Catalan referendum – open thread

The reaction seems spectacularly stupid. If large groups of people want to go to polling places and cast allegedly illegal ballots, why employ state violence to stop them? What is the harm in the activity that merits a repressive response? Even if you endorse the use of violence to keep Catalonia in Spain (which I don’t), shouldn’t you wait until something actually happens which demands force? If the Court says the ballot is illegal, then it can say it is illegal after it has happened just as well.

@2 Good questions. The realities extend beyond Catalan to the Basque region. All of this is happening in real time and we’re a long way from any resolution. The state is using legal means to prevent a vote I concur should be allowed to proceed. The Catalans understand better than us that this is precisely how the state likely respond. Ethnicity matters and no matter how wrong the use of force may seem to outside observers a great many people in Spain strongly believe the government has no choice but to act.

“the Catalan quagmire is as much a result of Catalan intransigence and utter disrespect of rule of law as of Madrid inflexibility; it is driven by nationalist exteremist and by provocation…”

Even if every word of this were true, going to a neighborhood location to fill out a form is just about the most peaceful civil action one can imagine. Why on earth turn it into a street brawl, when there’s no reason to do that? It is criminally stupid; stupid, because it can’t have the desired effect of ‘stopping Catalans from wanting to separate’ – far more likely the opposite! – and criminally so because it is an abuse of state violence.

Spain is not a repressive regime and democracy requires respect of rules

Spain has been an economic horror story for a decade, as has been Greece and to a lesser degree Italy. Neoliberalism does provide a facade of diverse and multicultural representation to legitimize austerity, stratification, and economic repression, and this is why rules are made by those with the guns as said above, including Social democrats (Dear God, Hollande followed by Macron) and rules are made to be broken.

There’s an echo of the American situation in that the rural members of a federated state are attempting to be absolutist in their hegemony. The American hegemonists are exercising control through means more subtle than armed confiscation of ballot boxes, but we’ll see. “Stupid politically” is not right; this is what absolutism does, and besides it works often enough.

I know much more about the Spanish Civil War than the current situation in Spain, and am mindful of “how easy it is as an outsider to know half of the facts and sensitivities, and make overly quick judgements on that partial knowledge. ” I wish I knew even one-quarter of the facts! I cannot help but see ghostly shadows of Catalonia’s anarchists from the 1930s where I know nothing of today. I do know that Spain’s encounter with Euro debt was an importantly regional one and Catalonia was the worst offender (and therefore greatest beneficiary then and most entangled now). The Catalan debt bomb figures in this somehow. Destroying Catalonia’s autonomy would seem like lighting a fire under a shack containing high explosive, but maybe someone thinks the central government can handle that debt.

Madrid should not brawl at all, unless forced to. Note how Abraham Lincoln waited for the Southerners to violently seize control of Fort Sumter before commencing hostilities. It seems to me that the Spanish state is overeager to initiate violence against a peaceful movement. Especially noteworthy for a political party (PP) that grew directly out of Francoism and rejects any reevaluation of the Francoist past.

@16 more Americans died in the ensuing war than every other war fought by the United States combined. This might not be the best first choice. Spain has already had a horrific civil war. Why would you embrace a second?

So, how are they going to deescalate this in this day and age of uncontrollable communication, while being subjected to European standards of human rights?

They aren’t. Reactionary movements — and the Right in spain is to all practical purposes made up of supporters of Actual Fascism — are all affected by theory-of-mind impairments, which means making plans that allow for the choices other people make is beyond them.

“What will they do in response” is a question that it is literally biologically impossible for Rajoy to answer. He doesn’t think that way.

Unlike ETA, the Catalan separatists aren’t bombing anyone. The UK didn’t require thugs to put down the vote on Scottish separation (yes, I know, the Acts of Union can be legally reversed). Czechoslovakia dissolved peacefully (if stupidly). If the Parti Québécois ever does win a separation vote, Canada will survive; contiguity of territory is not a necessity (see Alaska).

The violence on the part of the Spanish state was entirely optional and almost certainly counterproductive in the long run.

I don’t embrace a second Spanish Civil War. But Abraham Lincoln was able to prevent international recognition of the South and reunify the nation by deliberately not being the aggressor. He didn’t start the American Civil War but he did almost end both it and slavery before his assasination. I don’t understand why the Spanish authorities automatically reach for violence to prevent a vote. Catalonia hasn’t even declared independence and has pursued exclusively peaceful means. Are they going to start shooting Catalans if they persist in voting and protesting?

I started out thinking Catalan independence was a dumb idea, politically and economically. But hell if Rajoy’s jackbooted thugs haven’t pushed me into the full separatist camp. At this rate we’ll have 100 nations recognizing the independent Republic of Catalonia before the week is out.

Police brutality is a NoNo!
Independence because not liking your neighbors is a NoNo!
Independence because not wanting to pay for the commons is a NoNo!

For heavens sake -(the catholic one) we are talking about Europe and not Texans wish to split from the United Homeland…

Lincoln won the argument, but he didn’t win it by making a _legal_ argument. It’s hard to make a convincing case that states, having voluntarily entered into the union, may not voluntarily exit the union. Is it reasonable to force a geographically sound cultural minority to remain subjects of a state within which they don’t want to remain? I can’t see how. Must the Kurds remain minority Iraqis and Turks, aganst their will? Must Tibetans remain Chinese? Wouldn’t it be wiser for Spain to invest in _convincing_ the Catalans they’d be better off in Spain than not? If they can’t convince, isn’t that a problem in and of itself?

What is democracy? A state? A process? A happening?

Wikipedia has a page called List of active separatist movements in Europe. There are a lot of them, 16 in Spain alone.

Rajoy’s government is itself the result of backdoor deals. That is partly because Spain has undergone a horrendous depression driven by government austerity, which resulted in a political tossup – and the same old same old government. In my puny view, this police riot does look like Rajoy using the independence vote to strengthen his precarious position. In 2016, when the regional gov. passed the resolution for an independence vote, the for side was at around 48 percent. https://euobserver.com/political/135403 The state has ample media tools to widen the against side, and definitely that happened with the Scotland vote in the UK. But Rajoy has pursued another strategy, which, I think, is aimed at delegitimating opposition parties so that his Franquist party can win massively the next round of elections. I don’t think Rajoy is stupid, and simply “biologically programmed”, as one commentor above put it, not to understand the independence movement – he’s been a wheeler dealer, and quite a corrupt one, for quite a while. It will be interesting to see how opposition parties – the terrible socialists and the Podemos peeps – respond. So far, both Puigdemont and Rajoy have gotten what they wanted.

#30 Problem is, the government represents the very large part of Spain that considers that asking the question, that thinking it is something that has to actually be answered by the Catalonian (or any other) population, is kind of anathema.

Their mental model is that the “unity of Spain” is something that is almost God-given, and thus not to be discussed, and not something that comes from the wishes of the actual Spanish population. So you can be a Spaniard happy to be one or one unhappy to be one, but at no point they will ever think that it is up to you to decide if you are or not.

I can say a thousand reasons why I dont like the idea of Catalonian independence and why many of the paladins of said idea are not really nice people. That is absolutely irrelevant to the point; as you said, we should be working for Catalonians to widely accept and embrace Spanish nationality, but instead our government and a lot of our population is dead-set into giving them even more reasons to go away, starting with the big one: saying that they cant do anything but be Spaniards even if 100% of them hate the idea.

I don’t know enough about the different arguments but
this seems to be an interesting twitter feed.

I’m a dual Spanish citizen, and I’m half Catalan and half Castilian so this whole situation in Spain has been very disheartening to me.

As a person On The Left, it’s in my training to reject Nationalism in any form. It’s almost always a destructive force. .

Not to be all Ron Fournier about it but this crisis has been largely fueled by craven Nationalism on both sides.

Financial crises fuel nationalism. We saw this in the 1930s and we’re seeing it all over Europe with a resurgence far right parties.

Post 2008, Spain hasn’t seen its own version of Front Nationale or UKIP. Spanish nat’lism hasn’t turned on immigrants, it’s turned on itself

As we’ve seen from the images today, the right wing government in Madrid is incredibly craven and reactionary. Almost fascistic.

Rajoy has used his hardline stance against Catalunya to shore up his base of support in a moment of economic hardship for Spain.

And as @bcqer points out, it’s a good way to distract from an unbelievable corruption scandal that has plagued the conservative party.

That isn’t to say that the movement for an independent Catalunya is a left wing emancipatory one. It just isn’t.

Catalan nationalism has typically been conservative, especially in the democratic era. CiU, which ruled Catalunya for decades, is neoliberal

The current ruling coalition, which supports independence, is led by a conservative (Puidgemont) in an alliance with anti-capitalist parties

Literally the only thing they have in common is a sense of shared nationalism. That’s it. That alone should give people pause.

In fact a lot of the leftists that are veterans of the labor movement and anti-Franco resistance reject independence

That said, that doesn’t mean that Catalunya shouldn’t be allowed to vote. It absolutely should. Madrid’s actions today are heinous.

Allow the vote, and make the case for Catalans to stay in solidarity with their brothers in other regions. Do The Work, so to speak.

Catalunya is the richest region of Spain and has a lot of values worth admiring. It should be on the vanguard of a more just Spain.

In summary my stance is “For Self-Determination. Against Independence. Fuck the Police. And Fuck the PP”.

M. Martin de Almagro on this at Duck of Minerva:

http://duckofminerva.com/2017/09/on-catalonias-referendum-groupthink-and-strategic-essentialism-as-the-enemies-of-democracy.html

In three recent European referendums, about 37-38% of the eligible citizens voted “leave”: Scotland 2014, the UK 2016, and Catalonia 2017. However, Scottish unionists voted en masse in 2014 (the turnout was 85%) while Spanish unionists mostly stayed home.

