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Spain would just cease to exist. Spain will cease to exist anyway given the trajectory of the EU. I don't know why anyone in Spain seems to care about Cataloni

Spain would just cease to exist. Spain will cease to exist anyway given the trajectory of the EU. I don't know why anyone in Spain seems to care about Catalonian independence. They seem to want to immediately turn around and (re)join the EU, which is rapidly taking over more and more areas of governmental policy. EU forbids different regions from being more "competitive" than others (see their demands to the UK) and implements large wealth transfers from richer to poorer areas, so, the rest of Spain would end up being subsidised by Catalonia still. If you care about Spain existing you should be campaigning for Spain to leave the EU, rather than being distracted by whether Catalonia does or does not possess whatever trivialities the EU leaves behind to member states as it grows.

yiyus 7y ago
> I don't know why anyone in Spain seems to care about Catalonian independence. I never cared, but I do care about the image they are projecting of my country (specially as someone living abroad). Moreover, they are doing great getting the worse of everyone. I never liked nationalism (including Spanish nationalism) and now it's worse than ever. And I do not like anti-riot police, and I do not want my government to close web sites, and I do not like to see Barcelona burning, and I do not like the hate I see in the eyes of the independentists when they talk about Spain, neither I like the hate I see in the eyes of some people when they talk about the Catalan independentists or even about Catalonia. And I think I could accept all this if it was for a good reason, but I think it is just stupid nonsense (did we learn nothing from Brexit?). We should be moving forward towards some kind of United States of Europe, and worrying about doing something with all these people from Africa who keep coming here, not about breaking apart and stupid flags. I get many questions from friends from all over the world, and I do not know how to answer them, I just feel shame. That's why I care. If tomorrow the Spanish state disappears and we just become one big European country, I would not mind at all. By the way, you are right about what would happen if an independent Catalonia joint the EU. As a wealthy region, they would have to pay. However, why would the EU allow to join a wealthy country who just decided to break their own laws in order to not subsidize poorer regions?
- oska 7y ago
  > And I think I could accept all this if it was for a good reason, but I think it is just stupid nonsense (did we learn nothing from Brexit?). It's not for you to decide that. If a majority of people in a region (yes, still to be conclusively shown for Catalonia) wish to have independence and their own self-government then they should have it. Otherwise you are promoting tyranny. You're like the husband who tells his wife that she is wrong for wanting a divorce because he's still happy with the marriage. Actually, the principle of indissoluble marriage has a lot in common with Section 2 of the Preliminary Title in the Spanish Constitution: > The Constitution is based on the indissoluble unity of the Spanish Nation Both principles of indissoluble unity - both in marriage and in the constitution of a state - are expressions of tyranny.
  - yiyus 7y ago
    When I say "this", I do not talk about the independence of Catalonia. I refer to everything I wrote in the previous paragraph that you have ignored to instead talk about divorces (a bad analogy, by the way). They have created a problem that is directly affecting me, and only for their own benefit. And I am the tyrant here?
- repolfx 7y ago
