be expected to overthrow the government in order to "legally" split off. i'm not sure why this is any different - if they win, then the new country obviously won't be held to whatever rules the old one had. this is sort of the nature of the game - successful nations splitting off get to "live to tell the tale".
JetSpiegel 7y ago
Not to mention the current Prime Minister (he's only PM because the support of the pre-independence parties) dragged his feet for months instead of start discussing a federal Spanish state or some other solution. Radio silence until the procés.

nl 7y ago

The section on "Self-determination versus territorial integrity" on https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination addresses the different arguments here.

iagovar 7y ago

> The question is if a democracy can be called democratic if it's impossible/unlawful for minorities to secede. I also think that a secession wouldn't be the smartest choice, but that's a totally different matter. I don't think I'm in position to have a long discussion about this in english, but I thought about it and reached no conclussion. If I'm against the Catalan independence it's basically because of practical reasons. I don't think it will solve any problem, but create many more, make many people from Catalonia and from outside miserable and it's also the question of how this momentum has been achieved, which actors have been involved, and in what way. Currently the independence movement is probably, and for the most part, outside the control of PDCAT and ERC, which are the two main independence parties. But I can't just erase my memory and forget how it got here, and on what arguments. I have Catalan friends and relatives, as well as two ex-girlfriends, so I don't live in a television reality (exclusively), and the situation hurts me a lot, and I can understand how the Catalan perception of events develops, and I am perfectly aware of the failures of the Spanish state, but I can only be in favour if I do a very selective memory exercise. All this without forgetting that there is a legal way, which is to reform the constitution. But it is difficult and requires a political capital that the parties that (now) are idependent have burned long ago. And I can imagine what a politician sitting in his office thinks when he observes that he has never had better material and symbolic conditions, and that if he wanted support from other regions he would have to recover the capital lost in the last, I don't know, fifteen years.

ErneX 7y ago
Constitution reform is the only way and yet lots of people keep pointing to other things, this is the reason we are stuck in this situation now. That road is long and requires actual politics, what they have done is taking a shortcut to nowhere.
- ivalm 7y ago
  Catalan are not majority of Spain. They cannot themselves change the constitution, yet they do not want to stay in Spain. So it's a fake "way." The majority should not be allowed to bully the minority.

zozbot234 7y ago

> The question is if a democracy can be called democratic if it's impossible/unlawful for minorities to secede. Well, as both Americans and Spanish might say, "we had a war to settle that issue." The U.S. have been a republic (what you call a "democracy") for the entirety of their history as a nation, and yet unilateral secession is clearly forbidden.

AsyncAwait 7y ago
I think OP is asking whether such countries, including the US, are indeed democratic, or just called that like Congo is called democratic, (not to the same degree obviously, but the same principle).
- wang_li 7y ago
  Can a country be called democratic if me and six friends are not allowed to draw a random border around a house and then vote to murder the residents with only our votes counting because only those inside the arbitrary border we drew are allowed to vote?
  - JCharante 7y ago
    Wouldn't the analogy be better if you lived in a dorm building, and your friends voted to draw the border around the dorm?
  - AsyncAwait 7y ago
    Ugh. By your logic once India was conquered by the British, all attempts at independence were six friends drawing a random border around their house.
  - vidarh 7y ago
    Unless the residents you vote to murder are also given the same freedom to secede and draw a border that excludes you because they do not consider your rule legitimate, this certainly would not be democratic. Your analogy illustrates why a right to secede matters: It is the ultimate peaceful (if the right is protected) tool for those who feel disenfranchised, whether by being robbed off the chance to vote or because they are a persistent minority, to ensure that either their rights are protected because the government do not want them to leave, or that they have an escape hatch against a majority abusing their power. It is saying "we no longer accept that this government legitimately represents us," and the right and ability to do that seems to me to be the most fundamental concept of democracy - but only if it is extended to everyone, which takes away the problems of your example; you and your six friends would have no rights to draw a new border that includes other residents without they too having a say, including the right to themselves secede if you do not offer them something they are willing to see as legitimate. As such it provides an important incentive against over-reach and towards negotiated settlements that does not exist when there is no realistic mechanism for a minority to vote for their region to leave. You can mitigate the need for a right to secede by giving sufficient protections for minorities against the choices of the majority; but whenever secession gains substantial support, that is evidence that whatever mechanisms are in place are insufficient. To me, a government that feels a need to deploy police to stop a region from demanding independence is inherently illegitimate. At the same time, I am all four having secessionists be made to understand the consequences, in that if you a house and decides your house should secede, then fine, but you e.g. have no inherent right to then be allowed to cross the border, or expect your new neighbouring state to provide you with any services, and you can expect them to act with force to protect the interests of any of their citizens resident on "your territory" who do not want to secede and who are not offered sufficient protections - including their own right to secede from "your state" and rejoin their preferred state. In practice I think that taking such a right to secede to it's full consequence would minimize actual uses - anyone wanting to do it would need to take into account the problems of whether or not they'd e.g. end up with enclaves, eroded borders, exclaves, and whether they'd even end up with a contiguous territory of significance at all if they have majority support in a region but also lot of resistance, and would be forced to actually negotiate to solve such issues in a way that is not inherently detrimental to both sides. At the same time this would also apply to the state you seek to leave.

