Things in Catalunya's politics are reaching a nice boiling point.
I realise now that I did not explain in my last political posts that in Catalan elections, the independentists won but not by a big margin enough to be comfortable declaring independence, and that after some in-fighting and decision-making, they decided to defend again a referendum. However, this time they want it more concise, more serious, and the important part: Binding.
So, if "Yes" wins, they will apply it.
This is not that easy to do, as anyone can figure out. Forming part of a bigger country means that you have a lot of laws and regulations and public spaces, contracts, public workers, etc, that are actually controlled by the bigger government. Leaving that cannot mean that you don't have all these things from one day to the other.
Therefore, in order for a referendum to be binding, you need to think about these things, and if they're achievable. And so far we're told that these things are being prepared, yes, to make sure a theoretically new country would continue functioning after independence.
In order to perform the referendum, the Catalan government has tried to negotiate with the Spanish government. However, Spain has big democratic problems, which translates to the fact that they're really REALLY scared of letting people vote. I'm not talking even scared of "Yes" winning, I mean that they think voting is the problem here.
The ruling party's official twitter posted that the Catalan government should stop the referendum and instead listen to the people. That's not a joke or an edit, they said that, publicly, and didn't realise how mind-numbingly stupid this was.
Anyway, the Catalan government has been quite clear in this: Spain can negotiate conditions regarding the referendum,, but the referendum will happen. If they don't negotiate , the next step will directly be to negotiate terms of independence. And that's the other thing, as I mentioned before in other posts, with the current numbers it seems pretty clear the "Yes" would win in the referendum.
Of course the Spanish government has refused to negotiate and is just suing everybody they can in the Catalan government for trying to defend illegal ideas, basically. That's the smart argument they're using. They also have a number of police agents and politicians actively trying to find dirt, or invent dirt, on Catalanist parties and the Catalan government. Again, this is not a conspiracy theory or a joke, several reporters and investigators have discovered such a plot to try to condemn Catalan politicians that defended independence, and they have conversations and audio files that show precisely that, with police and politicians saying the local Prosecutors will fine-tune the case so they can have one.
The whole thing is such a clear abuse of power, lack of judicial independence and lack of democracy in Spain that it's amazing Europe is shutting up about it mostly and, at max, just mentioning they're "concerned" about Spanish authoritarian tendencies.
And the root problem is that, in Spain, the fascists won the war. They won it long ago, they grabbed power, and never released it. The transition to a "democratic" state was done to soften the regime, and indeed Spain is more democratic now...but the people in power are still pretty much of the same ideology, especially in the ruling party.
How can you explain otherwise that this ruling party protests when a city wants to change street names that references and honours the dictator and his friends?
How can you explain otherwise that this ruling party funded for years the organisation named after the dictator, which existence is based on defending his ideas and legacy?
How can you explain that there is a memorial to the dictator where he's buried, and time and time again when somebody says to move his body and, in this way, not make it in his honour, this same ruling party doesn't allow it?
How can you explain that when a teenager makes a joke about a prime minister of the dictator that was killed in a terrorist attack, she gets condemned for ridiculing the victim? The "victim", that imprisoned and executed people for purely political reasons.
If that was not enough, this same party has, every day, every single day, some member accused and/or condemned for corruption. Every. Day. This party has been formally accused, as a party, as a whole, for illegal funding.
And they still win elections. Not by a lot maybe, but there's a core group of people that always vote them, and I'm talking about around 8 million people, close to 33% of the total voters.
That's unacceptable.
And let's not mention the rest of the Spanish parties, because the situation is not much better especially regarding corruption....but the current ruling party, that's the worst. By far. In all fields.
Do you know why in Spain we don't have a new, far-right, emergent party, like in so many European countries? Well, in case it was not evident, because we are the first ones. We had the far-right party since the dictatorship and afterwards, and it's our current ruling party.
We cannot tolerate that.
And for once, it seems the Catalan government agrees. They may have their ulterior motives for it, but the reality is that there's now a group of politicians and rulers in Catalunya that want to go all the way until the referendum, even if it means they get condemned by Spain in the way there.
If everything goes well, on September/October, the Catalan region (where this ruling party has its worst results) will vote to decide if we want to be independent. And you know, independence from that? Yes, I want it, very VERY much.
