This Sunday (9th of November), lots of people voted in Catalunya about independence. However, this can be considered a demonstration more than anything else.
We've talked several times that currently the Catalan government is really pushing for independence, to hide their own mistakes and corruption, and to try to get some extra votes. And we've mentioned in other posts that there is actually a big proportion of people that do want to become independent, for a big number of different reasons. And how Spanish central government is acting really really stupid about it, as in all things they do.
Now let's explain what has happened in the recent months, because it's the kind of thing that is hard to believe....
Catalunya's government and quite a lot of the Catalan political parties decided it was time to vote. Scotland had done the same, so they felt prepared to organize voting. They established the 9th of November as the date.
First thing that happened is that Spanish government, rules by PP, said that this is illegal and antidemocratic. We've mentioned before, but the kind of people that say voting is antidemocratic must have the most twisted minds of the world...or more likely, the stupidest.
However, it is true apparently that there's some part of the constitution and actual laws that say referendums (as in legally binding voting processes) can only be organized state-wide, by the Spanish government. Never mind that other times referendums like this were asked at levels different than state-wide and nobody complained about it, but well...
So, the Catalan parties cannot organize a referendum legally. Ok, that is fine. What they did then is prepare a law saying that they could organize a public poll to consult people about things. Of course the purpose of the law was to vote and see if people wanted independence, but the law itself just provides a way to vote about stuff, without this being legally binding but allowing the use of official census and public workers.
And then the Spanish government said this was illegal as well and anti-constitutional, and that "democratic, law-abiding citizens" would never participate in the voting. They started a legal process to stop the voting, and even if it is not clear what will be the judges verdict, the result is this poll was basically blocked from happening any time soon (judges are slow, it could take a year or more for a verdict)
This is the point that surprises me. Surprises me because the rest of the European Union didn't tell Spain to shut the hell up and let people vote. Sure, this may be kind of an internal Spanish matter, but we're talking about a theoretical "democratic" country saying that it is illegal to make official polls, basically. Serves to show the type of "Democracy" that the European Union also supports...
Anyway, I was expecting a bigger outcry from all sections. Especially the people that do not want an independent Catalunya.
If I really, really wanted to stop independentism, some years ago (when it might still be possible to do so, because now I don't see it working) I would have made negotiations and concessions to Catalunya, and then I would have allowed them to vote, while campaigning in favour of the union of regions. That's more or less what happened with Scotland. If then you convince enough people that it's not worth the risk and we can obtain good results together, you have killed the independentism movement for the next 20-30 years.
When somebody ask, you can always say this was recently voted, and the results were clear. You can vote again in some time, but you cannot vote every year until you get the result you want, and therefore people against independence would have a strong argument to forget about it for a while and things would calm down.
At this point I don't know if its pure incompetence or machiavellian planning: Incompetence is easy to understand, because the Spanish government has proven to be useless so many times in less than 3 years that I lost count. However, it can also be that the Spanish government is quite happy with the independentists. After all, they are an enemy. Something that people can join to fight, and something that is not the main parties' cases of corruption. Every day there's more and more people from the two main parties being arrested, accused or even condemned in the tribunals, and independence is a nice distraction.
Then again, they say to not attribute to malice what can be explain by simple dumb stupidity...
Anyway, the Catalan government organized another poll, unofficial, without census, done by volunteers. Of course such a pool cannot be very useful to ask officially for independence, but well, it server its purpose to get the pulse of the people....
And the Spanish government and other central parties still complained about it and tried to stop it.
Luckily, since at this point the legal waters were very murky (and getting closer to the dictatorial style) this time this was mostly ignored by the Catalan government and the voting happened.
The results are interesting...only 2.3 million people voted out of 6.2 possible votes, but considering how unofficial and rushed the thing was, it is still a success. Not every town had a voting area, so not everybody was able to vote. Since it was unofficial consulates and embassies would not help with this, and I could not vote either, although some international voting points were created around the world.
80% of voters declared to want independence. 10% declared to want a different status, but not necessarily while being independent from Spain, and less than 5% declared they didn't want any changes. The rest of the votes were not valid answers (maybe we can consider them also supporters of "No", but it is not clear).
This would indicate that most people in Catalunya want independence, but actually the thing is that the people that do not want it were convinced to not vote. So, they had no visibility, no effect on the final result. There's a big group of people that do not want to separate from Spain, but they were not really fully represented in this poll.
