I arrived at the polling station on the night before Catalonia was set to vote in a contested referendum on the region’s independence from Spain. A Spanish court had declared the referendum illegal, and Madrid had sent thousands of riot police to Catalonia to shut down the vote. By midnight, workers at the polling station closed the building’s corrugated metal gate and sealed us in until morning, or until the police arrived. Inside, we waited for whichever came first.
The vote was organized in secret. The organizers spoke and texted in code: In this polling station — a community center in Barcelona, called Foment Martinenc — and others in the area, ballot boxes were called pizzas and the ballots, napkins. The government representative who officially opened the voting center was called “la pizzera” — the pizza maker. The organizers who drove from polling station to polling station, to make sure each center had enough pizza and napkins, were called Telepizzas, after a cheap pizza delivery chain. Central Barcelona was divided among five Telepizzas.
When Catalonia voted on Sunday, October 1, ordinary voters in polling centers across the region used unconventional tactics to organize a referendum in the face of a heavy crackdown from the central Spanish government. It was a day of tension and drama, as Catalans voted for seccession by 90 percent (though most “no” voters abstained), and Spanish police reacted with force. This week, Catalan President Carles Puigdemont said he had the mandate to declare independence for the region and signed a declaration doing so — but soon after he suspended the effects of the referendum in favor of dialogue with Spanish authorities.
The October 1 clashes drew international attention to the referendum. But Catalan citizens had been preparing this vote for months.
The weekend before the referendum, police in Catalonia were given an order to shut down spaces to be used as polling stations. In response, ordinary citizens began occupying places like Foment Martinenc to keep them open. At another nearby polling station in Barcelona, an elementary school, organizers spontaneously held a weekend full of events and invited residents to camp out at the school. In a nearby city, voters organized a weekend-long tournament of rock-paper-scissors, advising participants that it might last a while, and to bring camping gear. Others were more direct, calling for a “territorial defense” of voting centers. Whether subtle, absurd or explicit, the idea was clear, said Lluís Rotger, an organizer at Foment Martinenc: “any activity to keep the polling stations open.”
Ballots and ballot boxes were targets for Spanish police in the lead-up to the vote. Police raided Catalan media, print shops, and other businesses in search of voting materials, seizing millions of ballots and hundreds of ballot boxes in each bust. After the initial seizures, the Catalan government ordered new ballot boxes from China to be delivered to a city in southern France, where ballots were being printed. Activists then drove the voting materials across the border into Spain and hid them however possible.
“People hid the material in their houses, cars, underground — it was up to their imagination,” Rotger told me. He explained that, among organizers, information about the vote was given out on a need-to-know basis. “Even the ballot boxes,” he said, “I didn’t know who had them, nor when they would arrive.”
Foment Martinenc is in a quaint residential neighborhood just outside the center of Barcelona. On the morning of the vote, the center was buzzing with activity. Poll workers opened the metal gate at 5 a.m., and a large crowd of people had already gathered outside. It was still dark out, and it was raining. The police were due to begin evicting polling stations one hour later, and organizers were rushing to prepare the space.
But where were the ballot boxes? Another organizer at Foment, Daniel Rofín, said he had no idea. Because the referendum organization was so secretive, Rofín explained, neither did anyone else at the polling station.
Soon there was a commotion outside, and a small sedan pulled up to the entrance of Foment. The crowd outside parted to make a path to the door. Two women opened the car’s trunk, pulled out four large masses wrapped in black trash bags, and shuttled them inside. Both women quickly got back in their car and sped away. The pizzas had arrived.
Photo: Chris McGrath/Getty Images
The organizers of the referendum in Catalonia had the odds stacked against them from the beginning. As they laid out plans for a vote, a Spanish court declared it unconstitutional and ordered police to seize voting materials. Soon after, Spanish military police arrested 14 Catalan government employees, effectively decapitating the official organization of the vote. After the arrests, Spanish press ran with headlines that the referendum had been “disassembled” and “neutralized,” and that “democracy had been restored in Catalonia.”