@37: The notion that you can’t become independent unless all your residents agree is pretty much a recipe to deny legitimacy to independence movements of any kind (which I’m sure was the intent). Such movements rarely begin with a majority, because the majority aren’t going to stick their necks out to be accused of treason or worse. It would have prevented the American Revolution, since many Tories were driven out or chose to leave. Not terribly consistent.

On September 6 the wafer thin nationalist majority (based on 47% of the vote in the 2015 election) in the Catalan Parliament rammed through a referendum law in a single day’s debate
The following day it rammed through a transition law, giving the Catalan executive plenary powers and making it immune from judicial control.
The Parliament’s own legal staff refused to sign off on these extraordinary measures and the parliamentary majority refused to send them for review to the Consejo de Garantías Estatutarias de Cataluña, the Catalan body charged with ensuring that Catalan legislation is in accordance with the rights and obligations set down in the Estatut, the Catalan Constitution. So before any national level court intervened in all this, *Catalan* institutions had already thrown grave doubt on these measures’ legality.
The only people involved with organising and managing the poll were those whose life’s ambition is to “get rid of the colonisers”, as President Puigdemont is wont to put it in unguarded moments.
Regardless of what the government of Spain does or fails to do, there can’t be a democratically acceptable referendum until there’s a broad consensus within Catalan society that one is necessary and we would appear to be miles from that.
When and if such a consensus does arise there will be nothing in the world the government of Spain could do to stop it.
If I was a Catalan nationalist I’d stop shouting about Francoism and start figuring out why so many Catalans vote for parties that want nothing to do with independence.

I imagine the Catalan push for independence might seem, to EU elites currently pushing for more integration (id est, less nation state) like a very ridiculous (and quite inopportune) anachronism.

There is one thing that nags me personally in all of this is: isn’t wanting to have a country based on your ethnicity… er…. fundamentally racist? I would like to know good arguments as to why that is not the case, because I’m really quite unsure about what to think about it.

It would take some nerve to claim that the good people of 1776 had this inherent right, but the bad people of 1860 didn’t.

I may be wrong, but my memory says that the 1776 right to secede was abrogated in 1789, because part of ratification of the Constitution involved the debts of the individual states under the Articles of Confederation becoming nationalized.

In any case, the South perhaps fought for slavery, but the North claimed to be fighting for Union. IOW…never mind this shouldn’t become an American Civil War thread.

Mario@50: I see it more as a discussion about which functions of government should be done by the different levels of government. In that light the EU tries to extract border control, standards and some financial management from national to EU level. At the other end of the scale, rubbish collection is usually done by local government. Some people hope to see the EU eventually resemble “proper” federated states like the USSR or USA, or even Australia (made up of 500-ish nations before federation)… perhaps better examples should be found?

To me, Catalan independence is saying “less national level, more state level government”, or in economist language “what does Spain give us that we can’t get from the EU”.

Putting it in racial terms make even less sense than US racism, where there is at least a visible difference between the “races”. I don’t think “Spanish” counts as a race, let alone the microethnic categories that subdivide it. I haven’t seen any calls for non-Catalan ethnics to be removed.

“If I was a Catalan nationalist I’d stop shouting about Francoism and start figuring out why so many Catalans vote for parties that want nothing to do with independence.”

When you’re done wondering about that, start wondering how the referendum got 90% approval from the voters. Did the ‘no’ votes stay home? If there are a lot of ‘no’ voters, was it clever of the Spanish government to make it hard for them to vote?

I’m seeing a lot of very strange analogies posted here and I think it’s reflective of a lot of fairly ignorant commentators trying to make sense of a very confusing situation. I can’t really wrap my head around Catalan independence either, but I do know that the American Civil War is a terrible analogy. The American South wasn’t a nation that had existed as a distinct linguistic and cultural group for more than a thousand years. Nor was “America,” for that matter. European ethnic nationalism/self-determination movements might be seen as justified or not depending on your perspective and how they go about achieving independence, but they obviously exist in an entirely different framework from secession movements in places like the USA that were never really nation states to begin with. Also, the Confederacy was about one-third enslaved, and an unknown, but likely substantial proportion of its population was composed of mostly poor, mostly white unionist “hillbillies” who were never really consulted, so you can’t really argue secession was about the right to “self-determination” or even supported by most Southerners. The Confederacy’s government was essentially an aristocratic oligarchy and its justifications for secession were more about socio-economics than national identity (except insofar as they considered “slave owners” to be their national identity) so comparisons to populist secession movements motivated by a genuine yearning for national autonomy make very little sense.

One way to consider the Catalan drive for independence is to ask oneself how, exactly, they came to be ruled from Madrid in the first place. Consider that the personal union of Ferdinand and Isabella, which united the kingdoms of Castille-Leon and Aragon-Catalonia to produce the empire called “Spain,” began with them as equal co-rulers. Aragon was majority Catalan and a fairly even match of its western neighbor (at the time, there were no American colonies and Aragon dominated the Western Mediterranean). Personal union ended ended a dangerous rivalry and allowed them to drive the Muslims from Andalusia, and dominate the Iberia, Western Europe, and the Atlantic for centuries to come. Ferdinand of Aragon had himself come from a Castilian family, however, and the large and prosperous Catalan community in and around Barcelona wasn’t even Aragonese — except in feudal terms — so they were always a nation inside but apart from the rest of Spain and never got to choose their overlords, but being a minority in a feudal nation (where they had powerful local lords to protect them) is very different from the reality of living as a minority in a nation state.

The Catalan people (and Catalonia’s well-developed civil society) have never had much opportunity to decide for themselves if they wanted to be “Spanish” or not and every time it looks like they might try to make that choice for themselves, Madrid steps in to remind them that they have no right to that choice. Franco took the choice away once, and the Constitution of 1978 seems to have mostly deferred it. No one really wants another civil war, but as long as there is this sense that Catalans are Spanish subjects rather than citizens, Catalan nationalism (or anti-nationalism) will remain a powerful political tool for good and bad actors alike.

P.s. Although these historical comparisons are very dubious, the Spanish government is possibly informed by the recent British experience of what happens if you allow an independence referendum… (even one that is de jure non-binding)

Is it reasonable to force a geographically sound cultural minority to remain subjects of a state within which they don’t want to remain? I can’t see how. Must the Kurds remain minority Iraqis and Turks, against their will? Must Tibetans remain Chinese?

I very much agree with that, and believe it is the only position fully compatible with the UN Charter (“All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development”). To the list of exemples, I’d like to add Kosovo, which seceded from then Yougoslavia.

So I tend to support the principle of organizing politically for independence, even when I would personally disapprove of the outcome (for instance I support the principle of the Savoie independence movement even though I completely oppose the idea of Savoie independence). Catalans in favor of independence should, I believe, have the right to organize in favor of it, for instance by organizing referenda, without having their hands smashed by police. If a majority of them is indeed in favor of independence, they should have the right to politically express that and, eventually, to secede. Ditto for Scots, Welsh, Flemish, Quebecois, Bretons, Corsicans and proud residents of Galt Gulch.

In a just world, how else could it be?

The interesting question is why Scotland seceding from the British (rump) Empire was so controversial, while the prospect of secession from Spain is not. It’s not because the central government is Francoist, because it’s not. It is Catalan secession that will prompt the central government to revive the Francoism that was so carefully left in reserve by democratization, not the Francoism prompting the secession. (Besides, good liberals lover Ukraine, which is approximately the same kind of anti-Popular Front government.) My instinct is that the real problem is socializing Spain, rising above the corruptions of democratization, not national partition, which mat be capital’s divide et impera.

I suspect a good bit of the support for Catalunya is that it will be a stronger force for the current world order than the rather ramshackle Spanish state. By my lights, that means Catalunya shows every sign of being a more potent neoliberal state. It’s the Lega du Nord turning North Italy into a powerhouse unencumbered by the South. I’ve heard that the new Catalunya will include Valencia and the Balearic Islands, but not Aragon. It seems like it should be the other way around. But, is this actually true?

Perhaps another way of expressing this is to say is breaking up English imperialism is like trust-busting. But breaking up Spanish imperialism is like spinning off a healthier company out of a failing corporation. The phrase “nascent imperialism”one hears in reference to China, Russia, even Syria, seems to be absent from the debate.

As to the violence of the Spanish state, speaking as a US national I am not impressed. Somehow I think US cops would have accomplished much more intimidation, especially with an actual body count.

Layman@57

Your criteria do seem to demolish the case for Scottish independence. Scots are not:
– a religious minority in a state with an intolerant established religion. There is indeed a Church of Scotland, which is the established national church: it’s Calvinistic and Presbyterian,
– a lingual minority in a state which discourages use of their language. Most Scots speak a dialect of English, which is in no way discouraged and is no more incomprehensible outside Scotland than Geordie is outside north-east England. A small minority(around 1%) of Scots speak Gaelic, a very distinct language, but as far as I know there is no demand for an independent Gaeldom.
– an ethnic minority in a state which oppresses their ethnic group. In the 20th and 21st centuries, Scots have been so little oppressed in the UK that Balfour, Campbell-Bannerman, Bonar Law, Ramsay MacDonald, Macmillan, Douglas-Home, Blair and Brown could reasonably be counted as Scots Prime Ministers; and Cameron’s father was Scottish but heavily anglicised. (There were another 14 non-Scots).

