The Spanish government has announced that the parliament of Catalonia and its entire government have been “dismissed” today, hours after Catalonia declared independence from Spain in a 70-10 vote.
Obviously Spain believes they can do this, since they didn’t recognize the declaration as legitimate. On the other hand, it’s not clear that an independent Catalonia is going to feel like Spain can just dismiss their government. The standoff is continuing.
But Spanish officials appear to believe that the dissolution is a fait accompli, and Spanish prosecutors say they are looking into charging the Catalans with “rebellion,” and are trying to figure out if those charges will just be centered on the government’s cabinet, or all 70 MPs who voted “yes” to independence.
The charges could carry many years in prison, and could come as soon as Monday, according to Spanish officials. The expectation seems to be that they can end the secession movement by jailing the entire leadership, then having new regional elections on the assumption that the only party that’ll still be in one piece is the anti-secession Socialists.
Dismissing a popular democratically elected government while that government is still popular… hmmm, nope, not going to work.
Tried to find out what the rest of Spain thinks of Catalan independence. Quora actually has the question “How do Spaniards feel about Catalan independence.
Laura Hale gives the most detailed answer including a sense that Catalan is seen as spoiled and corrupt, but the upvoted one by Eduardo Ringach is “We don’t care”.
Catalan independence seems to be very much a priority of the elites.
Yup, there seems to be a lot of reasons to be against independence. But in that case, Spain has played every card wrong. They should win by their ideas, not just ignore the problem for a long time and crack down with violence when it suddenly gets serious.
The referendum may well have been rigged as well. The result differed so radically from the polls that it’s certainly suspicious. But Spain’s actions have just helped legitimating the referendum and the government. They should have simply accepted the referendum and assisted in surveilling it as it was being held.
Voter turnout was low enough (43%) that the referendum results have low legitimacy. Even routine American Presidential elections break 50%. Hong Kong’s umbrella revolutionaries made the same mistake, assuming to much real support for an elitist cause with a lot of hidden fine print.
Elites aren’t renowned for innovative thought any more than caring what the plebes think. However, Spain is probably counting on the high level of indifference to independence by most Catalan inhabitants to blunt serious opposition.
The language of the Catalan working class is Spanish; they might not have bothered to vote. Make the problem too real, and Spaniards and working class Catalans will probably go with the best economic argument in their interests. Spain has the default advantage, and Catalan leaders are avoiding the question beyond saying rich Catalans pay too much in taxes.
“Voter turnout was low enough (43%) that the referendum results have low legitimacy. Even routine American Presidential elections break 50%.”
Well, yes, if you exclude all the people legally forbidden to vote. If you include everyone, not even close.
Why didn’t Serbia just “dismiss” the Kosovo government???