  If tomorrow the Spanish state disappears and we just become one big European country, I would not mind at all. I have unfortunate news for you. People hating larger governmental forces that control them isn't something weirdly unique to Spain or European nations. It is a part of the universal human condition. If all existing European nations were abolished and merged into a new EU "country", guess what? The "nationalists" would hate the EU instead. This already happens in fact. Why do you think Brexit won? It won because so many people really don't like the EU and the way it works. The entire British population was threatened by its own government with ruination and told anyone who voted Leave was thick and racist, and Leave still won. Imagine how much bigger the result would have been if the government hadn't relied on such aggressive tactics. Worse still, people who think they aren't "nationalist" would also be filled with hate, but towards imaginary external enemies instead. Go listen to the people who run the EU. Listen to people like Juncker, Verhofstadt and Merkel. They can't stop talking about the EU empire and the threats posed by "China, Russia and the United States". The USA is rather different to China but to the new Europeans, it's just another foreign enemy. The way to stop people hating on each other is to help them resolve their differences amicably. Lots of votes, lots of tiny nation-states or even city states, and yes lots of borders, ideally of the smartest possible type to ensure they're hardly noticeable. In the end, forcing everyone to comply with one small group's set of preferences will always create big tensions. The solution is thus not fewer countries, but more.
charlysl 7y ago
I strongly disagree with your bleak view of the EU. Membership is actually one of Spain's biggest strengths, as are other alliances, like NATO. Of course, there is a tradeoff here, members loose a degree of independence, and there are serious problems with the design of the Euro, laid bare by the financial crisis. But one should also compare the current situation with the alternative, which would be european nations facing US, Russia and China on their own. Their bargainaing power and influence would be severely reduced, as the UK is about to find out. I see this current trend against international alliances as part of the larger wave of populism and nationalism in the wake of the financial crisis, where people are looking for whom to blame, and the real culprits (crony capitalism) are too happy by the distraction: career polititians, and the rest of the world in the US (how else to explain Trump?), the EU in the UK, the West in Russia, and, more to the point, Spain in Catalonia. Much of this talk of the EU being against its members' interests is Kremlin propaganda, given that much of Russia's weakness lies in the strength of western alliances, so it is in their interest to weaken or break them.
- repolfx 7y ago
  Russia has a GDP smaller than Italy's. It's a threat only in the minds of a very particular segment of society that seeks to blame it anytime they lose an argument. "Kremlin propaganda" isn't responsible for Trump or Brexit and may well not exist at all, as every attempt to reveal it keeps disappearing into puffs of smoke. What exists are arguments Euro-federalists keep losing for reasons they can't understand, so they seek to blame shadowy conspiracies that are always just out of reach of proof. This is visible in your own post! My view of the EU is neither bleak nor non-bleak. It's a simple factual statement of what the EU is and what it's becoming, as stated very clearly and repeatedly by the people who run it. The goal of the EU is to merge countries together. Do you believe the EU is not a federalist project? That its goal is not to become a new country? How do you explain the ever growing power of the Commission, the new Army, the flag, the laws that make disrespecting the flag illegal, the continual push for ever more integration, the explicit talking points you repeat here that the EU must "unite" to "face US, Russia and China"? The end state is not to lose a "degree" of independence, as you put it. It's to lose all independence completely. That is the end result of ever closer union, as the treaties word it, and that goal can be seen in the actions of the EU every day. It's not standing still. It's unifying armies, tax rules, trying to create new immigration law and so on, often without adjusting the treaties because they know that would trigger automatic referendums in some countries that they are guaranteed to lose. Finally, the EU is not an alliance. Alliances are agreements between separate entities to support each other within some precisely defined scope, like military defence in case of invasion. The EU is something more: a movement to merge the separate entities together completely in all conceivable areas, until there's nothing left to be allied anymore because they're the same thing. Rejection of the EU is not a rejection of alliances, it's the opposite - it's a preference for alliances.