So I think that you should, logically, disapprove of the SNP. Do you?

@30 Layman 10.02.17 at 5:48 am:

Lincoln won the argument, but he didn’t win it by making a _legal_ argument.

As Glen Tompkins pointed out, Lincoln did make a legal argument in his inaugural address of 1861. (Beginning about paragraph 11) But you are right, he did not win by making that argument; the law was enforced via violence. [Thank you, Glen – I had never read that address until today.]

It’s hard to make a convincing case that states, having voluntarily entered into the union, may not voluntarily exit the union.

You must be reading the apologists of The Confederate States of America to make that silly argument. Does someone make a successful legal argument that a written agreement is something that a party may unilaterally breach without consequence? But your statement could be right because you used the word “voluntarily” in place of “unilaterally”.

Is it reasonable to force a geographically sound cultural minority to remain subjects of a state within which they don’t want to remain? I can’t see how. Must the Kurds remain minority Iraqis and Turks, aganst their will? Must Tibetans remain Chinese?

You left out the Palestinians, the Mapuche, the Meth Addicts, the Cajuns, the Nyungar, the Ecotopians, the Inuit and the Anarchists – but I should not expect a comprehensive list (ibid., para. 22). I also do not expect any universal answer to your question – if there is an inherent right to secede, don’t we all end up as Sovereign Citizens? We then enter alliances with each other, without anyone but our sovereign selves to enforce the terms of those alliances…which might develop some sort of feudal structure…eventually we create bigger alliances (to protect us from other big alliances) and give them some authority to set fair standards and enforce agreements…pretty soon, we each work for a Sovereign Corporation and pay taxes. Or some such….

Wouldn’t it be wiser for Spain to invest in _convincing_ the Catalans they’d be better off in Spain than not? If they can’t convince, isn’t that a problem in and of itself?

Yes, but…Rajoy. (An acquaintance at Complutense says that he thinks Rajoy is using Trump’s methods, freshly spurred-on by last week’s meeting.)

@47 Layman 10.02.17 at 6:24 pm:

bob mcmanus: “No the better argument, codified in the post-Civil War amendments, was that a State, by seceding, may nor deprive some of its internal residents, those who wished to remain US citizens, of their US citizenship, rights and privileges.”

Well, the fact that it was codified in post-Civil War amendments makes it clear it wasn’t in the Constitution _before_ that.

Surely you are not arguing that only enumerated rights are to be recognised by the USofA? That appears to be a narrow interpretation of the Ninth Amendment.

It’s still the case that Lincoln invented a prohibition that many people thought didn’t exist, and that arguably didn’t exist even looking at it from this great distance.

Arguably, you do not exist from whatever distance there may be between us. I’ll let those with a better foundation in philosopy explain, if needed. I think that one side of such an argument about Lincoln comes from glibertarians and from apologists for The CSA [something about culture and heritage], and their reasoning is motivated by a particular outcome.

This is especially true since it was the Constitution of a state which only existed because it seceded from another state over the objections of a substantial number of the citizens who would be forced to secede against their will. It would take some nerve to claim that the good people of 1776 had this inherent right, but the bad people of 1860 didn’t.

The good people of 1775-1783 paid dearly to win against unilaterally-imposed rule. The good people of 1861-1865 paid dearly to enforce a voluntarily-entered agreement.

The “bad people of 1860” paid dearly for their attempt to unilaterally exit an agreement.

As far as the recent events in Catalu̱a are concerned, I have the idea that the differences are being trumped up for political purposes Рby both Rajoy and the separatist parties. There is the same sort of emotional appeal that works on supporters of Trump or Netanyahu.

Once the separatists start an alliance with Macron, we will know they’re serious.

Susan C@59

A British version of the breakup of Yugoslavia would seem unlikely. There is no obvious parallel for the Serbian/Croatian massacres of the 1940s, nor for the loyalties of the Croatians/Slovenians to the Hapsburg empire.

A Spanish version of Northern Ireland seems equally unlikely. I don’t think there is a Spanish version of the Protestant/Catholic divide going back to the 16th century (a time when there were indeed Spanish Protestants, soon exterminated); nor a tradition of Castilian terrorists trying to overthrow a Catalan state in the 1920s to the 1990s, against the wishes of the actual Catalans.

As for the US Civil War: if there is evidence of black slavery in Catalonia, please do let us know.

“All of these are probably wrong”, you said. Indeed.

CB @ 71

How does your opinion (too often justified, I entirely agree) apply to Irish independence, 1920s, or to the proposed incorporation by force of an unwilling Northern Ireland into a united Ireland then and in subsequent decades?

Salem @62 is right in that the Catalans aren’t very oppressed.

As a matter of fact, if you are not of Catalan origin, you will find it difficult to get a permanent professorship at a Catalan university. At least, that’s what I’ve been hearing from my Spanish friends for close to a decade now (before that, none were aiming at professorships) – and some of them are Catalans. As far as I know, this is even institutionalized. It is legally legitimate to discriminate against non-Catalans in such a situation (and IIUC it is the same in the Basque country).

Membership in an ethnicity is, by definition (although, compare with R. Tuvel, 2017), determined by being born to a family of that same ethnicity. The difference to a ‘race’ is superficial. A standard issue Spaniard and a standard issue Catalan have about the same genotypic and phenotypic differences between them as a standard issue German and a standard issue European Jew had in 1939. So, frankly, I’d say the Catalan independence movement is a racist movement. But I’m willing to accept an alternative interpretation of the issues.

Bravo Fake Dave @58 – exactly what I was getting agitated about reading this thread.

Stephen@70

I can only imagine that you didn’t read Susan’s comment carefully enough. Surely, your comment backs up her post – it’s very tempting to look at the situation in Cataluyna/Spain and then think about the case via your own national situation, but that analogy is almost certainly misleading. (To make this more concrete: I’m Welsh. When I was growing up, Welsh Nats used to claim that Cardiff was like Barcelona, but with rugby. (This was somehow linked to a vague historical memory of the role of the miners brigades in the Spanish civil war). They then used data about Catalonia to ‘prove,’ claims about Wales. That was deeply misleading, but, still, when I saw coverage of the protests this weekend, my automatic response was to imagine the police breaking into my Primary School and beating up my parents. Yes, that is silly. But, surely, that was Susan’s point?)

@58
“I can’t really wrap my head around Catalan independence either, but I do know that the American Civil War is a terrible analogy. ”

Yes, and this is quite an understatement. The notion that we should be taking our cues from a 19th century society where the primary issues were just how bad human slavery is and how best to ethnically cleanse the remainder of the continent is, uh, bizarre. I mean, Franco happened hours ago by comparison.

The criteria for a permanent public sector jobs is fluency in both catalan and spanish, not ethnicity or not?
Still very questionable but not quite the same is offical discrimination by ethnicity.

Ogden Wernstrom: “The good people of 1775-1783 paid dearly to win against unilaterally-imposed rule. The good people of 1861-1865 paid dearly to enforce a voluntarily-entered agreement. The “bad people of 1860” paid dearly for their attempt to unilaterally exit an agreement.”

It strikes me that this is a bizarre, untenable basis for justifying the actions of any of these people. Who imposed rule on the good people of 1775? That rule had existed for generations. They were born into it, as were all their countrymen. None of the good or bad people of 1861 had ever entered into any agreement; their grandparents had, grudgingly, and with a tacit understanding that it was the states which were, in the end, sovereign.

It would be far simpler to say that secession is, for you, good when it meets with your approval, and bad when it doesn’t.

“Surely you are not arguing that only enumerated rights are to be recognised by the USofA? ”

Perish the thought. I’m arguing that you can’t very well say that the Constitution was clear on the point before the war if it was necessary to amend it to be clear on the point after the war.

CB @ 72 Stepehen

The independence of Ireland was achieved by a campaign of guerrilla nafrare and terrorism and was followed a Civil War.

. the new state soon lost a considerable proportion of its Protestant population.

In NI, after the defeat of the IRA a complex repressive apparatus was set up keep the minority population in its place.

Despite Brexit induced speculation,I think the only conceivable circumstances in which NI would become part of a united Ireland would ones involving a deep rejigging of the status of the UK and Ireland, some kind of confederal arrangement perhaps?

Chris Bertram

I’d suggest that the last hundred years offer few examples of secessions and partitions unaccompanied by massive ethnic cleansing or at least the oppression…

Yes, but the last hundred years also offer few examples of secessions and partitions which were the outcome of a democratic process. I take that as an obvious precondition. I don’t think the record of secession that do satisfy this precondition is that bad, but even if it were, I don’t think it is a dispositive argument for the following reason.

Like war, start the process and it is hard to get out and hard to know where it will lead. Good reason not to start.

That’s where I completely disagree (in the abstract). I believe people should have the right to start (process of secession, not wars, to be clear). I believe it is an essential component of the democratic system that people may experiment and see for themselves what the outcome of the experiment is, even if it is obvious (to me) that the experiment will lead to bad outcomes . And, yes, I obviously realize that this means people will often experiment in directions I disapprove of or which are harmful to me or to people I care about, but that’s a feature, not a bug. So I’m perfectly prepared to believe that it would be catastrophic (or at least very bad) if Catalonia left Spain, so I’m perfectly prepared to listen to arguments saying (for instance) that one should absolutely vote No in the referendum. Arguments against the referendum itself or against its principle, I find considerably weaker (this logical articulation is also where I think we disagreed on immigration law, in that I personally believe – probably like you – that a very broad freedom of circulation and installation is the way to go yet I also believe in the right of political groups to democratically organize in favor of other options, whereas I understand you to argue for a more deontological and as such more absolutist understanding of the matter).

