International Catalonia's Rebellion: 170,000 Spaniards in Madrid March Against Amnesty Plan for Catalan Secessionists

I firmly support autodetermination, however Catalans should lose a lot if they choose this route.
 
They are going to change their mind when they find out FC Barcelona would be evicted from la liga.
 
gtm3 said:
They are going to change their mind when they find out FC Barcelona would be evicted from la liga.
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I hope they split so I can then invade with my army of weiner dogs. we'd win too.

iu


badger holes > fox holes

Samantha Fox holes > Megan Fox holes
 
Suppressing the vote is bloody stupid , best to just make it clear that they would be blocked from the EU and be crippled by their portion of the debt and let them vote
 
Catalonia, Elated but Fearful, Braces for Independence Vote
By ELLEN BARRY | SEPTEMBER 29, 2017

​

TERRASSA, Spain — Jordi Juanico Sabaté, a 6-foot-8 giant of a man, folded himself into a cafe chair in this Catalan city and fixed his eyes at a point on the horizon.

He was thinking about Sunday, when Catalan leaders have scheduled a voteon separating from Spain. Vast numbers of Catalans are hurtling toward a confrontation: Spanish security forces have been moved into the region on cruise ships, under orders to halt the vote by force. But Mr. Juanico, 59, a counselor in a psychiatric hospital, shrugged off the threat of violence as if it were a detail. He looked serene, almost blissful.

“All my life, I had the dream of dying in an independent country,” he said. “It was a dream that used to seem very remote. But now it is very near.”

In an age of fragmentation, the Catalan referendum stands apart. Unlike the Kurds, who voted overwhelmingly this week to separate from Iraq, Catalans, who live in an autonomous region in Spain’s northeast, are not driven by an external threat or oppression, by a war or by an economic collapse. They live well, in the prosperous heart of Europe. Their grievances are old and bone-deep, reawakened by political movements, both in Catalonia and in Madrid, magnified by partisan media on both sides, and accelerated by the Spanish government’s blunt, reflexive clampdown.

​

That it has progressed to this dangerous point is testament to the power of a nationalist narrative. It has unfolded so naturally, older people worried, that the young did not fully understand the risk they were taking.

“You see how it is going to end,” said Mr. Juanico’s mother, Serafina Sabaté, 89.

She said it sharply: Under the fascist government of Francisco Franco, her father was imprisoned for six years for producing fabric for the republican army. She asked her grandson, who was elated about the vote, what he would do if the government sent tanks.

“Look, we have lived through a war,” Ms. Sabaté said, her voice shaking. “If people go to the street, if someone does something against the state, they will jump on him. Anyone who has lived through the war wants these days to pass by.”

The city of Terrassa, an old textile manufacturing center just outside Barcelona, seemed preternaturally calm last week, the sidewalk cafes full and a yearly theater festival underway. Under the surface, however, there was the sense of an approaching collision — one that was days away, and then hours.

The mayor had mostly disappeared from public view, explaining in a Facebook post that he had come under a torrent of abuse when he had tried to remain neutral on the vote. Elementary-school principals had received letters warning that they might face sedition charges if they opened their doors for voting. Teenage activists — joyful, full of expectation — talked about blocking security forces with their bodies.

“We have been waiting for this moment for 300 years,” said Guillem Carbonell Vidal, 18, who is studying to be a theater technician. He was excited, and sleep-deprived, having spent the past week running from one political meeting to another, debating such matters as whether to print a new currency and nationalize the banks.

“I am 18, and I will be able to live the way I want,” he said. “We will be able to build a new future. We have to build a society that is anti-patriarchal, where women don’t have to suffer violence, which anyway is created by men, and where the working class has power.”

The last few weeks, he said, have been “a dream.”

Opinion polls suggest that about half of Catalonia’s 7.5 million people support breaking away from Spain, but the separatists’ influence ballooned in 2015, when independence parties won a majority in the region’s Parliament. There was already resentment that the Spanish government was siphoning too much of the region’s wealth.


