Your general point is of course correct, but did you really think Spain was the ‘weakest link’ in Europe to break? I didn’t. As I said I would have guessed Hungary since that’s the country where an ideologically ‘extreme’ party is closest to winning power (and I don’t see the ruling establishment giving in without a fight). Or maybe Greece because of the severity of their crisis. Or maybe, along a slightly longer time frame, some of the other Eastern European countries. I certainly wouldn’t have guessed Spain.
The other thing is, Spain is a richer country today than Eastern European countries are, and therefore both Spaniards and Catalonians have more to lose (in terms of comfortable lifestyle, etc.) from a civil war than people in the poorer eastern countries would.
Throughout all this mess, the stench of dick-measuring competition between Madrid and Barcelona is powerful and all-pervading >.<
I feel so depressed by all of this.
Hey, you can always play a game of “how long will Puigdemont take to reverse something he just did”. Or Colau, Ponytail, or so many others.
My dad used to lay bets against nobody whenever the spokesman of Herri Batasuna (whatever they happened to be called that week) gave an interview: the bets were on which bits of it would be withdrawn next morning in Diario Egin. With this batch you don’t even need to wait till next morning.
Well, he reversed course on the first declaration of independence about 25 seconds after he made it, so that’s going to be tough to beat.
Spaniards will be able to come together for a couple of hours in the FIFA Under 17 World Cup Final against England in a few minutes.
BUMPED
Any updates, now that Rajoy has been thrown out? The new guy needed secessionist support to get elected; he might be more symphathetic?
So far, the new Catalan president is making a fool of himself to anybody not his followers (word salad worthy of Trump regarding the Mediterranean Games), the King is doing what he normally does, the new government is busy coming up with stuff for their own Ministries and treating the word salad as ladran, luego cabalgamos… they bark, therefore we ride. Or, “when he says something which either makes sense or breaks the law, we’ll pay attention. Until then, we’re busy.”
Note that Sánchez also needed the help of Podemos. Podemos’ stalinist-populist leader* isn’t happy about the results. People who don’t vote for Podemos, on the other hand, are.
- Wild electoral promises combined with “if you don’t bow enough to The Leader, you’re out” internal policies.
AK, they’ve heard you!
El País has an interview with Pedro Sánchez in which the first half is practically taken up by Catalonia (TLDR: “we’ll speak with them about the things that it’s legal and legit to speak with them; any time they insist on tossing up the board gonna be tought titty”, but of course he says it more politely). It’s not available in the English edition yet, that one is dedicating a ton of space to His Bro-in-Lawness and to this year’s Sanfermines program (which doesn’t even get a mention in the Spanish edition).
Interesting. How are the Independance supporters taking it. My old flatmate is half Catalan/half Portoguese. Obviously not a fan of Spain (;)). He seemed certain that the EU would intervene (what, they would order the French and the UK to invade?) when the referendum happened. How the “international commuity was going to force Spain to let historic Catalonia arise”, he was annoyed when I told him most of the International Community thought “Catalan” was just another nickname for FC.
He was disappointed at the turn of events…even more when the office of his multi-national Company went scurrying out of Catalonia and he had to relocate to errrr Madrid. He seems more hopeful now that Sanchez is in power. So I was wondering.
BUMPED.
Several leaders given lenghty jail terms. Major protests in Barcelona.
And how the bloody fuck do any of those protesters who are actually, genuinely independentist think that burning downtown Barcelona is going to get them international help, is beyond me.
A columnist in El Confidencial (sorry, in Spanish) has a pretty large point, taken directly from the sentence. The constitutions of every single country that the independentists have claimed as their “defenders” indicates that each of those countries is indivisible. The article doesn’t say this, but one of those countries happens to be France, where populations with languages other than French (Catalans in the SE corner of the hexagon among them) have a lot less rights and political recognition than in Spain.
A few weeks ago we got the statistics for last year’s creation of new companies (including subsidiaries of other companies, be they national or multinational). Most newspapers, including some which are catalanist but not suicidally so, have been pointing out that Madrid saw greater growth than Catalonia for the first time in decades and in fact now has more registered companies than Catalonia, again for the first time in decades; the flow of companies and people from Catalonia to other regions continues. The most radical newspapers were looking at only one data point, the amount of companies created in Catalonia (which yes, was greater than zero). They made no comparison with previous years, no mention of companies closed… So yeah, there is a definite exodus.