Or to be concrete, suppose Catalonia secedes and on day one decides that whoever is not a true Catalan according to their spurious criteria cannot be a civil servant anymore, so that thousands of people are suddenly laid off. Do I disapprove? Of course. Am I convinced that the supposed benefits in terms of protection of the cultural identity of Catalonia or similar BS are transparent pretexts to pander to xenophobic segments of the electorate? Yes.

But I also don’t see that such a political move and such motivations would be so out of the ordinary that political movements advocating for them should be barred from normal political expression. After all, it frequently happens that recently elected right-wing or neoliberal governments unexpectedly lay off thousands of civil servants with equal disregard for the human impact as in my hypothetical scenario and with equally spurious motivations (offering tax breaks to the ultra-rich, pandering to the market fundamentalists…), and though many people oppose such moves, I don’t see many people seriously entertaining the thought that campaigning on such ideas is a bad idea in principle or should be outright illegal.

“The notion that you can’t become independent unless all your residents agree is pretty much a recipe to deny legitimacy to independence movements of any kind (which I’m sure was the intent). Such movements rarely begin with a majority, because the majority aren’t going to stick their necks out to be accused of treason or worse. It would have prevented the American Revolution, since many Tories were driven out or chose to leave. Not terribly consistent.”

Well, no, because every people always has the ability to eschew legal means and to attempt to violently tear the state apart by force, as in 1776 and 1861. The upshot is that you should have a really good reason for doing so, and be willing to pay the price. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were very well aware that they were putting their lives at risk.

Layman@84 “None of the good or bad people of 1861 had ever entered into any agreement; their grandparents had, grudgingly, and with a tacit understanding that it was the states which were, in the end, sovereign.”

No, there was no such tacit understanding. The first words of the Constitution are “We, the people…” Nor was the Constitution ratified by the states, they were ratified by popular conventions. And Article Nine states “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” The people, not the states.

The existing government, under the articles of confederation, did not establish the new government. Moreover, as I think was mentioned above, the new government was not established by unanimous vote of sovereign states. It is thoroughly illogical to conclude that a national government can be established in lieu of the confederation by a mere plurality of sovereign states.

Some people promoting the Constitution professed to believe it did not institute a national government. It is never possible to be completely certain they were invincibly stupid. But a more plausible explanation is that they were discreet with the truth. It is true that there are distinct limitations on national powers. It is difficult enough to reconcile the full faith and credit clause, or the commerce clause with any notions of state sovereignty. But it is impossible to reconcile the fugitive slave clause or the injunction that national treaties are national laws with any theory of sovereignty.

It was Jefferson whose Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions tried to revive such notions in a severely polarized political climate still roiled by the French and Haitian Revolutions. But in practice it was Calhoun who really promoted this states’ rights revisionism.

Suzanne@85 “The slaves making for the British lines would have been surprised to hear they were running from government of the good people, whose eventual constitution would be chock-full of accommodations to slaveholders, including the Electoral College that is still with us today. Had the Good People stayed loyal to their monarch, American slavery might have ended sooner with many fewer dead.”

Gerald Horne is wrong. The American Revolution in the end was the death knell of property suffrage and slavery, in the north. The question of why this was the opposite of true in the south is not really an issue for Horne, which leaves his work as irrelevant. As for the idea Parliament would have abolished slavery in all their colonies means they would have been attacking elite property not just in a handful of islands but in a whole vast realm. Thinking the politics of abolition could possibly have worked out the same way in defiance of the balance of power is absurd.

But the US Civil War is not nearly as irrelevant as claimed. How does the country get divided up? What happens to national properties in Catalunya? What happens to Catalan properties in the rest of Spain? Where does the national debt go? How do the Euros in the banks get divvied up? How do you even tell the difference between Catalan and “Spanish” Euros? The business support for these demonstrations that the Catalan independence movement smacks of support for an economic war of liberating property.

CUP is eco-feminist and advocates participatory democracy? I even saw a reference to it as a “degrowth” party! Is it really a left-wing party at all?

About the Civil War, there was the Compromise of 1860. If both sides had stuck with the deal they made, there might have been room to avoid few hundred thousand deaths and misc. other disruptions. Slavery was being deprecated globally, over time. Cotton was soon to become a glut on the market.

Maybe, just maybe, self-sovereign nation-states and not the plus ultra of political systems.

@Stephen: Spain was slightly involved in the religious wars of the 16th. You might regard the current Spanish state as the shrunken remnants of their Empire which used to include Holland, not to mention extension of sovereignty overseas.

– so you guys really and obviously didn’t want to discuss the (probably) main reason for this stupid outbursts of reactionary – and self-defeating ”nationalism”?

It may be true that Nationalists and separatists are ready to “pay the price” for breaking an existing political unit, which may have existed for hundreds of years in different forms like Spain. But the point is they are imposing such sacrifice on those who do not believe in the mythic benefits of separation, who may be a majority or even a large minority in their own territory. They are careless of the interests of the rest of the unit as well as of people who disagree in Catalonia. As His Most Catholic Majesty the king of Spain correctly observed in his TV speech. The point about the Spanish Constitution of 1978 is that it was a compromise to allow the restoration of the Parliamentary system by reassuring both sides democracy would not threaten National unity while allowing devolution. Trying to break it by unilateral secession is very stupid and dangerous. This is what gave franco the excuse to start the civil war as champion of unity and conservatism. The alliance between the Nationalists and left in catalonia is a open invitation to the Spanish Tories to repeat the exercise of stomping on the more radical regions by using the threat of sedition and separation. The whole exercise is staggeringly stupid and unnecessary and will do nothing to reduce poverty or unemployment or correct the effects of the financial crisis and austerity. As a response to failing to win the Spanish general election it is daft. Why not try winning more votes next time round? If the king decides to send the army to crack heads the Catalans will have a lot more to complain about.

CUP = leaving Spain will help bring an end to capitalism in Catalonia. a sovereign people!! a sovereign people!! a happy people!!!!! a people with dreams !!!!! Spain is not a democracy, Venezuela is a democracy. the Catalan nations !!! the Catalan nations !!! (note plural). Rinse, repeat

No, I haven’t gone to their meetings or read their proposals in depth. They get loads of coverage on Catalan state media tho and those are the kinds of things they say

@102
“[…]this stupid outbursts of reactionary – and self-defeating ”nationalism”?”
You mean Rajoy government reaction?”

Yes – that too.

And
”What you describe is a human foible.”

Agreed – and not only you in Southern Europe have been told for centuries that you are not as good as the peoples in Northern Europe. The East Germans have been told by the West Germans and as so many times mentioned here US so called ‘Blacks’ have been told by US ‘Whites’ and in kind of a crazy way F…face von Clownstick has told Americans that they are NOT as ‘good’ as workers as for example THE Chinese because ‘we the people’ are NOT ‘winning’ against them.

And then you write: ”Because for Catalans not doing anything means to disappear, more or less slowly.”

That’s why now: ”Catalonia First”?

Hrm. India’s been redrawing all its state borders on ethnic lines for years. Realistically the EU is a single polity and member-state borders are internal: drawing sovereign borders on ethnic lines has a bad reputation, but does anybody have any data on internal borders?

(Also, of course, the catalans and the central government had a negotiated-out autonomy framework that Rajoy and the spanish judiciary shat all over.)

Ogden Wernstrom: “Layman, continuing to appear to demand a single, simple standard by which all secession shall be judged…”

Really, I don’t now what the fuck you’re going on about.

@ 109
”Similarly in Europe a “left wing” view now has people having to decide between “good nationalists” i.e. Scotland and Catalonia and “bad nationalists” i.e.”

Not really – as in the Netherland in France and in Germany -(a yuuuge chunk of Europe) ‘- given the choice between nice persons who doesn’t represent them and diabolical persons who does represent them, most people voted for the nice persons.

Which isn’t actually quite different from Clinton/Trump – as Clinton/Trump showed – the majority also didn’t vote for Trump – just same crazy US… situation erected him ‘President’!

@109 If there is a leftwing view of Scottish and Catalan “good nationalists”, it’s not showing up here. Some kinds of nationalism are worse than others, since nationalism slides easily into racism. That accounts for the worse treatment of UKIP and, even more, AfD.

Dipper: “As Clinton/Trump showed, given the choice between a nice person who doesn’t represent them and a diabolical person who does represent them, most people will vote for the diabolical person.”

I think you’re unintentionally right. The entire purpose of two dozen years of right-wing mud-slinging (Whitewater and Travelgate and Vince Foster and carpetbagger and devious-standing-by-her-man and New World Order and Muslim brotherhood and Benghazi and emailz and so on) was to convince people that she was diabolical. In the end, most people voted for her, diabolical and on their side. The rest voted for the other guy.

@ John Quiggin

“nationalism slides easily into racism. That accounts for the worse treatment of UKIP”.

To the disappointment of many on here and elsewhere, UKIP have been particularly firm about avoiding a slide into racism. In fact, it could be said that the essence of Farage’s political genius was to be aware of the possibility of racism in UKIP and ruthlessly expel it wherever he found it.

German firms with a presence in Britain should make provisions now for a “very hard Brexit”.

Presumably that means increasing their manufacturing presence in the UK so they can continue to sell products here without paying self-imposed tariffs and navigating self-imposed customs hurdles.

@ nastywoman.

Missing the point here. Lots of people in these countries voted for people they felt represented them who happened to be nice, not because they were nice.