yiyus 7y ago

> I don't know why anyone in Spain seems to care about Catalonian independence. I never cared, but I do care about the image they are projecting of my country (specially as someone living abroad). Moreover, they are doing great getting the worse of everyone. I never liked nationalism (including Spanish nationalism) and now it's worse than ever. And I do not like anti-riot police, and I do not want my government to close web sites, and I do not like to see Barcelona burning, and I do not like the hate I see in the eyes of the independentists when they talk about Spain, neither I like the hate I see in the eyes of some people when they talk about the Catalan independentists or even about Catalonia. And I think I could accept all this if it was for a good reason, but I think it is just stupid nonsense (did we learn nothing from Brexit?). We should be moving forward towards some kind of United States of Europe, and worrying about doing something with all these people from Africa who keep coming here, not about breaking apart and stupid flags. I get many questions from friends from all over the world, and I do not know how to answer them, I just feel shame. That's why I care. If tomorrow the Spanish state disappears and we just become one big European country, I would not mind at all. By the way, you are right about what would happen if an independent Catalonia joint the EU. As a wealthy region, they would have to pay. However, why would the EU allow to join a wealthy country who just decided to break their own laws in order to not subsidize poorer regions?

oska 7y ago
> And I think I could accept all this if it was for a good reason, but I think it is just stupid nonsense (did we learn nothing from Brexit?). It's not for you to decide that. If a majority of people in a region (yes, still to be conclusively shown for Catalonia) wish to have independence and their own self-government then they should have it. Otherwise you are promoting tyranny. You're like the husband who tells his wife that she is wrong for wanting a divorce because he's still happy with the marriage. Actually, the principle of indissoluble marriage has a lot in common with Section 2 of the Preliminary Title in the Spanish Constitution: > The Constitution is based on the indissoluble unity of the Spanish Nation Both principles of indissoluble unity - both in marriage and in the constitution of a state - are expressions of tyranny.
- yiyus 7y ago
  When I say "this", I do not talk about the independence of Catalonia. I refer to everything I wrote in the previous paragraph that you have ignored to instead talk about divorces (a bad analogy, by the way). They have created a problem that is directly affecting me, and only for their own benefit. And I am the tyrant here?
repolfx 7y ago
If tomorrow the Spanish state disappears and we just become one big European country, I would not mind at all. I have unfortunate news for you. People hating larger governmental forces that control them isn't something weirdly unique to Spain or European nations. It is a part of the universal human condition. If all existing European nations were abolished and merged into a new EU "country", guess what? The "nationalists" would hate the EU instead. This already happens in fact. Why do you think Brexit won? It won because so many people really don't like the EU and the way it works. The entire British population was threatened by its own government with ruination and told anyone who voted Leave was thick and racist, and Leave still won. Imagine how much bigger the result would have been if the government hadn't relied on such aggressive tactics. Worse still, people who think they aren't "nationalist" would also be filled with hate, but towards imaginary external enemies instead. Go listen to the people who run the EU. Listen to people like Juncker, Verhofstadt and Merkel. They can't stop talking about the EU empire and the threats posed by "China, Russia and the United States". The USA is rather different to China but to the new Europeans, it's just another foreign enemy. The way to stop people hating on each other is to help them resolve their differences amicably. Lots of votes, lots of tiny nation-states or even city states, and yes lots of borders, ideally of the smartest possible type to ensure they're hardly noticeable. In the end, forcing everyone to comply with one small group's set of preferences will always create big tensions. The solution is thus not fewer countries, but more.

charlysl 7y ago

I strongly disagree with your bleak view of the EU. Membership is actually one of Spain's biggest strengths, as are other alliances, like NATO. Of course, there is a tradeoff here, members loose a degree of independence, and there are serious problems with the design of the Euro, laid bare by the financial crisis. But one should also compare the current situation with the alternative, which would be european nations facing US, Russia and China on their own. Their bargainaing power and influence would be severely reduced, as the UK is about to find out. I see this current trend against international alliances as part of the larger wave of populism and nationalism in the wake of the financial crisis, where people are looking for whom to blame, and the real culprits (crony capitalism) are too happy by the distraction: career polititians, and the rest of the world in the US (how else to explain Trump?), the EU in the UK, the West in Russia, and, more to the point, Spain in Catalonia. Much of this talk of the EU being against its members' interests is Kremlin propaganda, given that much of Russia's weakness lies in the strength of western alliances, so it is in their interest to weaken or break them.

repolfx 7y ago
Russia has a GDP smaller than Italy's. It's a threat only in the minds of a very particular segment of society that seeks to blame it anytime they lose an argument. "Kremlin propaganda" isn't responsible for Trump or Brexit and may well not exist at all, as every attempt to reveal it keeps disappearing into puffs of smoke. What exists are arguments Euro-federalists keep losing for reasons they can't understand, so they seek to blame shadowy conspiracies that are always just out of reach of proof. This is visible in your own post! My view of the EU is neither bleak nor non-bleak. It's a simple factual statement of what the EU is and what it's becoming, as stated very clearly and repeatedly by the people who run it. The goal of the EU is to merge countries together. Do you believe the EU is not a federalist project? That its goal is not to become a new country? How do you explain the ever growing power of the Commission, the new Army, the flag, the laws that make disrespecting the flag illegal, the continual push for ever more integration, the explicit talking points you repeat here that the EU must "unite" to "face US, Russia and China"? The end state is not to lose a "degree" of independence, as you put it. It's to lose all independence completely. That is the end result of ever closer union, as the treaties word it, and that goal can be seen in the actions of the EU every day. It's not standing still. It's unifying armies, tax rules, trying to create new immigration law and so on, often without adjusting the treaties because they know that would trigger automatic referendums in some countries that they are guaranteed to lose. Finally, the EU is not an alliance. Alliances are agreements between separate entities to support each other within some precisely defined scope, like military defence in case of invasion. The EU is something more: a movement to merge the separate entities together completely in all conceivable areas, until there's nothing left to be allied anymore because they're the same thing. Rejection of the EU is not a rejection of alliances, it's the opposite - it's a preference for alliances.