But the preparations continued, and so did the crackdown. Police blocked 140 pro-referendum websites and prohibited the national post office from mailing any election materials. The weekend of the referendum, three-fourths of all Spanish riot police were in Catalonia. The night before the vote was to take place, Spanish military police raided the Catalan government’s data and digital communications hub. Their objective was to take offline the Catalan census and voting rolls, as well as the webpages for the voting centers. That night, a government spokesperson in Madrid announced that the referendum had been “nullified.”
And yet, on October 1, Catalonia held a referendum. The vote was plagued with technical and logistical issues and boycotted by a large segment of the population, but many others were able to cast a vote. People waited in line for hours to do so while Spanish police went from location to location in a brutal operation that injured over 800 voters and closed nearly 100 voting centers. Social networks were saturated with photos and videos of police wielding nightsticks at unarmed protesters and bloodied faces outside public schools, and then of police walking away with voting materials.
At Foment Martinenc, after a few technical hiccups, voting started around 10:30 a.m. and lasted until the night. Poll workers made sure to keep a large group of people outside the voting center throughout the day, made up of those who had already voted, or those still waiting to do so.
“The idea was to always have people outside protecting the door,” Rotger explained. “Whenever we thought Policía Nacional or Guardia Civil might come, all the old people and kids were brought inside.”
“The first people they’re going to beat are the ones outside,” he added.
The organizers at Foment had different plans in case the police showed up. They had found hiding places for the ballot boxes inside the community center. Another plan was to smuggle the ballot boxes out of Foment in trash bags and to hide them in a nearby shop. Rotger says that he even brought a large hiking backpack with him. If the other options didn’t work, he planned to just grab the votes and run.
Such schemes were enacted all over Catalonia. In one town, activists hid the ballot boxes and started playing dominos when police arrived. In another, the vote recount was held in a church during mass.
At Tomás Moro, a school in the outskirts of Barcelona, poll workers hid the real ballot boxes and used two ballot boxes full of blank paper as decoys for the police to take.
“The police came with six vans and broke open the two doors [to the school] with crowbars and hammers,” recalled Anna Sajurjo, one of the poll workers present. “They took the two ballot boxes that were on the tables, full of blank votes.” Once the police left, Sajurjo added, voting resumed at Tomás Moro.
Even Puigdemont, the Catalan president, had to trick the Spanish police in order to vote. A helicopter from the military police was following his convoy of cars as he went to vote. Reports later surfaced that the convoy stopped under a bridge so the president could switch cars and go cast his ballot in another town, without alerting the police that were hovering above.
The Spanish police never showed up at Foment Martinenc, though there were regular visits from the Catalan police, called the Mossos d’Esquadra. Early in the morning, two Mossos officers walked toward the community center, one holding a document in his hand. As the police approached, the crowd linked arms and began shouting, “You will not pass.” After a few seconds, the police turned around and walked away. The Mossos would repeat this exercise once every two hours throughout the day.
Josep Lluís Trapero, head of the Mossos d’Esquadra, had ordered police to evict voting centers, following the court order, but told them not to use violence and not to not disturb public order – in contrast to the behavior of the Spanish forces. After the referendum, politicians in Madrid were quick to criticize the Mossos for not acting more aggressively, and a Spanish court has said publicly that it is investigating Trapero for sedition.
Daan Everts, a former Dutch ambassador who has monitored over two dozen elections around the world, said that “the use of force displayed by the Spanish police has no place in established democracies.” Everts, who brought a team of 20 observers with him to Catalonia in September, said he has never seen anything like this month’s referendum.
“It has been exceptional in all aspects,” he said. “There was very active prevention, prohibition from the Spanish government, so nothing was normal.”
Sitting in his temporary office in a posh neighborhood in Barcelona, Everts rattled off a laundry list of technical issues with the vote. The Catalan election commission worked in secrecy. There was little transparency in the voting protocols. Poll centers were intermittently open and closed due to technical issues, and most were missing some essential voting materials at points throughout the day.
In one-quarter of the polling stations visited, Everts said, voting had to be stopped temporarily so poll workers could hide voting materials from the police.
