Catalonia and Independence

[Honey Honey]

Laws and rules are not sacrosanct, they can be amended, removed, replaced just as quickly as they are written down if the political will is there.

It is the job of political powers to ensure social cohesion within the borders of their power. If the rules themselves are directly having a negative effect on social cohesion it is political folly to continue to implement them. 

But it is worse than that in Spain now, it's one thing to remove someone from office for breaking political rules, it is another to jail them, wtf, it's 2017.

Spain is repeatedly allowed to break EU treaty rules. Compromise is possible with political will and intelligence. 

 

[SirBalon]

32 minutes ago, Kitchen Sales said:

Spain is repeatedly allowed to break EU treaty rules.

Break which EU treaty rules?

Spain is an independent nation inside the EU and it has its own constitution written and signed by all members.  Nothing rules over Spain's constitution!

As for it being amended...  I hope so!  But for that to happen, it needs to have the agreement of everyone in Spain via a legal referendum.  Once that has been acquired, then each region can put forward what it wants, and we can all work on a more just plain for all.

"Un golpe de estado es punible" It says so in the constitution!  They knew what they were doing and if they didn't...  Well...  Like they say on all frames of law, ignorance is no defence!  It's all there, written in black and white.

[Kowabunga]

4 hours ago, Kitchen Sales said:

11 ministers jailed yesterday for political reasons. There is no justification for it which can coincide with the belief in liberty. This is a conservative authoritarian response which is inkeeping with who Rajoy is.

Separation of powers is not perfect anywhere, but maybe you have also trouble grasping the concept is you believe those politicians are in preventive detention because Rajoy said so. He may be a fool, but he surely wouldn't have wanted to put them in prison that early after having called for a snap election on 21 December. For the better or worse courts don't obey or modulate responses according to what executive wants and decide independently.

The Audiencia Nacional judge Carmen Lamela (where the Catalan Government members are indicted) has accepted the Attorney General lawsuit without much question while the Supreme Court (where the "Board" of the Catalan Parliament has been indicted) have decided to give them time to prepare for the defence. After reading the Lamela auto (here in pdf), I think the justification for the bigger crimes (sedition/rebellion), despite being the most elaborated part is not that clear at all (and that is a big issue), but I remark I am not a legal expert by any means. Have you read it?

In the other hand, I think the possibility of destruction of evidence (by third parties) is clearly there, and the way they've been acting the Catalan Government should be probably considered as a criminal organization, in connivence with the already escaped Puigdemont and the rest of indicted members of the Catalan Government. Also, Puigdemont has proved that simply retiring the passport may be not enough.

Sadly this insurrectionary spell may have been used to detect the inadequacies of the Spanish judicial system (I am not an expert, but probably a flawed description of rebellion and sedition in the criminal code mudding up quite a bit the lawsuits, a better clarification on where the Audiencia Nacional has competences and where it doesn't, the role and appointment procedure of the Attorney General, a better clarification on how the privation of rights of accused people pending a definitive sentence should work, the politisised nature of the Constitutional Court...) and propose reform.

But not the case, virtue signalling, muh francoism and so on coming from a large sector of society, mirrored by people like you, voicing how authoritarian Rajoy has been when supposedly "jailing 11 ministers" and/or "how judicial response should accomodate to the political situation" and/or "what a grave grave mistake has been commited by the judge when pulling a politically counterproductive judicial response" (???). They seem to have a lower grasp of what independence of the judicial power means than the very same Rajoy.

[Honey Honey]

3 hours ago, SirBalon said:

Break which EU treaty rules?

Spain is an independent nation inside the EU and it has its own constitution written and signed by all members.  Nothing rules over Spain's constitution!

Fiscal rules. Every second of every day.

 

2 hours ago, Kowabunga said:

Separation of powers is not perfect anywhere, but maybe you have also trouble grasping the concept is you believe those politicians are in preventive detention because Rajoy said so. He may be a fool, but he surely wouldn't have wanted to put them in prison that early after having called for a snap election on 21 December. For the better or worse courts don't obey or modulate responses according to what executive wants and decide independently.