Let’s burn a few stores, a few containers, a few trees that have been there since Antoni Gaudi was a college student, and that will bring investors back. Rrrrrrrrrright.
As of right now, the current independentist “procés” is like Monty Python’s parrot: it has passed on, joined the choir invisible… this is an ex-“procés”.
In the end, the only thing that had a chance in hell of getting independence going was support from foreign countries with some relevance. That is not happening (Spanish diplomacy has run circles around the Catalan government in the international arena).
It was symptomatic that, a couple of days ago, the Catalan Government called all consuls in Barcelona to “explain” their position about the sentences to them…
…and when it became clear that not a single one would be attending, the Catalan Government cancelled the meeting.
Right now I see the supporters of Catalan independence as going through the 5 stages of grief: they have been through denial and right now they are going through wrath. Later will come attempts at bargaining, depression and a measure of grudging acceptance of the inevitable. The independentist project is dead, to all practical effects.
November 10 there are again general elections in Spain. The independentist patties are already getting the knives out (they actually hate each other). It appears as if the right-wing parties in Spain (PP and, god help us, Vox) will get big gains…
And it may well be the beginning of the end for the electoral performance of the independentist parties. They are more and more desunited with every passing day.
We will see how it goes.
For now,
- Seat (one of the largest employers in the province of Barcelona) is closing its factory for at least a day and a half, because of the problems they expect people to have getting to work. Article in Spanish, eventually it will probably be translated, it’s from El Pais and they have an English edition.
- Saturday 26th (so, Saturday after next) there was supposed to be a Barça-Madrid in Barcelona. It’s likely to be moved to mid-December. The subway station for my house is the same as for Camp Nou; I’m sorry for the loss of business my neighbors will have from fans not coming to that big match, but not sorry that hopefully every store’s windows will survive that weekend.
- The US, France and the UK are already warning their citizens against travelling to Barcelona. Other times their warnings have been kind of absurd; this time I can’t say they don’t make sense.
All links in Spanish.
In my opinion all this mess will pass, people will get tired, and the final result will only be making Catalonia poorer and less relevant. Already Madrid is growing more than Barcelona, and many companies and organizations are bypassing Barcelona and going to Madrid, Valencia or Zaragoza.
The whole thing is a tale full of sound and fury, told by an idiot, and will end like the parturition of the mountains, which ended up giving birth to an insignificant mouse.
Or worse: the final result will be nothing when it comes to “status quo”, a relatively impoverished Catalonia, and plenty of bad blood between family and friends that nobody knows when will dissipate.
All in all, lots of negatives for Catalonia.
I honestly don’t believe it was ever about independence (the difficulty of achieving it has been, if anything, increased tenfold by the “Procès”) and very much an attempt at creating a wave of Nationalism that would give the two main nationalist parties more power and control.
But this Nationalistic movements are still going strong, everywhere in the world. In the rest of Spain, Spanish Nationalism is on the rise. I think that in that sense, their electoral seats are more than safe at the moment.
Of course, problem with Waves of Nationalism, is that they tend to eventually crash and destroy everything around them.
Highlighting mine.
Nah, in narioalistic causes, the last stage of grief is IEDs.
Eh, the Catalan nationalists, ETA they are not. There was a group who tried to plant bombs some years ago. The only damage they managed to do was blowing themselves up a couple of times, and killing an old woman by accident.
Also - I am pretty much convinced that a non-negligible fraction of the Catalan government does not actually believe in Catalan independence. If push comes to shove, I can see the Catalan government either collapsing or folding and giving up. And a non-negligible part of the mess is ultimately directed from above, from the independentist factions in the Catalan Government. Probably for self-serving reasons (pissing contest with Madrid with the hope of winning concessions in a hypothetical negotiation that is now more a pipe-dream than anything else).
Again, the final result will be a relatively impoverished Catalonia, a loss of relevance (economical and political) in front of Madrid, bad blood among the Catalans themselves, and a new humiliation to add to the many they ended up visiting upon themselves.
Fun fact: Catalonia has had a bunch of self-proclaimed independences in the last 150 years, and each one has been shorter than the last. The list is as follows:
1871 - lasted for 1 month
1931 - lasted for 3 days
1934 - lasted for 8 hours
2017 - lasted for 25 seconds
The next one I guess will be measured in microseconds or something like that.
BUMPED
The Spanish election has had one weird consequence. One of the most likely coalition partners for a central Governor are Catalan separatists and their leader is one of the ones given lengthy jail terms.