dmaldona 7y ago

In order to have a healthy democracy we first need the rule of the law. Constitutions are made to define the foundations of those laws and protect citizen minorities against majority abuses: what if 80% of the population of a region decides to expel the other 20% because of whatever reasons? The fact that the state tries to preserve the integrity of the country is necessary to keep the rule of the law. For if it just renounces to a region, its power to enforce its law is lost in such region. Now let's assume a particular region decides to secede. That region's people, industry and such is the product of a historical process: there has been some migration, investments in the region and outside the region, etc... Thus, in case of secession under what law its decided how that secession is done? Who has legitimacy to define the rules of the law?

nitwit005 7y ago
It's not entirely sensible to talk about "rule of law" when it comes to secession. Most countries exist in violation of some earlier set of laws. They were part of some nation and broke away, or they replaced their own government with another form through revolt.
- ErneX 7y ago
  I think you meant "secession". A really small minority is actually revolting, thankfully. Lots of pro-independence people are protesting peacefully. There's also the other side that don't want to hear anything about seceding that are just looking at these events unfold pretty worried.
  - nitwit005 7y ago
    Yes, thanks. My brain refuses to see typos and I just read back what I intended to write.
vidarh 7y ago
In order to have a healthy democracy, we first need legitimacy. In other words, those who are part of the entity need to consider it to have authority. Nobody should be surprised if an entity you can not leave if the majority oversteps their perceived bounds ceases to have legitimacy in the eyes of those who are forcibly prevented from leaving. By all means seek to ensure all interests are taken into account, but you don't do that by holding people against their will. [My favorite discussion on the topic of democratic legitimacy is Robert A Dahl's "After the Revolution? Authority in a good society" (Yale University Press) that goes through this issue in a very approachable way]

ErneX 7y ago

91% of the people of catalonia voted for the current spanish constitution back 1978, these are the rules of play for all us. Any change to that constitution should be made by the mechanisms it itself provides, and even in the case a new one is made, it'd have to be voted by the whole country in a referendum. This crisis has been provoked by irresponsable politicians that have taken shortcuts clearly out of the law in order to secede a whole region of Spain from it, and we also need to keep in mind half of the people from or living in Catalonia do not want to split from Spain. My 0,02.

snvzz 7y ago
>91% of the people of catalonia voted for the current spanish constitution back 1978, Many of these people are dead. There was no alternative to this constitution as it happened in a very unstable climate after the death of the dictator, where the constitution was seen as the one way to stabilize the country and advance towards a democracy. >This crisis has been provoked by irresponsable politicians that have taken shortcuts clearly out of the law These "irresponsible" politicians exhausted all avenues and did what they did because they had no alternative left to actually act on what their constituents, the people who voted for them, put them in place for. And the fact people want this is in no way unrelated to what happened to the Estatut d'Autonomia, which defines the relationship between Catalonia and Spain. The current version of the document was written in Catalonia, revised and cut several times until Spain was OK with it, then voted in a referendum in Catalonia and put into effect, only to be cut down dramatically shortly after by the constitutional court, acting on the behalf of a Spanish nationalist political party which gets almost no votes at all in Catalonia. This was perceived as a massive insult to Catalan people. Not only the situation was not repaired, but Spain's attacks on Catalonia's self government continued. This is the main reason why independence took a hold, perceived as the only option going forward. >and we also need to keep in mind half of the people from or living in Catalonia do not want to split from Spain. I have to ask for the source of this data. Certainly not a referendum, nor an election. At best, some newspaper poll. My 2¢.
- ErneX 7y ago
  Data is actually the Catalonian government statistics office (Centre d'Estudis d'Opinió): https://elpais.com/ccaa/2019/07/26/catalunya/1564132750_826665.html https://elpais.com/ccaa/2019/07/26/catalunya/1564132750_8266... This and all the recent catalonian parliament elections, you clearly see the split between pro independence parties and not pro independence. The 1978 constitution is the current rule of law, it can be changed, but that needs political support in the spanish congress. If you want to simply ignore the rule of law because you don't like the constitution or "many of the people that voted for it are dead" that's your problem (sorry to be blunt, but that can't be a serious argument).