The whole thing turned up to be more like a demonstration in favour of a referendum, but still, with more participation a more realistic picture would have been possible. As it is now, the central government will say that not enough people participated (and also that the whole thing is antidemocratic and illegal, as usual). Meanwhile, the Catalan government will take it as support of their work (which is not true, Catalan government is doing a very bad job). The rest of teams and parties will each interpret it as they wish, but it is undeniable that a big majority of people in Catalunya want things to start moving, towards independence or at least towards a more official and definitive voting.
What is more evident here is the parties and people's true colors regarding democracy. If somebody is offended by my following words, sorry, but this is the truth: If you believe voting for something to know people's opinion is bad, you are a defender of dictatorships and totalitarian governments. Simple and clear.
Not everything should depend on the votes of the people. There are things that are right and things that are wrong, and not everything allows for opinions. As I mentioned before, if that would be the case we would not need any experts in anything, we could just all vote and see what the majority thinks.
However, that does not mean there aren't things where it is important to ask the population about their opinions. And it does not mean that asking everybody about a topic is ever a bad thing, even if the government or the experts decide to do something else afterwards.
This is a clear example, because the "big picture" of the organization of a region is something that you can let everybody decide. Regardless of the actions to take afterwards, voting to see who wants independence is never bad. Wanting to stop the voting is bad. Wanting to stop the voting shows you disregard the term "democracy". It means you believe in imposing ideas. It means you think that ethics are not important, legality is, and therefore as long as something is legal it is ok to do it, and as long as something is illegal you should not do so, without actually thinking if these things are ethical or moral. With this logic, some centuries ago it would be ok to have slaves, because it was legal. And we should not try rescue and free them, because that was illegal (stealing property).
When you are against voting, you're basically defining yourself as this. Maybe you were not aware of it, but that's what you did by thinking voting was bad. And if you don't want Catalunya to be independent, well, promote the "No", because not voting is the surest way to guarantee the region leaves Spain.
And voting is never something permanent. Voting is a continuous process. A constitution does not stay approved after one voting, it needs revisions, rewriting and more voting after some years pass. And this is what "democracy" means, if you don't like it openly promote a dictatorship that fits your world-view better, just don't be an hypocrite about it.
(Ah, as a final reminder, I support independence. Not because I feel specially Catalan, but because I'm embarrassed to be Spanish, and also because it would mix things up and give opportunities to redefine what is Spain, what is Catalunya and maybe a chance of getting rid of a big amount of corrupt bastards on both sides)
We've talked several times that currently the Catalan government is really pushing for independence, to hide their own mistakes and corruption, and to try to get some extra votes. And we've mentioned in other posts that there is actually a big proportion of people that do want to become independent, for a big number of different reasons. And how Spanish central government is acting really really stupid about it, as in all things they do.
Now let's explain what has happened in the recent months, because it's the kind of thing that is hard to believe....
Catalunya's government and quite a lot of the Catalan political parties decided it was time to vote. Scotland had done the same, so they felt prepared to organize voting. They established the 9th of November as the date.
First thing that happened is that Spanish government, rules by PP, said that this is illegal and antidemocratic. We've mentioned before, but the kind of people that say voting is antidemocratic must have the most twisted minds of the world...or more likely, the stupidest.
However, it is true apparently that there's some part of the constitution and actual laws that say referendums (as in legally binding voting processes) can only be organized state-wide, by the Spanish government. Never mind that other times referendums like this were asked at levels different than state-wide and nobody complained about it, but well...
So, the Catalan parties cannot organize a referendum legally. Ok, that is fine. What they did then is prepare a law saying that they could organize a public poll to consult people about things. Of course the purpose of the law was to vote and see if people wanted independence, but the law itself just provides a way to vote about stuff, without this being legally binding but allowing the use of official census and public workers.
And then the Spanish government said this was illegal as well and anti-constitutional, and that "democratic, law-abiding citizens" would never participate in the voting. They started a legal process to stop the voting, and even if it is not clear what will be the judges verdict, the result is this poll was basically blocked from happening any time soon (judges are slow, it could take a year or more for a verdict)
This is the point that surprises me. Surprises me because the rest of the European Union didn't tell Spain to shut the hell up and let people vote. Sure, this may be kind of an internal Spanish matter, but we're talking about a theoretical "democratic" country saying that it is illegal to make official polls, basically. Serves to show the type of "Democracy" that the European Union also supports...
Anyway, I was expecting a bigger outcry from all sections. Especially the people that do not want an independent Catalunya.
If I really, really wanted to stop independentism, some years ago (when it might still be possible to do so, because now I don't see it working) I would have made negotiations and concessions to Catalunya, and then I would have allowed them to vote, while campaigning in favour of the union of regions. That's more or less what happened with Scotland. If then you convince enough people that it's not worth the risk and we can obtain good results together, you have killed the independentism movement for the next 20-30 years.