Still, Everts was quick to add what his team of observers didn’t see: evidence of vote fraud, in the form of ballot-stuffing, doctoring vote counts, and other efforts to tip the final result. But because of opposition from the Spanish government, he said, “It was very messy by definition.”
Photo: Pau Barrena/AFP/Getty Images
After spending most of the day of the vote at Foment Martinenc, I decided to go visit other polling stations in the neighborhood. It was around 7 p.m., one hour before the polls were officially supposed to close.
There were around 200 people gathered outside another nearby polling center when David Fernandez, a former local politician from a far-left separatist party in Catalonia, came outside. The crowd cheered. “We have to defend the votes, and we need you to help. Let’s go for a walk. Don’t ask questions,” Fernandez told the group, who all seemed to instantly understand what was about to happen.
A line of people then exited the school, carrying multiple ballot boxes among them. The crowd massed around them and began chanting protest slogans as they walked. As people on the balconies above us started filming and taking photos, chants of “we voted” and “the streets will always be ours” slowly changed to one unified chant of “don’t film!” The crowd seemed to know how exposed they were.
This was the fourth escape plan among the polling stations in the area, Rotger, the poll worker at Foment Martinenc, explained. One of the stations was on a narrow pedestrian street and had only one entrance. Poll workers all assumed that the Spanish police would raid while they were counting votes and decided to stop voting an hour early and move all of the ballot boxes to the most protected polling station. As polling workers carried the last boxes into the voting center to be counted, a large crowd swarmed in front of the door, blocking the entrance. The riot police never showed up.
The contested vote set off a week of protests. The day after the referendum, people clogged the street outside the headquarters for the Spanish police in downtown Barcelona. Flag-wielding separatists squared up against Spanish riot police with shields and tear gas cannons, until local police came to diffuse the situation. The next day, Catalan labor unions called a general strike, and for a day the streets of every Catalan city were packed with people protesting police violence. The following weekend, 350,000 Spanish nationalists filled the streets of Barcelona, many having bussed in from all over Spain. While most separatist demonstrators have been peaceful, even in the face of Spanish police provocation, the nationalist march was marked by violent clashes with bystanders and the occasional fascist flag and Nazi salute.
The tone of the protests was a far cry from the scene at Foment Martinenc on the eve of the referendum. There, there were no flags and no talk of political parties. The center was filled with Catalans of all political stripes; people seemed more concerned with their ability to vote than what would happen afterward. Yet as we waited, a few people watched videos that had been shared on social media days earlier, of military police leaving from cities all over Spain to come stop the vote in Catalonia. In the videos, crowds had gathered to see the police off, waving Spanish flags and chanting, “Go get them!”
A few of those watching, in a moment of introspection, wondered out loud when it had become about “us” and “them.” The chanting crowds in the video seemed a harbinger of the clashes that were to come.
Top photo: People rest inside a would-be polling station at a school in Barcelona, on Oct. 1, 2017, to prevent the police from sealing it off in a referendum on independence for Catalonia banned by Madrid.
Catalonia demonstrates that even a large population with deeply-felt desires is easily outmanouvered by the ruling powers-that-should-not-be. Pathetic but hardly surprising. Every person in Catalonia should stop paying taxes, top using the national media outlets and boycott the products of the multinationals that enrich the government in Madrid. They should ignore Spain’s legal system and declare it invalid within their territory and force all military personnel not declared to their cause out, keeping all infrastructure and equipment as rightfully theirs from their stolen historic taxes. Anyone that comes to force a reverse should be met with force. It is as simple but as utterly provcative and dangerous as that.
Anything else is pointless – if you want a separate country, you have to evict and repel hostile elements. And for that, asking nicely rarely works.
If the Catalonians did that, there would likely be war in Europe, maybe even throughout the world. It is one thing for a small group of violent enforcers to act to intimidate a peaceful crowd, quite another for an army, police force or mercenary group to open fire and kill people within Europe.
Seems we are teetering on the edge right now and this is unlikely to just go away.
It is certain to anyone who witnessed Greece and Catalonia that waving flags and scribbling on ballot papers for another bunch of easily-bought politicians achieves absolutely nothing.
