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Police and would-be voters have clashed during a Catalan independence referendum held on Sunday:
Scenes of chaos and violence unfolded in Catalonia as an independence referendum deemed illegal by Madrid devolved quickly on Sunday. As police followed orders from the central government to put a stop to the vote, they fired rubber bullets at unarmed protesters and smashed through the glass at polling places, reports The Associated Press. Three hundred and thirty-seven people were injured, some seriously, according to Catalonia's government spokesman.
Spain's Interior Ministry said a dozen police officers were injured. NPR's Lauren Frayer reports from Barcelona that some people were throwing rocks down at officers from balconies. Yet the violence came from all directions.
"Horrible scenes," Lauren reports. "Police dragging voters out of polling stations, some by the hair."
Scuffles erupted as riot police forcefully removed hundreds of would-be voters from polling places across Barcelona, the Catalan capitol, reports AP. Nevertheless, many people, managed to successfully cast their ballots across the region after waiting in lines hundreds-of-people-deep, including the elderly and families with small children, says Reuters.
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said that he did not acknowledge the vote and called it "illegal".
Also at NYT, Bloomberg, The Washington Post, and BBC:
Catalan emergency officials say 761 people have been injured as police used force to try to block voting in Catalonia's independence referendum.
Update: Catalan referendum: Catalonia has 'won right to statehood'
Spain Vows to Enforce the Law in Rebel Catalonia
Catalonia Leaders Seek to Make Independence Referendum Binding
Previously: Spain Trying to Stop Catalonia Independence Referendum
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Tuesday October 03 2017, @03:47PM (2 children)
From the Catalan side of things:
1. The Catalans have a long tradition going back to at least the Spanish Civil War of managing their own affairs.
2. For now almost a decade in Spain, unemployment has been sky-high and the government has been under absolutely crushing debt. It's no surprise that people would be trying whatever they can think of to get out from that.
From the government side of things:
1. The Spanish government has made promises to the rest of the EU and Germany in particular. Catalonia seceding would make it harder or even impossible for them to keep those promises.
2. If Catalonia gets away with seceding, then Basque country is not far behind, and it's entirely possible that other bits and pieces of Spain follow after that. The basics of maintaining a country involve keeping your territory intact.
From the cops' side of things: Beating people up is what they do.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Tuesday October 03 2017, @04:30PM (1 child)
1. The Spanish government has made promises to the rest of the EU and Germany in particular. Catalonia seceding would make it harder or even impossible for them to keep those promises.
So what? Too bad. Circumstances change, and promises aren't worth much.
2. If Catalonia gets away with seceding, then Basque country is not far behind, and it's entirely possible that other bits and pieces of Spain follow after that. The basics of maintaining a country involve keeping your territory intact.
What's the problem here? Why does Spain *need* to stay a singular nation? Did Czechoslovakia need to stay a singular nation? No. It amicably broke up, the two resulting countries are still friends, and they're both trading partners within the EU. There's a bunch of nations in the EU that are small: Luxembourg, Malta, etc. are very small, but countries like Ireland, Slovenia, and Croatia are also quite small with less than 5M population. I count a full 16 nations in the EU that are smaller than Catalonia (pop. 7.5M)! So why should Spain remain such a large singular nation? Honestly, IMO the EU would be better off if some of its larger nations broke apart to eliminate these internal tensions, and then became full-fledged EU members. (There's also some microstates that aren't full EU members but use the Euro and have special status: Andorra, Iceland, Liechtenstein, San Marino, etc.) I really don't see why regions with well-defined separate ethnic groups or cultures shouldn't be separate nations here; normally, the argument is they're too small to stand alone, there's economic benefits in unity, etc., but this is the EU so those arguments fall flat: there's lots of small EU nations with less than 7.5M population, and they get all those economic benefits by being EU members, so they don't need to be part of some other nation that is in turn an EU member.
We have the same thing in the USA: why do NYC and upstate NY need to stay in a single state? They really don't. They could split up, and both would easily be viable states on their own, while remaining members of the union. It would make more sense to break apart NY state (each new state would be roughly 10M) in fact, than to continue allowing Rhode Island and Wyoming to exist as separate states. Wyoming only has a pathetic 500k people!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 04 2017, @12:18AM
In California (Nor Cal, So Cal, Central, Cascade, and Sierras. Possibly Western variants as well via port cities)
We need transportation infrastructure with relatively tolerant laws for traveling between regions, but each region needs more flexibility in its laws than region specific laws would allow. Working this out would be difficult but could allow more diversity in individual regions so long as shared resources such as water and air were suitably preserved by all parties (IE nobody upstream taking all the water or upwind polluting all the air.)
But actual social laws and taxes and such need to be decided far more on the local community level than they currently are, and less money collected and dispensed to other regions. Let them figure out their own economy rather than having others prop it up thanks to better federal politicians/pandering.