I realise now that I did not explain in my last political posts that in Catalan elections, the independentists won but not by a big margin enough to be comfortable declaring independence, and that after some in-fighting and decision-making, they decided to defend again a referendum. However, this time they want it more concise, more serious, and the important part: Binding.
So, if "Yes" wins, they will apply it.
This is not that easy to do, as anyone can figure out. Forming part of a bigger country means that you have a lot of laws and regulations and public spaces, contracts, public workers, etc, that are actually controlled by the bigger government. Leaving that cannot mean that you don't have all these things from one day to the other.
Therefore, in order for a referendum to be binding, you need to think about these things, and if they're achievable. And so far we're told that these things are being prepared, yes, to make sure a theoretically new country would continue functioning after independence.
In order to perform the referendum, the Catalan government has tried to negotiate with the Spanish government. However, Spain has big democratic problems, which translates to the fact that they're really REALLY scared of letting people vote. I'm not talking even scared of "Yes" winning, I mean that they think voting is the problem here.
The ruling party's official twitter posted that the Catalan government should stop the referendum and instead listen to the people. That's not a joke or an edit, they said that, publicly, and didn't realise how mind-numbingly stupid this was.
Anyway, the Catalan government has been quite clear in this: Spain can negotiate conditions regarding the referendum,, but the referendum will happen. If they don't negotiate , the next step will directly be to negotiate terms of independence. And that's the other thing, as I mentioned before in other posts, with the current numbers it seems pretty clear the "Yes" would win in the referendum.
Of course the Spanish government has refused to negotiate and is just suing everybody they can in the Catalan government for trying to defend illegal ideas, basically. That's the smart argument they're using. They also have a number of police agents and politicians actively trying to find dirt, or invent dirt, on Catalanist parties and the Catalan government. Again, this is not a conspiracy theory or a joke, several reporters and investigators have discovered such a plot to try to condemn Catalan politicians that defended independence, and they have conversations and audio files that show precisely that, with police and politicians saying the local Prosecutors will fine-tune the case so they can have one.
The whole thing is such a clear abuse of power, lack of judicial independence and lack of democracy in Spain that it's amazing Europe is shutting up about it mostly and, at max, just mentioning they're "concerned" about Spanish authoritarian tendencies.
And the root problem is that, in Spain, the fascists won the war. They won it long ago, they grabbed power, and never released it. The transition to a "democratic" state was done to soften the regime, and indeed Spain is more democratic now...but the people in power are still pretty much of the same ideology, especially in the ruling party.
How can you explain otherwise that this ruling party protests when a city wants to change street names that references and honours the dictator and his friends?
How can you explain otherwise that this ruling party funded for years the organisation named after the dictator, which existence is based on defending his ideas and legacy?
How can you explain that there is a memorial to the dictator where he's buried, and time and time again when somebody says to move his body and, in this way, not make it in his honour, this same ruling party doesn't allow it?
How can you explain that when a teenager makes a joke about a prime minister of the dictator that was killed in a terrorist attack, she gets condemned for ridiculing the victim? The "victim", that imprisoned and executed people for purely political reasons.
If that was not enough, this same party has, every day, every single day, some member accused and/or condemned for corruption. Every. Day. This party has been formally accused, as a party, as a whole, for illegal funding.
And they still win elections. Not by a lot maybe, but there's a core group of people that always vote them, and I'm talking about around 8 million people, close to 33% of the total voters.
That's unacceptable.
And let's not mention the rest of the Spanish parties, because the situation is not much better especially regarding corruption....but the current ruling party, that's the worst. By far. In all fields.
Do you know why in Spain we don't have a new, far-right, emergent party, like in so many European countries? Well, in case it was not evident, because we are the first ones. We had the far-right party since the dictatorship and afterwards, and it's our current ruling party.
We cannot tolerate that.
And for once, it seems the Catalan government agrees. They may have their ulterior motives for it, but the reality is that there's now a group of politicians and rulers in Catalunya that want to go all the way until the referendum, even if it means they get condemned by Spain in the way there.
If everything goes well, on September/October, the Catalan region (where this ruling party has its worst results) will vote to decide if we want to be independent. And you know, independence from that? Yes, I want it, very VERY much.
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