More on the crisis in Spain
https://www.wsws.org/en/topics/country/eu-span/
for discussion:
Catalonia and the ‘Europe of Regions’ |
Exclusive: Catalonia’s bid for independence from Spain had a curious twist, a readiness to take its place within the supranational European Union, a further challenge to traditional nation-states, observes Andrew Spannaus.
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/10/11/catalonia-and-the-europe-of-regions/
This process of independence of Catalonia is a smokescreen to cover the huge corruption cases of the ruling parties in Catalonia and Madrid.
The ruling party in Catalonia does not want really independence, and that is the reason why it has not yet been clearly declared:
The Catalan president made an ambiguous declaration and, 8 seconds later, he proposed to his Parlament to suspend this declaration of independence.
In addition, in the Parliament of Catalonia there have been no votes to approve this declaration of independence, nor to suspend it.
On the other hand, in Madrid, while people are sentenced to jail for writing jokes on Twitter, a group of catalan politicians who say they want to chop Spain into two pieces are not sentenced.
It would be of great interest for the freedom flag-waving Intercept reporters to take a look at what life for a non-nationalist Catalan is like in Catalonia. They might find it a tad Orwellian in places. Instead of assuming that the Spanish government oppresses Catalonia, they might find out that the Catalan government has been doing its own little sinister circus number there for decades with the Spanish ones looking the other way in exchange for their parliamentarians’ votes, and that non-nationalists have had to keep silent or else for a long while, save for a few brave ones.
Pizza-gate??
and terrorism is “freedom loving”, CIA corruption to economically enslave whole countries is “respect for the rule of law”, “enrusing the progress of the ‘free’ world “, … when it originates in us and, yes, that pro-Russia Vladimir Putin has been working very hard for the last 400 years or so, at keeping Spaniards and Catalans at each other’s throats
Thank you!
There is a Spanish saying that goes: “No hay mal que dure cien años, ni cuerpo que lo resista” (“There is no evil that lasts a hundred years, nor a body that resists it”)
Well, for 400 years Catalans have been taking b#llsh!t from the corrupt Spanish government and their b#llsh!tting “realeza”, who all of a sudden has started to talk about “democracy”, “greed”, “unity”, “the constitution”, “the rule of law”, …
I am (not really that) amazed to see the EU politically block Catalans’ bid and rightful option to brake away from Spain, as if they were a former Soviet satellite state.
Enthusiasts, agitators and Internet bots most certainly paid by the Spanish government are calling Catalans “communists”, “Muslim lovers”, … because they fought Franco in Spain to their last drop and take more refuges than anyone else in Spain?!?
Why should Catalans be forced to “love” Spain and why should Spain spend time “patriotically hating” Cataluña instead of ridding their own internal corruption?
// __ SPANISH SECRET CONFLICT [Documentary about Catalonia]
youtube.com/watch?v=iJ_cAQ8j1O8
~
// __ BBC: Cataluña, A region apart (1979)
youtube.com/watch?v=mt31tCJdsLE
(17:15) author Mathew Tree: same thing they did with Jewish and Muslim people a long time ago
~
Hegel thought as nations as somehow having some sort of “collective spirit”. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said: “a great writer is, so to speak, a second government in his country, and for that reason no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.”
All Spain, Britain and gringos can claim as their “imperial greatness” is how they have been abusing people who can’t defend themselves on an equal basis. They don’t have a soul as a nation, this is why they need [email protected] monarchies, have neurotic media and need to invent “white-man-burden”, “God is with us”, … kinds of philosophies. Compared their media, their “philosophies”, … their societal ethos to the French, the Germans and Russians. That would make for an interesting Anthropology, consciousness study.
RCL
Well, there are not as smart as author contends.
Simpler and more effective would be to declare independence effective on a date of referendum +1 to repeal Catalonian government decision of declaring independence.
An election where only those who are against independence would participate and if they got 50%+1 eligible voters, independence would have been off otherwise would go in effect automatically.
Such referendum could not be disturbed since it would have automatically caused independence to go into effect if people were not allowed to vote.
But that was not done since Separatists had no enough vote to win, last polls from two weeks about gave them 42% and 48% against.
But that aside what the hell it was all about?