The Audiencia Nacional judge Carmen Lamela (where the Catalan Government members are indicted) has accepted the Attorney General lawsuit without much question while the Supreme Court (where the "Board" of the Catalan Parliament has been indicted) have decided to give them time to prepare for the defence. After reading the Lamela auto (here in pdf), I think the justification for the bigger crimes (sedition/rebellion), despite being the most elaborated part is not that clear at all (and that is a big issue), but I remark I am not a legal expert by any means. Have you read it?

In the other hand, I think the possibility of destruction of evidence (by third parties) is clearly there, and the way they've been acting the Catalan Government should be probably considered as a criminal organization, in connivence with the already escaped Puigdemont and the rest of indicted members of the Catalan Government. Also, Puigdemont has proved that simply retiring the passport may be not enough.

Sadly this insurrectionary spell may have been used to detect the inadequacies of the Spanish judicial system (I am not an expert, but probably a flawed description of rebellion and sedition in the criminal code mudding up quite a bit the lawsuits, a better clarification on where the Audiencia Nacional has competences and where it doesn't, the role and appointment procedure of the Attorney General, a better clarification on how the privation of rights of accused people pending a definitive sentence should work, the politisised nature of the Constitutional Court...) and propose reform.

But not the case, virtue signalling, muh francoism and so on coming from a large sector of society, mirrored by people like you, voicing how authoritarian Rajoy has been when supposedly "jailing 11 ministers" and/or "how judicial response should accomodate to the political situation" and/or "what a grave grave mistake has been commited by the judge when pulling a politically counterproductive judicial response" (???). They seem to have a lower grasp of what independence of the judicial power means than the very same Rajoy.

 

Rajoy's actions triggered the prosecutions when he removed the politicians from office, they wouldn't (and in many countries, maybe Spain) couldn't be jailed without being removed from power in the first place. A judiciary has no militia, it can be blocked at any time and its judgement disregarded. Its so called "independence" is a virtue that can be gazumped by another, you simply have to possess that other virtue in greater quantity. Yet there is clear will to disregard it, much of your post is just a furthering of "the rules are broke but them's the rules" excuse, it is common in this age of peace to fall back onto this idea that liberty can simply wait til tomorrow because we do not want to rustle any jimmies. That the freedom of 11 people has been removed says it is no longer acceptable to put your thumb up your arse waiting for tomorrow otherwise you are complicit, which Rajoy more than most is and it is a fair assessment to use his history to gage why he is complicit, as in his authoritarian anti-separatist ideals block any thought process towards liberty.

[God is Haaland]

DAS RITE! Catalonia is free now. Death to the traitors!!11

[Spike]

38 minutes ago, BartraPique1932 said:

DAS RITE! Catalonia is free now. Death to the traitors!!11

Moments before realising that would nullify their 2010 World Cup.

[God is Haaland]

3 hours ago, Spike said:

Moments before realising that would nullify their 2010 World Cup.

Ah, shut up with your logic and reason. This is about freedom, independence and showing those pocket picking Castilians who's boss. Remoaners can't put a price tag on my freedoms. 1932 best year of my life.

Also: We won, get over it.

[God is Haaland]

On 22.12.2017 at 02:23, Spike said:

Moments before realising that would nullify their 2010 World Cup.

WC 2010 winning team was mostly Barcelona, therefore Spain would lose it, not Catalonia. Everyone you tells you otherwise is a filthy Castilian.

We need to stop the counter-revolutionary elements, right @SirBalon?

[SirBalon]

22 minutes ago, BartraPique1932 said:

WC 2010 winning team was mostly Barcelona, therefore Spain would lose it, not Catalonia. Everyone you tells you otherwise is a filthy Castilian.

We need to stop the counter-revolutionary elements, right @SirBalon?

99% of the Barcelona contingent in that side were either born outside Catalonia from parents from other parts of the country or sons of immigrants from other parts of Spain. Only Piqué, Puyol and Busquets are real Catalonians with all three being pro Spanish. 

[Kowabunga]

4 hours ago, SirBalon said:

99% of the Barcelona contingent in that side were either born outside Catalonia from parents from other parts of the country or sons of immigrants from other parts of Spain. Only Piqué, Puyol and Busquets are real Catalonians with all three being pro Spanish. 