Jordi Juanico Sabaté, 59, a counselor in a psychiatric hospital. “All my life, I had the dream of dying in an independent country,” he said.
​

Madrid — which allowed a nonbinding referendum on independence in 2014 — has taken a hard line this time, arguing that a unilateral act of separation flies in the face of the rule of law, and sets a dangerous precedent for other European countries struggling with similar movements.

Ask “independistas” why the need to break away from Spain is so urgent, and the answer goes back to 1714, when Philip V of Spain captured Barcelona during the War of the Spanish Succession, bringing an end to the Catalan principality. This was a period of consolidation across Europe, as strong monarchies absorbed smaller, weaker neighbors. In Catalonia, this is not obscure history: It is common, these days, to hear the archaic insult “botifler,” which means a supporter of Philip V and his ally, the French house of Bourbon.

Many Catalans have grown to adulthood believing that they were, simply, not Spanish. Under Franco’s dictatorship, which ended in 1975, the government tried to stamp out all Catalan institutions and the language, and thousands of people were executed in purges. Virtually no Catalan family emerged from that period unscarred.

But Terrassa, as a manufacturing city, also has a large population that moved to Catalonia from other parts of Spain. In those neighborhoods, it can be difficult to find anyone who supports independence. Gabriel Zafra, who heads an association of migrants from Extremadura, a region in western Spain, said the mounting demand for independence had made it politically risky to question, even for elected officials.

“They have created a monster of illusion and excitement,” said Mr. Zafra, a retired janitor who has lived in Catalonia since 1974. “They have promised them the land of Narnia. They have promised them a Catalonia full of flowers, where happy people go to church on Sunday. That is a lie.”
The other people in Mr. Zafra’s neighborhood bar, a place with one-armed bandit slot machines and heavily tattooed bartender, thought that breaking away from Spain would lead to economic collapse. Eva Álvarez, whose family owns the bar, said she had needed to reassure her 12-year-old son that, if Catalonia became independent, they would not have to leave.

“Nationalism is a kind of racism,” Mr. Zafra said, wondering aloud if ethnic violence would follow. “I don’t want to compare it to Serbia, but if this continues, I might have to,” he said.

As the weekend approached, there was no way to know how many in Catalonia would defy the orders from Madrid, but time for speculating was running out.

When school ended on Friday, the police were expected to seal buildings normally used for voting. In the doorway of an elementary school on Carrer de Sant Marian stood its headmaster, Marta Suana Rovira, 48, a slight woman who wears braces and laughs almost incessantly.

Spain has warned headmasters that if they open their buildings to voting they could face a charge of sedition, which under Spanish law carries a prison sentence of up to 15 years. Plainclothes officers from the Catalonian police force, the Mossos, had appeared in her office, asking to see her identification and noting her home address and the names of her parents.

It had been a long week, and she was having trouble sleeping.

“My family says they will visit me in prison, and bring me a file inside a loaf of bread,” she said. “I tell them, ‘No, chocolate.’”

Ms. Rovira assured the police she had not provided anyone with keys to the facility ahead of the vote. But the question of keys is a tricky one, she added with a twinkle: The teachers have them, the parents have them, and so do any number of community groups. She spread her hands, as if to show that she was helpless in the matter. “It is impossible to control,” she said, and then went off into a gale of laughter.

On Friday the time had finally come, she stood outside her building, scanning the street for police cars. Instead, she saw a parade of parents — mothers in tank tops and sweatpants, fathers in T-shirts and blazers — who had volunteered to occupy the school all weekend, in shifts, to keep it open for Sunday’s vote, advertising it as a “Fall Festival.” Some had brought backpacks with toothbrushes and changes of clothes. They sat cross-legged on the playground, as if this were a normal meeting of the parent-teacher association.

“We will stay until Sunday,” said Belen Parra, 44, and then she raised a clenched fist in the air. “On Sunday, we will resist entirely.”