And again on the USA yes we are all aware that more people voted for Clinton than Trump, but the US Presidential rules which were not secret require the winner to win the college not get the most votes. Voters in those key swing states were entitled to vote for who they felt best represented them, just as were citizens of California, New York etc. Clinton’s failure to do the mathematics and get on the plane does not make the voters in those places racists.

@118
”Clinton’s failure to do the mathematics and get on the plane does not make the voters in those places racists.”

The idea that if people vote for a racist F…face – it could be IN ANY WAY the ‘failure’ of somebody who campaigned against such a despicable idiot – never will stop to amaze me…

@116 Many things could be said, that doesn’t make them true. I’ll turn the mike over to well known lefty, Jonathan Arnott, former UKIP MEP

http://www.hartlepoolmail.co.uk/news/jonathan-arnott-resigns-over-ukip-s-attitude-towards-muslims-1-8587359

@117 Quite possible, given general characteristics of nationalism, but no evidence . How about Rajoy and his nationalist party?

#121. That is a bit more easy to find out, the current darling of the Catalonian branch of the PP, Xavier García Albiol, has used the islamophobic card for years.

Although if I dont remember it wrong CiU (the previous iteration of Puigdemont’s party) also had a lot of similar instances.

Not to mention the traditional view of some that the #1 existential threat for the Catalonian republic and “race” are the “hordes of Andalusians” inmigrating there.

You can get a look at that and more if you understand Spanish, at https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heribert_Barrera, Barrera being an historical leader of the left wing nationalist ERC party.

I dont think is of a lot of use to get into this because I think, maybe naively, that this is not precisely a significant part of what most people think about the issues at hand. No need to see what side has the most racists uncles at the table, we all have. But what do I know, I didnt think we were going to get to this clusterfuck either.

@113 “Do we know what the Catalan movement thinks of people of color? Of refugees? Of muslims?” in general, would prefer any /all of the above to incomers from the rest of Spain. Better Muslims that Murcians, as it were.

(yes, I know, Baños, Rufián and some other Cat. nat standard bearers are of Spanish descent, the zeal of the convert, the love that’s hammered in etc. And look at the current Cat. cabinet
http://www.govern.cat/pres_gov/govern/ca/govern/consell-executiu/index.html

Apart from Forn’s second name, 100% ethnic Catalan pedigree )

@Layman 10.04.17 at 6:31 pm, #97

@ Rob Chametzky, Amar certainly makes that argument. Nevertheless, there were founders on both side of the debate and the point was argued for decades before the Civil War.

Not wanting to get all textegitical, but I’m a little unclear how to read your comment.
So: what point are you saying there were founders on each side of?

(A) Is it that there were founders who were against precluding secession and founders who were for precluding secession? (B) Or is it that there were founders who believed the Constitution precluded secession and founders who believed it did not?

The answer to (A) is pretty clearly “yes”, and Amar gives examples.

Basically saying “no” to (B) is Amar’s big point. Amar’s argument actually has two parts: (1) secession is precluded by US Constitution and (2) those arguing about ratification, on both sides, understood (1) to be the case, with the evidence for (2) providing evidence for (1).

The argument over ratification, he says, was between Federalists and anti-Federalists who all understood that the Constitution precluded secession, and whether that was acceptable was one (pretty major) part of the larger ratification argument.

Now it is doubt true, depending in part at least on who counts as among the “founders”, that examples could be given of some who believed the Constitution did not preclude secession. Crucially, Amar shows/argues that the public records of the debates and private writings/letters of debaters do not include this view. Perhaps Amar is (overly) selective or biased in his (presentation of his) scholarship. I can’t say, but that would seem to be required to counter his argument.

As for later views, Amar also addresses this, explaining, for example, how/why misunderstandings of the language and context of the Constitution could (and did)
lead to such mistakes.

Genug. Basta. Enough.

–RC

Some kinds of nationalism are worse than others, since nationalism slides easily into racism.

Where does this happen? I have not noticed Latin American nationalism sliding into racism, that is, Guatemalans saying they are superior to Hondurans, Cubans telling Dominicans to check their privilege, or Uruguayans feeling diminished by Paraguayans, and yet, in Latin America, nationalist sentiments are as present as elsewhere together with a regional identity. Regarding race, I challenge anybody to determine, by their looks, whether a person is Mexican or Peruvian, Castilian or Catalonian, Italian or Greek, French or Iranian. Once you leave out the minorities of what Westeners call white and black, you are left with the vast majority of humanity whose “race” does not even have a name. Let’s call them cosmopolitan brown. What is the good of national racism if you can’t tell the national races apart?

It is a peculiarly Western notion that nationalist sentiment must be avoided because it easily slips into Hitlerian genocide, a notion that cannot be universalized. This leads to many Westeners seeming incapable of rationally addressing the nature of national societies without bringing up their fear of them, sooner or later, transforming into murderous oppressors and world-wide plunderers. In contrast, Latin Americans do not share these profound fears about their societies. Au contraire, most fear being plundered by the Western institution called the IMF.

This leaves us with the original questions Catalonian separatism brings up: what is the nature of national societies and do they have the right to self-determination? If so, under what circumstance and using what procedures? This can and must be universalized. Forget about racism.

@ John Quiggin – 117 Farage had not been the leader of UKIP for a while at the time of that quote. With the party’s purpose fulfilled it is sliding into irrelevance. The drift towards an anti-islamic party is simply hastening its demise and so making my point.

@ Layman. That isn’t what I said. I’m not going to respond to you picking at things I didn’t say.

@ nastywoman. Germany has a massive trade surplus with the UK. Tariffs and customs problems will make them selling their goods here harder, making it more profitable to move manufacturing here. There are already stories of Brexit forcing companies to – horror of horrors – moving their supplies from overseas producers to domestic producers.

@Z well, nationalism has this in common with racism, that it advocates discriminating against individuals on the basis of a characteristic that is very difficult for an individual to change. Even when others are tolerated as members, the notion of a “normal” citizen can have markedly exclusionary effects. Scottish nationalism has actually been quite good on some of this stuff, but I’d be interested in the details of any proposed nationality law.

“Also, any mode of reasoning that leads you to judge the anti-colonization movements of the past decades, which often explicitly appealed to ethnicity or a strongly exclusionary sense of cultural identity to justify their existence, as fundamentally racist is probably offtrack somewhere.”

Careful now, lest we look to closely at the facts. Many anti-colonization movements, in seeking to define the nation excluded from it ethnic groups who were seen as having been too friendly with the colonizers, among others. The attempt by the government of Myanamar to represent the Rohingya as “illegal immigrants” and to deny them citizenship has plenty of precedents. Rejecting the rule of colonial powers was a good thing, seeking to reproduce the mono-ethnic fantasy of the European nation state throughout the world was not.

Rob Chametzky @ 130

Madison held that there was a “right of seceding from intolerable oppression.” He saw this as something other than a right to secede at will, but I hope you’ll agree that ‘intolerable oppression’ is hardly a rigid standard, being to a great extent in the eye of the oppressed.

Jefferson actually threatened succession in 1799. Morris held that secession was “entirely constitutional” in 1812. The Massachusetts legislature considered secession in 1808. There are plenty of examples.

The founding fathers had to reconcile their view that the union was inseparable with their own rebellion against their government. At least some of them dodged, asserting that while there was no right to secession at will, there was an inherent right to secession under the right circumstances. They were splitting hairs, I think.

Further to Eamonn’s point about secessionist fantasy, I recommend looking for anything at all about defence expenditure in the secessionist platform. They appear to think independent Catalonia will be welcomed with open arms by the EU, rather than the diktats being ruthlessly applied to much bigger Britain. These would surely include NATO membership. Some existing members like Portugal spend about 1% of GDP on defence, but the agreed target is 2%, and this could easily be imposed on a new applicant. Add to this a more realistic scenario on Catalonia’s share of Spanish national debt, and the gravy held out of a plusher welfare state becomes invisible.

Another area they do not seem to have thought about, even less excusably, is cultural diplomacy. There is a large community of Catalan speakers in the Valencia region, with no secessionist sentiment of note; in the Balearics; and in French Roussillon. Catalan nationalists want to preserve the language and other creatures of the culture everywhere it exists, which means good relations with the governments of these areas. Independence will get in the way of this, as suspicions of irredentism will be hard to allay.

The thing about tarrif and customs problems with german-made goods being difficult to sell in the UK is that… the EU doesn’t and won’t run export regulations to get entangled in, so any problems will have to come from the UK side, either deliberately (making a mockery of Uk open for business rhetoric) or accidentally as a result of UK administrative incompetence.

(In any case the big problem will be the breakup of supply chains: trade barriers have a compounding effect, so unless you go full juche…)

Dipper

Physicists search for simple laws or quantities that help measure and understand what is going on. In modern politics that quantitiy would be political representation, and the law is that people vote for whomever maximises their political representation. As Clinton/Trump showed, given the choice between a nice person who doesn’t represent them and a diabolical person who does represent them, most people will vote for the diabolical person.

Physicists have measuring instruments and measuring techniques for the quantities they measure. There are no measuring instruments or measuring techniques for political representation; the idea that it can be treated as something quantifiable like the quantities of physics is entirely fraudulent. Votes for Clinton and votes for Trump are/were countable; the reasons for those votes, not so.

side issue, but the customs inspection these days does not involve “spend[ing] a lot of money setting up massive border inspection posts”. It does involve intricate IT changes across multiple systems (exporters, importers, carriers, forwarders, brokers, storage and so on). These typically take years to implement. Since the details of Brexit are not known, probably all that can be done are preliminary capacity changes, mostly on the British side (EU systems already cope with large volumes of non-EU traffic, so adding British points of exit to the list of non-EU ports is presumably not a problem). Only a small percentage of goods are inspected and much of that is done away from ports of entry. As with most compliance systems, ninety per cent of people comply automatically – the enforcement is there to keep the other ten per cent from getting out of hand.