That reads a bit ethnicist.

Accepting the conventions of international law about the sucession of states (even if applied to sport trophies) doesn't sound particularly counter-revolutionary, though. The reactionary elements (which indeed they exist) are elsewhere.

 

[The Artful Dodger]

5 hours ago, SirBalon said:

99% of the Barcelona contingent in that side were either born outside Catalonia from parents from other parts of the country or sons of immigrants from other parts of Spain. Only Piqué, Puyol and Busquets are real Catalonians with all three being pro Spanish. 

Pique pro-Spanish, i thoght he was the arch-Independence man?

[SirBalon]

44 minutes ago, The Artful Dodger said:

Pique pro-Spanish, i thoght he was the arch-Independence man?

That's because the pro extreme right in Spain have manipulated everything about him to seem that way but he's always maintained he isn't a separatist at all.  Politics in Spain is a labyrinth of everything untoward in the human psyche. 

[SirBalon]

1 hour ago, Kowabunga said:

That reads a bit ethnicist.

Accepting the conventions of international law about the sucession of states (even if applied to sport trophies) doesn't sound particularly counter-revolutionary, though. The reactionary elements (which indeed they exist) are elsewhere.

 

It is ethnicist.

There's nothing wrong with it being that in the nature of a cinversation such as this. Take for example all the transsexual laws being implemented throughout Europe (slowly so as to not cause alarm). Here in the UK feminists are up in arms by stating that a man for as female as his mind makes him feel it cannot ever understand, appreciate, comprehend or more importantly feel the road and passage of womankind throughout life.

[Danny]

8 hours ago, SirBalon said:

It is ethnicist.

There's nothing wrong with it being that in the nature of a cinversation such as this. Take for example all the transsexual laws being implemented throughout Europe (slowly so as to not cause alarm). Here in the UK feminists are up in arms by stating that a man for as female as his mind makes him feel it cannot ever understand, appreciate, comprehend or more importantly feel the road and passage of womankind throughout life.

You have just reached peak SirBalon.

[God is Haaland]

Puigdemont reveals Catalonia's new currency.

[Kowabunga]

On 1/4/2018 at 23:32, SirBalon said:

It is ethnicist.

There's nothing wrong with it being that in the nature of a cinversation such as this. Take for example all the transsexual laws being implemented throughout Europe (slowly so as to not cause alarm). Here in the UK feminists are up in arms by stating that a man for as female as his mind makes him feel it cannot ever understand, appreciate, comprehend or more importantly feel the road and passage of womankind throughout life.

Talking about ethnicists. The Catalan Parliament has just elected a supremacist one stuck in the 1930s as President of Catalonia. 

[6666]

Seems like a bit of a crazy punishment... Maybe people more knowledgeable on the subject think the punishments are fair but it comes across as pretty insane to me.

 

[God is Haaland]

1 hour ago, 6666 said:

Seems like a bit of a crazy punishment... Maybe people more knowledgeable on the subject think the punishments are fair but it comes across as pretty insane to me.

 

How many Puigdemont bucks is the bail?

[The Artful Dodger]

4 hours ago, 6666 said:

Seems like a bit of a crazy punishment... Maybe people more knowledgeable on the subject think the punishments are fair but it comes across as pretty insane to me.

 

It is pretty serious what they tried to do, if successful it would completely destabilise the whole of Spain and bring about civil disorder. The Spanish government have handled it terribly from the beginning though, the violence used to suppress the vote was unnecessary and only made a martyr of the Catalan cause. 

 

 

[SirBalon]

The punishment is excessive and aside from far-right supporters in Spain practically nobody thinks this is fair... At least not level headed people.

They DO deserve to be punished though in the same fashion BJ here in the UK can be punished of he doesn’t execute the Ben Act (he’s been warned).

I’ve repeated it countless times here... Spain have a written codified constitution and those politicians broke constitutional law to a grave extent from using central public money for 7 years to promote separatism, even break school curriculums by reducing Castilian below lawful levels and replacing it with more Catalan which was already more than half of the week.