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/09/...ferendum.html?referer=https://www.google.com/
 
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not gonna happen


if Catalonians get independence the Basque people will demand independence as well. after that, who knows.
 
Last Samurai said:
not gonna happen


if Catalonians get independence the Basque people will demand independence as well. after that, who knows.
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The crazy thing is, polls indicate only a minority of Catalans actually want independence. The vote, if allowed to take place unmolested, would almost certainly result in a “no” vote.

But Catalans do want the ability to hold a referendum. Spain’s response has been a heavy handed overreaction that is uncomfortably reminiscent of the Franco years, something that will not be received well in Catalonia or Basque Country. In effect, Spain is creating a popular resistance. It is an unbelievably stupid reaction.

This is also an interesting study in amalgamated nations that contain populations that have ethnic groups with their own language and culture that long predate the nation itself, like the Basques and Catalans. Even Franco couldn’t stamp out their independent streak.

My take is that Spain is much more fragile than most folks realize, and never really made a successful transition to Democracy. There was never any accounting for the Franco years. The history of Spain-even modern Spain-is a history of coups and internicine conflict. This whole ordeal could blow over, or we could see war on the Iberian Peninsula in a decade. Neither would surprise me. Spain is a basket case.
 
the independence referendum day arrived.

Catalans are voting, while Spanish police units start disrupting the voting by charging, using riot control equipment and makings arrests.

There are several reports on social media of Spanish police firing rubber bullets at people queuing to vote in the referendum.

The Catalan government has predicted that 60% of Catalonia’s 5.3 million eligible voters are heading to the polls in defiance of the Spanish government and constitutional court, which have declared the vote illegal.

Neither the rain nor the Spanish authorities are discouraging many Catalans from turning out to try to vote. Hundreds of people have been queuing outside the polling station at the Cervantes primary school in central Barcelona since 5am. Inside are dozens of people - adults and children - who have been camped out since Friday night in the hope that their occupation will allow the school to be used a a voting centre.

Joan Garcia, an agricultural engineer who’s just spent his second night there, reports that people slept well. Officers from the regional police force, the Mossos d’Esquadra, are under orders to empty polling stations and seal them off. But that’s not happening here. The police, who were greeted with a cheerful “Bom dia!” from the crowd, are coming and going but not intervening so far.The people who have gathered to vote are in good spirits despite the rain, but deadly serious about why they have come.

“I’ve been here since 5.15,” said 43-year-old Mireia Estape, who lives locally. “I’m here to fight for our rights and our language and for our right to live better and to have a future.”

Asked how likely it was that people would be allowed to cast their ballots, she was insistent: “We will vote today.”

One man in the crowd, who did not wish to be named, said that Catalans had a right to vote.

“I’m European, not African. In Africa they don’t let people vote.” He said he had come to because, “Catalans need to vote. They’re robbing us in Spain”.

It would, he said, would be a great day: “Spain has lost 22 colonies. Today it’s going to lose another.”

Another would-be voter was blunter about her motivation: “I don’t want to live in a fascist country.”

There was a moment of panic at ten to eight, when a car moved towards the crowd. But it turned out it was carrying a ballot box that was quickly taken inside to cheers and shouts of “Votarem!” (“We will vote!”).

Within 10 minutes, the organisers inside announce that voting would begin at 9am. The Mossos continued to maintain a discreet distance. Asked how he was feeling, one officer replied, with a shrug, “Well, here we are, aren’t we?”
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/l...pendence-referendum-spain-catalonia-vote-live

live updates (Spanish):
http://www.lavanguardia.com/politica/20170930/431653471605/referendum-1-o-en-directo.html

 
Authorities have said that this referendum goes against the goals and objectives of the European Union.

This is the response









Now imagine when Merkel gets her EU army.
 
Fuckin Spanish idiots. They are doing all they can so that Catalans actually secede.

They should learn from the master manipulators the Anglo-Saxons, which have avoided the secession of Québec and Scottland, without even a drop of blood being shed.

And I say this as a Québec nationalist.
 
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