That does not mean there will not be chaos. When Australia switched on a new customs system in 2006, goods piled up on wharves because industry interfaces did not all work as planned (despite extensive testing). It’s not the tariffs (simple change), but the myriad of industry connections that have to be reset that will be the problem.

Nobody seems to have mentioned Ukraine. Looking back, why was the U.S. so gungho for Yeltsin’s idea splitting Ukraine from Russia? Ukraine was part of Russia for a longer time than the U.S. has been a country, yet not only did it split away, but the EU and the U.S. have used every incentive to get it to move further away from Russia. I’m not asking this as a big fan of Putin – Putin, after all, is Yeltsin’s handpicked successor, and he simply amplified Yeltsin’s system of corruption and authoritarianism. Surely, though, the case for Catalonia is of the same type as the case for Ukraine. Interesting that the E.U. seems to view these as completely different instances. I think they are, in fact, very similar.

@149 Sorry, what is your point?

I’m arguing that once we self-identify as part of group and make that our in-group, then we’re highly likely to out-group practices, beliefs, and people as strange and even suspect.

I’d like to avoid specifics, but if we’re talking about threats to people who self-identify as black, as Jesse Jackson noted, then the threat is much more likely to come from other folks self-identifying as black. Police violence against people of color, undoubtably a fact, has diminished at an extremely encouraging rate. Any is too much, but if we removed all police violence against blacks (an ideal well worth working for) the number of African-Americans being shot, robbed, and raped, would not be very different from what it is today. As for black people being bigots, the answer is yes to varying degrees depending on the out-group. Gay black men face a great deal of bigotry, especially in African nations.

Chris Bertram Careful now

Careful about what? Mario asked if building a state on ethnicity is fundamentally racist, and I pointed out that the Catalan independence probably gives very little concern to ethnicity compared to cultural identity and that if this makes them fundamentally racist, then most if not all anti-colonization movements (not to mention the UN Charter) are equally fundamentally racist, and I find that very odd to say the least. Nothing in the above is in contradiction with the fact that some anti-colonization movements have done horrifyingly racist stuff. In fact, nothing in the above would be in contradiction with the fact that all anti-colonization movements have done some horrifyingly racist stuff. My position is just that it is the doing horrifyingly racist stuff part that makes them racist, not organizing politically on the basis of a common sense of shared cultural identity. To be concrete, Latvians kept a strong sense of shared cultural identity distinct from the Russian and Soviet ones during the 250 years they were part of the larger identity on which they drew extensively to (re)gain their independence. Does anybody really believe that this, in itself, make the 1991 independence movement fundamentally racist?

nationalism has this in common with racism, that it advocates discriminating against individuals on the basis of a characteristic that is very difficult for an individual to change

In considering that Catalans in favor of independence are (perhaps even ipso facto) nationalist in the sense that they “advocate discriminating against individuals on the basis of [nationality]”, I think you are making a fundamental categorical mistake. I think you are missing that the following two questions are logically independent.

The first is 1) Who gets to decide who belongs to the political entity deciding laws in force on a given territory and group of people? Spanish people (defined in a certain exclusionary way) or Catalans (defined in a different exclusionary way) (or citizens of the EU, defined in yet another exclusionary way, or something else, but which would have to be exclusionary in the current actually existing world)? The second is 2) What is it OK to decide and what will actually be decided by the group selected in Question 1 about the people who are outside the exclusionary boundaries?

In your use of nationalism above, you seemingly navigate between the two questions in that you seem to interpret the answer “Catalans” to the first question as the answer “Catalans should be allowed to discriminate against anyone who is not Catalan” to the second question. But that is not so, logically speaking. It is theoretically possible that Catalans, having achieved political self-determination, will move on to grant full right of installation with full access to political and social rights to any permanent resident. It is even theoretically possible that the same Constitution that will enshrine the answer “Catalan” to Question 1 will also at simultaneously enshrine “Equal rights for everyone” as an answer to Question 2. At least, this is not theoretically less implausible than the same move on the part of Spanish people or EU citizens (and in fact it happened at least once historically: the 1793 French Constitution gave equal right to essentially anyone who subscribed to the ideals stated in its preamble and who wished to live in France). So if what you care about is freedom of installation, equal access to human, political and social rights etc… then the answer to question 1 should be of no concern to you, in the abstract.

Now I am very prepared to hear good arguments according to which in the actual world, an independent Catalonia would be much worse in that respect than today’s Spain (FWIW I don’t believe this at the moment, but I’m prepared to be convinced otherwise), or arguments according to which they would be about the same on that metric but that secession would be very bad for many other reasons (FWIW, I am quite willing to believe this at the moment). All these, because they point to a link between Question 1 and Question 2, would be (if true) arguments to vote No on the referendum (that I would personally find persuasive). But I don’t think they would be very persuasive arguments against the principle of organizing a referendum. For that, one would need arguments according to which exclusionary boundaries at some scales are fundamentally better or more justified than comparable exclusionary boundaries at different scales. That doesn’t strike me as impossible to achieve in the abstract, but I wouldn’t say it is especially easy either nor that the answer is so especially obvious to me that I could confidently say that Spain is an appropriate scale but Catalonia is not (or vice-versa).

@rogergathman, 148
Yeltsin did not split Ukraine from Russia. Ukraine was not a part of Russia, it was a part of the USSR, headed by Gorbachev.
Yeltsin was the president of Russian FSR, not the USSR. As long as the USSR existed, he was sort of like the governor of the biggest state, not the head of a sovereign nation. Hence his move to break up the USSR to its constituent states.

the nationalists are now going full magic realism. Junqueras, the VP says there’s no problem in banks moving their legal domiciles from Catalonia because they have only moved them elsewhere in the “Països Catalans” ( Catalan Nations/Greater Catalonia) and not Madrid. And recall that he’s by no means regarded as an extremist among the nationalists.
http://www.levante-emv.com/comunitat-valenciana/2017/10/06/oriol-junqueras-traslado-banco-sabadell/1624755.html

@
”Catalan independence probably gives very little concern to ethnicity compared to cultural identity”

”Probably” Yes and No – but that is so NOT-Twentyfirst Century!

– and about ”cultural identity” in october – there is a very famous European tribe -(especially loved by US Americans) – who always puts teh ”Lederhosen” on in Oktober and tries to drink a Liter of beer in one swoop – and this tribe is very famous in Spain too – as it kind of has conquered the Island of Mallorca – but where the tribe originally is from – it is unlawful to drink one Liter of beer in one swoop -(at least in a Festzelt) and that really should give the Catalans ”food for thought” -(in a matter of sayen)

Artur Mas, a key figure in the independence movement has said that, well, you know, perhaps we’re not really ready for this independence thing and the national govt has said it’s sorry the cops over egged it on Sunday

English-language source:
https://www.ft.com/content/7347414c-aa6f-11e7-93c5-648314d2c72c

“Russia” and “USSR” are different entities in this context, Roger. “Russia” is “russian soviet federative socialist republic”, one of fifteen constituent elements of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

The USSR dissolved, and the constituent republics, including the ukranian SSR, became indisputably first-tier sovereign entities[1]. “Russia”, the RSFSR, did not dissolve. It’s still basically got the borders that were established in communist times, apart from the Crimea.

Yeltsin was head of the RSFSR, and the dissolution of the USSR promoted him to a head of a sovereign government rather than a sub-national leader.

… ffs, I knew this at the time and I was a young teen back then.

[1] Their status prior to the dissolution of the USSR is actually-legally very slightly unclear, but it’s so completely moot that even as an academic exercise nobody really cares.

@161
The Russian Empire that annexed most of Ukraine ended in the revolution of 1917. (Galicia was first Polish, then Austrian, again Polish, and finally Soviet, but never Russian.) The Russian Whites who would have created something like Franco’s Spain (with added pogroms) were defeated and the USSR was quite definitely not a Russian nationalist state.
I find it odd that some people believe that multinational states that collapsed from the inside (Yugoslavia, the USSR and the Habsburg empire) could have been kept from collapsing if some outside forces would just have propped them up. I can see the tragedies, but those states failed.

@165
”I’m really not sure what you meant,”

All my bad – as I tried to write a short poem about ‘ethnicity compared to cultural identity’ in this century in Katalonien – where you can actually find about every ‘cultural identity AND ‘ethnicity’ and every ‘yes’ and ‘no’ – when 18 million tourists from all over the world descend now per year on this ‚Province‘ whith just 7,5 million ‚native’ Katalanen.

And if you ever would have experienced Barcelona or the Costa Brava in summer you HAVE to ask yourself: ‚how can such a minority of 7,5 million Katalanen – who live to such a yuuuge extend from a borderless and open-minded Europe and World come up with such a ‘provincial and narrow minded nationalistic idea of independence’?

Or not?

As a lot of natives of Barcelona definitely want their city and their country back -(‘from the tourists’) and thusly a different way of ‘independence’ than probably you think about?

It’s nearly as absurd if US would have fought in 1776 for independence from too many British Tourist or a city like London with about every type of European you can think about – suddenly wants to exit from it’s own population…

The vote by Catalonians was as brain-dead as Brexit. The Catalonians were lied to by their leaders. A truly independent Catalonia is outside the EU. It does not have a money. The savings of all its citizens goes poof any time the ECB decides to pull the plug. Somebody has to tell the independence crowd – both in the UK and in Catalonia – that just because you want independence does not mean that other countries have to give you what you want.