When somebody ask, you can always say this was recently voted, and the results were clear. You can vote again in some time, but you cannot vote every year until you get the result you want, and therefore people against independence would have a strong argument to forget about it for a while and things would calm down.
At this point I don't know if its pure incompetence or machiavellian planning: Incompetence is easy to understand, because the Spanish government has proven to be useless so many times in less than 3 years that I lost count. However, it can also be that the Spanish government is quite happy with the independentists. After all, they are an enemy. Something that people can join to fight, and something that is not the main parties' cases of corruption. Every day there's more and more people from the two main parties being arrested, accused or even condemned in the tribunals, and independence is a nice distraction.
Then again, they say to not attribute to malice what can be explain by simple dumb stupidity...
Anyway, the Catalan government organized another poll, unofficial, without census, done by volunteers. Of course such a pool cannot be very useful to ask officially for independence, but well, it server its purpose to get the pulse of the people....
And the Spanish government and other central parties still complained about it and tried to stop it.
Luckily, since at this point the legal waters were very murky (and getting closer to the dictatorial style) this time this was mostly ignored by the Catalan government and the voting happened.
The results are interesting...only 2.3 million people voted out of 6.2 possible votes, but considering how unofficial and rushed the thing was, it is still a success. Not every town had a voting area, so not everybody was able to vote. Since it was unofficial consulates and embassies would not help with this, and I could not vote either, although some international voting points were created around the world.
80% of voters declared to want independence. 10% declared to want a different status, but not necessarily while being independent from Spain, and less than 5% declared they didn't want any changes. The rest of the votes were not valid answers (maybe we can consider them also supporters of "No", but it is not clear).
This would indicate that most people in Catalunya want independence, but actually the thing is that the people that do not want it were convinced to not vote. So, they had no visibility, no effect on the final result. There's a big group of people that do not want to separate from Spain, but they were not really fully represented in this poll.
The whole thing turned up to be more like a demonstration in favour of a referendum, but still, with more participation a more realistic picture would have been possible. As it is now, the central government will say that not enough people participated (and also that the whole thing is antidemocratic and illegal, as usual). Meanwhile, the Catalan government will take it as support of their work (which is not true, Catalan government is doing a very bad job). The rest of teams and parties will each interpret it as they wish, but it is undeniable that a big majority of people in Catalunya want things to start moving, towards independence or at least towards a more official and definitive voting.
What is more evident here is the parties and people's true colors regarding democracy. If somebody is offended by my following words, sorry, but this is the truth: If you believe voting for something to know people's opinion is bad, you are a defender of dictatorships and totalitarian governments. Simple and clear.
Not everything should depend on the votes of the people. There are things that are right and things that are wrong, and not everything allows for opinions. As I mentioned before, if that would be the case we would not need any experts in anything, we could just all vote and see what the majority thinks.
However, that does not mean there aren't things where it is important to ask the population about their opinions. And it does not mean that asking everybody about a topic is ever a bad thing, even if the government or the experts decide to do something else afterwards.
This is a clear example, because the "big picture" of the organization of a region is something that you can let everybody decide. Regardless of the actions to take afterwards, voting to see who wants independence is never bad. Wanting to stop the voting is bad. Wanting to stop the voting shows you disregard the term "democracy". It means you believe in imposing ideas. It means you think that ethics are not important, legality is, and therefore as long as something is legal it is ok to do it, and as long as something is illegal you should not do so, without actually thinking if these things are ethical or moral. With this logic, some centuries ago it would be ok to have slaves, because it was legal. And we should not try rescue and free them, because that was illegal (stealing property).
When you are against voting, you're basically defining yourself as this. Maybe you were not aware of it, but that's what you did by thinking voting was bad. And if you don't want Catalunya to be independent, well, promote the "No", because not voting is the surest way to guarantee the region leaves Spain.
And voting is never something permanent. Voting is a continuous process. A constitution does not stay approved after one voting, it needs revisions, rewriting and more voting after some years pass. And this is what "democracy" means, if you don't like it openly promote a dictatorship that fits your world-view better, just don't be an hypocrite about it.
(Ah, as a final reminder, I support independence. Not because I feel specially Catalan, but because I'm embarrassed to be Spanish, and also because it would mix things up and give opportunities to redefine what is Spain, what is Catalunya and maybe a chance of getting rid of a big amount of corrupt bastards on both sides)