Then they went and executed a public referendum which wasn’t sanctioned by the Government and thus broke constitutional law... They were warned months in advance what this could incur and they still proceeded.  All in all it’s excessive and I would also add to this my own personal opinion on which the Government are actually making things worse even if the supporting numbers for independence have apparently gone down. I say worse because those that continue to support this are mostly radicals that are capable of causing more civil unrest with more innocent people getting injured from excessive police action.

[Kowabunga]

1 hour ago, SirBalon said:

The punishment is excessive and aside from far-right supporters in Spain practically nobody thinks this is fair... At least not level headed people.

The far right think the sentence is half-assed.

From my limited law understanding, there may be a serious concern in terms of this lengthy sentence potentially severing right to demonstrate (civil disobedience), as sedition (unlike rebellion) relates more to public order than to a damage to constitutional order.  In that regard, those 9-year sentences for activists Sànchez and Cuixart are very worrying. The Spanish criminal code doesn't look fit to deal with the subversion from the institutions, as 'sedition' and 'rebellion' entail too many years and 'disobedience' none. In addition to the rationale for sedition and rebellion probably not fitting particularly well with the proven facts either ("tumultuary"; "violence"... are problematic terms).

It's hard to have empathy with slimy pieces of shit like Turull, who deemed  the 15 June 2011 protests of the 15M movement before the Parliament of Catalonia a "coup d'etat" and was instrumental in demonstrators being handed a prison sentence, though.

[6666]

Handing out overly harsh punishments wasn't just unfair but it wasn't smart either. Reignited the movement.

 

[Inverted]

For me the issue with the Spanish constitution is that it has too much to say about separatism. To me, secession is an inherently political issue, and in trying to create a detailed but extremely difficult mechanism for it in law, Spain has made the issue much more difficult to handle. 

A constitution should either say nothing about it - like Britain - or it should expressly forbid it, like America. 

Spain takes the approach of laying out a way to potentially secede, but making it basically impossible to do so. The result is that the central government can simply refuse to engage with the movement while demanding that it follow a process which everyone knows was designed to be impossible.

[Azeem]

I have a way of settling this down

Barca and Real play a two legged tie, if Barca wins Catalonia gets to become independent if not then they stay with Spain for another 100 years. Simple 

[SirBalon]

2 hours ago, Inverted said:

For me the issue with the Spanish constitution is that it has too much to say about separatism. To me, secession is an inherently political issue, and in trying to create a detailed but extremely difficult mechanism for it in law, Spain has made the issue much more difficult to handle. 

A constitution should either say nothing about it - like Britain - or it should expressly forbid it, like America. 

Spain takes the approach of laying out a way to potentially secede, but making it basically impossible to do so. The result is that the central government can simply refuse to engage with the movement while demanding that it follow a process which everyone knows was designed to be impossible.

While I agree with some of the issues surrounding the merrygoaround that the Spanish Constitution seems to treat any form of secesssion... The reason there is so much detail on this in Spain is due to its history of the country and its very diverse cultures within it. Even provinces and micro-regions within provinces that exist within autonomous regions are quite different with a historical cultural "divide" within it. The north of Spain from Galicia, to Asturias, to Cantabria, to Euskadi (Basque region), to Navarra to Catalonia are very very rich in this particular detail. I can go to the mountain Concellos Galician province of Lugo around the Ribeira Sacra where for example where my parents are from in O Saviñao has a completely different cultural existence to its neighbouring Terras de Lemos which all goes back to Celtic/Germanic/Visigoth etc... Insular cultures that cemented ways of living so many centuries ago and amazingly still exist.

I'm being very basic here and a Spanish historian aficionado would annihilate and chastise me for being so basic and dismissive ofso much fundamental relevant detail that is very necessary. Just to say that going from the Catholic Kings (Isabel and Fernando)much later on has a lot to offer on what boils under the Spanish bonet for centuries to where we are now curiously enough.

These issues had to be addressed and inserted into the Spanish Constitution befause otherwise that part of the Iberian Peninsula would possible have a European area with hundreds of little kingdoms that would make Luxembourg, San Marino or Andorra look like Russia by comparison.