It is obvious that the rest of the EU will resist strongly giving Catalonia membership. The EU is still a federation of nations. Catalonia + Spain will get 2 votes where before a united Spain only got 1. This kind of arithmetic would create an incentive for splintering, which would make the EU ungovernable, and which other countries will obviously resist because it makes their own vote less valuable.

@ Dax “The vote by Catalonians was as brain-dead as Brexit”

Catalonia’s options for independence are pretty poor. But are they any worse than Ireland’s was a hundred years or so ago? Do you think the Irish were brain-dead to aim for independence? Should Ireland just have accepted continued rule from England as becoming independent was fraught with difficulty and England, being much bigger and wealthier, could crush an independent Ireland any time it so chooses?

@Dipper. Catalonia does not just want independence from Spain. It wants independence *and* remaining part of the EU. Catalonians should have had the option of voting:
1/ Independence even if outside the EU
2/ Independence only if inside the EU
3/ No independence
Just like Brexit, where the Leave option masked several different (and contradictory) possibilities, the Catalonian vote conflated two quite different paths. While those who support 1/ would (presumably) accept 2/, those who accept 2/ won’t accept 1/. Yet a substantial amount of the Independence vote was of the 2/ variety.

dax: “It is obvious that the rest of the EU will resist strongly giving Catalonia membership.”

It’s hard to imagine an EU that wants Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Slovakia, and Slovenia – all of whom have been voted in in the past 15 years or so – but that does not want Catalonia. We’re guessing here, of course, but your guess seems counterintuitive.

One of the great parts about the Catalan story is the discussion of how various groups respond to the sins of others, but very much enjoy ignoring their own. One of the favorite tropes of liberals is to smirk at German, French, and Spanish populations that pretend ignorance of the deportation of gypsies, Jews, and others. We get to watch this in real time now as the same folks who’ve been turning a blind eye to the systematic exploitation of young women by a ‘good friend’ of Michelle Obama and a top fund-raiser for Hillary Clinton rush to cut their ties with aging slime-ball. http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/354310-democrats-rush-to-cut-ties-with-harvey-weinstein

Hard to decry the sexist in the WH when we’re chumming it up with an aging tubby who abused his employees and exploited young women for decades whilst liberals turned a blind-eye. The Catalan tale is a cautionary one. Separatists claiming to have the best interests of the locals at heart; and a nationalist government built on the foundations of a police state offer plenty of food for thought. Best not to sneer too much, however, as I’m sure we can find plenty of muck beneath our own fingernails. Not here, of course, but more in the parts I frequent. Feet made of clay and all that, yes?

Dax@170

Catalonia + Spain will get 2 votes where before a united Spain only got 1. This kind of arithmetic would create an incentive for splintering

I don’t think you understand how the EU works when it comes to voting at the various levels. Spain & Catalonia will probably result in no change in MEPs, and little difference elsewhere.

Stephen @ 72

How does your opinion (too often justified, I entirely agree) apply to Irish independence, 1920s, or to the proposed incorporation by force of an unwilling Northern Ireland into a united Ireland then and in subsequent decades?

One could point to the ‘incorporation by force’ of Ireland into a British colony, or of the artificial Irish-Catholic-Nationalist minority into the six-ninths of Ulster ‘Northern Ireland’, but the southern Free State and its successors have never proposed to invade Northern Ireland, as the historical record will affirm.

Eamonn @ 86

The independence of Ireland was achieved by a campaign of guerrilla nafrare and terrorism and was followed a Civil War.

Despite Brexit induced speculation,I think the only conceivable circumstances in which NI would become part of a united Ireland would ones involving a deep rejigging of the status of the UK and Ireland, some kind of confederal arrangement perhaps?

i) The independence of twenty-six counties occurred with a rebellion in a pre-democratic situation. When a ‘universal’ franchise arrived in 1918, an overwhelming majority of the population voted for candidates who were standing on a platform of the ‘Republic’, which is when the First Dáil – soon outlawed and suppressed by the British – appeared as a national parliament. Though yes, there was (British state) terrorism, you’re correct.

ii) A proportion of the new state’s loyalist population emigrated. as happens in just about every post-colonial situation I’ve ever heard of.

iii) The ‘complex repressive apparatus’ was there already – the RUC was just the re-naming of the notorious RIC.

iv) now who’s engaging in fantasy? Assuming that you’re not just a Spanish sock-puppet.

Note that I do not know the different weapons and ammunitions that are implicated in this instance.

9mm Parabellum (the sub-machinegun round) isn’t effective against modern military body armour or helmets, even at the quite close ranges where it has to be employed to be effective. There is very limited military utility in such weapons.

181 Military grade weaponry is standard in many places, but not all. I doubt very much that any/many of the police forces purchasing such macho props will ever use the stuff, but boy don’t some folks love dressing the part. Military grade weaponry belongs in the hands of the military, whether regular force or militias. Re: the value of a particular class of weapons versus a modern national army, I think you’re making my point. Purchasing the weapons is an extremely poor use of time, energy, and money – much better spent, I’d say, on figuring out why independence is so necessary and how the economics of independence will actually work. The SNP skipped that step as well. The last thing the Catalans need to be investing in are armaments of any kind.

@191 I don’t frankly have any idea why you believe you have to rush to defend some of the most powerful people on the planet. I’m convinced that licking the glove isn’t going to make anything better for anyone. But I’m different that way, it seems.

Someone just sent me this, from 2014. Right on the money I’d say.

“Quand, du fait d’une inégalité sociale croissante, l’angoisse et l’insécurité montent au sein d’une population, la tentation existe de se replier derrière des frontières familières auxquelles on croit pouvoir se fier, et de s’accrocher à des entités “natales”, qu’elles aient été naturalisées ou qu’on en ait hérité, telles que la nation, la langue, l’histoire. Dès lors, le regain de la flamme régionaliste en Ecosse, en Catalogne ou en Flandre n’est guère, selon moi, qu’un équivalent fonctionnel du succès du Front national en France… ”

http://www.lexpress.fr/actualite/monde/europe/jurgen-habermas-en-europe-les-nationalismes-sont-de-retour_1621409.html

James@140

I recommend looking for anything at all about defence expenditure in the secessionist platform. They appear to think independent Catalonia will be welcomed with open arms by the EU, rather than the diktats being ruthlessly applied to much bigger Britain. These would surely include NATO membership. Some existing members like Portugal spend about 1% of GDP on defence, but the agreed target is 2%, and this could easily be imposed on a new applicant. Add to this a more realistic scenario on Catalonia’s share of Spanish national debt, and the gravy held out of a plusher welfare state becomes invisible.

I suspect that the debt problem will be dealt with via a deal, unless the Spanish fancy time-sharing their navy, air force etc. with the Catalans.

It’s somewhat amusing that some commenters seem to conflate Brexit and regionalist secessionism even though those are politically exactly opposed movements: Scottish and Catalan and other nationalists are pro-EU and oppose what they consider repressive centralist states. The EU btw has done a lot to promote regional cultural autonomy within member states, including pushing for the recognition of minority languages (which for centuries was anathema to French, Spanish or British centralists).

The current escalation in Catalunya, for which both sides deserve blame, is sad news. The left has absolutely nothing to gain from secessionism anywhere, as one has been able to observe from Yugoslavia to Turkey to Sudan. At best, even when there is no bloodshed (as in Scotland or Quebec), secessionist movements tie up political energy that could have been used more productively, they create needless antagonism and resentment that al most always stregnthens the reactionaries. There is no left case for nationalism, not even for the underdog brand (and the underdog nationalists, should they succeed, will be just as hostile toward all those considered “other” – in the case of Catalunya, probably the majority). There is no meaningful political divide between left Catalonian and other Spaniards, they can only succeed by working and organizing together.

@189 I concede that all kinds of folks whip stories up and that it’s highly likely that anti-independence folks want to cast political opponents in the worst possible light. That’s certainly been the case with Remain versus Brexit.

Your comments regarding military weapons strike me as nonsensical, frankly. You are literally comparing hand-held rifles of various kinds to howitzers and arguing that the weapons an infantryman or paratrooper might hold in his hands shouldn’t be considered military weapons because howitzers move on wheels, or tracks.

I feel I’ve made my point clearly, enough. Spending tax-payer money on macho props when the region is mired in debt confirms in my mind the immaturity of some independence leaders. And be clear, one need look no further than Las Vegas to get a sense of how much havoc can be unleashed with military weapons of the kind you poo-poo. You may be entirely content with playing deadly dress-up at the expense of the tax-payer (and sober-minded support for Catalan independence), others may have other priorities – such as providing real economic answers to a dubious public already suspicious of slogans and stunts such as security theater that actually make the public feel less safe. I’ve restated my position and that will have to suffice.

TM@192

There is no left case for nationalism, not even for the underdog brand (and the underdog nationalists, should they succeed, will be just as hostile toward all those considered “other” – in the case of Catalunya, probably the majority).

Not exactly true. The ROI, for example, has maintained a non-aligned status to the present day with a strong League of Nations (and subsequently UN) engagement, avoiding the ‘end of empire’ dirty wars as well as the rampant militarism (not least nuclear weaponry) that still defines the UK.

kidneystones: “And be clear, one need look no further than Las Vegas to get a sense of how much havoc can be unleashed with military weapons of the kind you poo-poo.”

None of the weapons used by the Las Vegas shooter to kill dozens were submachine guns, and one used 9mm parabellum ammunition. No infantryman uses such weapons or ammunition, not even paratroopers, not in the modern era. They are unsuitable for infantry engagements, lacking accuracy at range, velocity, penetration and stopping power. This is unsurprising, given that the ammunition was designed for sidearms, and adapted for use in what are short-range automatic pistols.

Having started by crediting reports that this purchase was evidence of violent revolutionary intent in the part of Catalonia, you now seem to be arguing that it’s evidence of macho policing. Have you changed your mind about the former?

Layman, you expect too much.

A question, or rather two questions.
+ if you’re talking to a person face-to-face, what sort of behaviours suggest the possibility to you that your conversatiional parter is for whatever reason not all there?
+ how much of that shows up on the internet?

One suggestion. Don’t talk about collectives as if they were individuals. Collectives don’t have preferences and desires and make decisions; individuals do.

Those arguments could be applied to almost any part of the world. Look at a historical map. How exactly did Yorkshire come to be ruled by London? The Provence by Paris? Franconia by Berlin? Novgorod by Moscow? Ticino by Bern? Those aren’t hotbeds of separatism but their claims to regional distinctness are probably no less justified than those of Scotland or Catalunya. It’s no better on other continents. Pick any part of the world. Everybody was conquered at some point, nobody was asked what country they wanted to be part of. Good luck trying to redraw the map based on criteria like that.

I wrote a paper touching on these topics a little bit ago, focused in part on what seemed to me to be lack of realism (in a non-philosophical sense, I guess) in most philosophical discussions of secession and self-determination, and an unwillingness, in both theory and practice, to think carefully about what a really just and consistent position here would be like. My thoughts were that it would quickly turn out to be “too expensive” for anyone who really cared about justice. For anyone who is interested, that paper is here.

I might add that, while current borders are “arbitrary” in some sense (a word that is thrown around too easily, as if it proved something, I think, not just here but in many debates) they have at least one significant advantage over novel new boarders – that many people have made their lives in relation to these, and with expectations based around them. Drawing new borders will upset those expectations is significant and predictable ways. This isn’t definitive, of course, but it does seem to me to deserve real consideration, certainly more than is given to them by may political entrepreneurs.

I had a chance to discuss the week’s events with a pro-Franco observer who agreed to lay out his concerns and finally had a bit of time to dig up some background in English. I stress that these are the opinions of another, but open a window that may be of interest. I’ll attach my own reaction in a separate comment.

Four reasons why force will be needed to resolve the Catalan rebellion.

“Why did the movement hold their referendum now, and why are they declaring unilateral independence this week?

1. Corrupt independence leaders fear their bank accounts in Andorra (currently secret) will be exposed when changes to Andorran banking laws kick in in 2018. Andorra and the Catalan region share a border and both communities speak Catalan. If Catalan and Andorra merge, independence leaders will at worst be tried in Catalan, rather than Spanish, courts.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/02/andorra-to-renounce-banking-secrecy-as-it-sheds-tax-haven-status
https://www.economist.com/news/europe/21613309-jordi-pujols-confession-undermines-catalans-hopes-independence-scandal-catalonia

2. Senior members of the Catalan police force have been replaced by those who swear allegiance to an independent Catalan state, effectively transforming the regional police into a private army supporting a political party in violation of Spanish law. This force is intended to intimidate the million-plus Catalans who do not support independence. An independent Catalonia will expel Spanish troops from its borders.
https://www.voanews.com/a/spain-catalan-independence-vote-mossos-police/4043406.html
http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/847347/Catalonia-independence-news-president-Carles-Puigdemont-army

3. The cultural battlefield has extended to schools. Children who self-identify as Spanish are singled out by Catalonian teachers favouring independence for shaming as ‘traitors’ and worse.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/09/29/tractors-roll-onto-streets-barcelona-referendum-battle-lines/

4. Catalan independence is utterly unworkable, born of an alliance of corrupt conservatives and others guilty of pilfering from the public purse, and anarchists hostile to all order – ready to push Spain into civil war rather than retreat.”

EWI @ 195: if you really believe that the obviously non-democratic Norman invasion of Ireland (which was not itself a democratic place) in the 12th century, and events in subsequent centuries (non-democratic in in Ireland, Britain or anywhere else), are in any way relevant to the degree of democracy in the twentieth-century UK, there is no point in discussing anything with you.

I was well aware that Michael Collins before being shot by the anti-Treaty IRA was playing a double game, violently suppressing the IRA in the south, where they wanted to continue an anti-British war which Collins thought could not be won, while supporting the IRA in the north where he hoped they would eventually overthrow Northern Ireland. If you think about that for a little, you will see that it actually supports my case.

That the Irish army has never tried to invade NI is of course true. That members of the Irish government have tried to send arms to the IRA in NI is equally true.

I note that you do not even try to respond to the basic criticism of so many independence movements: there is a basic incoherence in the argument that we must be independent, but nobody should be independent of us. But then, you’re an Irish nationalist.

Matt 204: Agreed. I used the word arbitrary in the sense that there is no inherently correct, “just”, “natural” way to draw the borders. Existing borders are based on historical contingency. These points my seem obvious but separatists often speak in these terms – existing borders are unnatural, they are the result of imperialist power play, war and conquest (true of almost all borders and difficult to see how it could be otherwise). Underlying these notions is almost always the idea that borders ought to be drawn as much as possible along “ethnic” lines, which I think is misguided and dangerous, because the homogeneous ethno-state is rarely achievable without ethnic cleansing. The Yugoslavian war and its outcome is testament to this.

“they have at least one significant advantage over novel new boarders – that many people have made their lives in relation to these, and with expectations based around them. Drawing new borders will upset those expectations is significant and predictable ways.”

I’d add that the UN world order is based on the principle that internationally recognized borders are inviolable. This implies that they can’t be changed unilaterally through secession. Separatists say: “we just want the right to decide our own future”. But they want to unilaterally decide the future of the country which they are trying to break up. They want to decide not just for themselves but for others as well. That is the problem.

TM said: Separatists say: “we just want the right to decide our own future”. But they want to unilaterally decide the future of the country which they are trying to break up. They want to decide not just for themselves but for others as well. That is the problem.

That’s right. And, I’d push it further (or focus on a different aspect) and note that, for any way you can cut up a country to get a separatist majority, you could cut it up another way to get a different majority. There’s no “natural” or “neutral” way to do this. Essentially any attempt will lead to the same problems the separatists claim to be addressing. My take-away is that, except in a few extreme and essentially remedially cases (Spain is not close to one), separatism is almost certainly the wrong answer to whatever the question is.

kidneystones: “The ‘Guns and Ammo’ discussion of which weapons will do what misses the entire point.”

One wonders why you brought it up in the first place.

Wamonn@213

Puigedemont last night: *mumble mumble Independence !! mumble mumble, well, sort of anyway, soon, I think, shit this is awful”.
The CUP last night : Treachery!! Fuck this for a game of cowboys we’re taking our toys and going home. (One of their deputies apparently resigned her seat this morning in disgust)

Behold the sordid Spanish jingoistic reality behind the supposedly disinterested, mature commentator.

Eamonn 10.07.17 at 10:54 am. 169
“and what exactly does the peaceful, democratic and participative government of Catalonia want with all this stuff”
https://twitter.com/thespainreport/status/916609583380140033

kidneystones 10.07.17 at 12:09 pm 169
@167 Thank you, again, for keeping us in the loop.
“I fully support any minority to organize and exercise their collective power in any more or less legal manner. Efforts to acquire military grade weaponry (if true) cast some members of the independence movement in a most unfavorable light.”

EWI @215 Can’t follow the chronology of simple comment thread?

Layman @214 You make the same basic error as EWI. Thanks for that!

Militarizing police forces is a spectacularly bad idea. Simply put: when the only tool we possess is a hammer ever problem starts to look like a nail. What were learning from Las Vegas is that many more may have died because of bad judgement, not insufficient weaponry. Military style weapons are rife among the gendarmes in France and have done nothing to stop the horrific attacks of the recent past.

The wars of Irish independence (ironically) confirm that a badly armed populace, highly motivated, can defeat an infinitely more powerful Empire, a fact lost it seems, entirely on our Irish military historian.

There are any number of good reasons why Catalan independence supporters should forget about weapons, and focus on solutions – both to violent threats and to economic security.

kidneystones@218

Can’t follow the chronology of simple comment thread?

Layman @214 You make the same basic error as EWI. Thanks for that!

We can follow your laughable floundering around about what are military weapons and what are police; but thank you for the spectacle of your ‘retreat! retreat! retreat!’ :)

The wars of Irish independence (ironically) confirm that a badly armed populace, highly motivated, can defeat an infinitely more powerful Empire, a fact lost it seems, entirely on our Irish military historian.

If you actually knew anything about the Irish war of independence – and I acknowledge that this is just about as likely as wishing Trump to know something about climate science – then you’d be aware that the revolutionaries had no answer at all to machine-guns, armoured vehicles, artillery and aeroplanes – all military innovations which the British possessed. Any attempt to go up against those was doomed to failure – which is why, after 1916, they didn’t.

There are any number of good reasons why Catalan independence supporters should forget about weapons, and focus on solutions – both to violent threats and to economic security.

Ah, yes, the Voice of Reason, how some things never change. So tell us, o concern troll – why are you so anxious to focus on the Catalans and not the actual brute-force-using Spaniards? There’s a question that answers itself, I think.

Stephen @219 – ‘An equally democratic provision for some northern regions to opt out’

Not very democratic – there were Home Rule/Independence majorities in two of the six counties that stayed in the UK, Tyrone and Fermanagh.