Separatists wanted to be in EU that by definition takes away big chunk of independence and sovereignty and takes away complete economic sovereignty under Euro monetary zone they declared to submit to.
What!!!!
What most are missing is the fact that Madrid panic response is not about Catalonia it is about Basque country.
The Catalonia issue in fact stems more from 2008 crisis and their carrying most of cost of Spanish recovery, they want to get better share of they money they send to Madrid and have been utterly ignored and disrespected by Madrid de facto fascist regime.
In fact like Scotland, [what killed their referendum] they want to stay in EU and probably last year referendum would have failed anyway so why not done then and got over with it last year.
It is because it would set a precedent of region leaving the Spain peacefully while Basque country was not able accomplish it for over several decades, as the only Spanish anti-fascist force to fight Franco fascists [liberation struggle continued by ETA] before and after WWII until 1975 and later fascists who just changed uniform for democrats.
The famous Picasso painting Guernica is about a Franco defiant Basque city leveled by German Luftwaffe [air force, killed hundreds] sent by Hitler to destroy democratically elected Republican government of Spain just a year or so before WWII stated in Sept 1939 while west was watching.
It is all a charade , a political play, among elites to elbow for more money, and the unspoken Basque issue make it look so dramatic. Unfortunately gullible Catalonians are confused thinking that they have any real stake in this turmoil.
You always got to report using the racial card. Call shit for what it is. So what if it was a white man. I think there should be a law to ban any news using the race of a person in there story. I got a wild idea. How about make it illegal to use any race, religion, and just use PERSON or INDIVIDUAL. You’re just as guilty.
I don’t believe the species should be used either. So what if this is about humans and not whooping cranes? It should be illegal to make any reference to species or even the type of entity the story is about as in living things vs. robots or minerals.
Extraordinary one-sided pseudo-journalism, full of distortions and inaccuracies. It seems that Mr Campbell only came into contact with separatists and more or less took dictation about their whining victimist nationalist sentiment and illegal activities.
Look what happened in the Balkans and then decide if any of this is noble or worthwhile.
Catalonia is a free society in the European Union already!
Nationalism is a virus!
The only time separation is good is when ‘we’ do it as in breaking up Yugoslavia and then Serbia through bombing (and us sending missiles into Belgrade’s TV station or Milo’s residence is NOT terrorism, no, it’s not). When the Russians do it it is, of course, despicable and unacceptable so they should stop immediately. The breaking of Yugo and ripping of Kosovo off Serbia was legitimate, progressive and environmentally friendly so stop talking about that. Any insinuation that IT emboldened the Russians to take back Crimea is only proof that the insinuator is a Putin stooge and that ends the argument.
By the way, it is so refreshing to be able to call those we disagree with Putin stooges as an alternative to calling them Nazis or anti semiticists. Diversity in name calling is good because all diversity is good unless it’s used by Putin to undermine our pristine democracy.
Zach, You rock! Wish we had more journalism like this, especially in Aspen.
Love you brother.
Poll was utterly bogus, completely illegal, and rife with fraud. Anyone who believes Catalonia can survive without Spain, as an independent country, is utterly out of their minds. I’ll use Texas as an example. Were Texas to remove itself from the US, Texas would have the TENTH largest GDP in the world, yet Texas could not survive without the United States. So, to put things in perspective, Catalonia isn’t the biggest economical sector in Spain, especially after the great exodus of businesses following that insane vote. Now the EU has stated Catalonia could never become a member. Exactly where is Catalonia to turn? They would be an isle unto themselves and soon devolve into a third world country.
Idiots.
How well mannered and original.
Catalonia’s independence problems are just like Scotland. Everybody knows that Catalonia is one of the most profitable parts of Spains’ economy. Now, Catalonia’s governor is speaking in code to avoid getting arrested and score points. The population votes for independence. He goes on TV. One minute, he says the people voted yes. Which means we’re independent? Actually, we’re kind of independent. Kind of what, like being semi raped? He’s trying to not lose face and his job.
Besides, if Catalonia becomes independent, like Scotland, how will you run your own economy? Other than North Sea oil that’s running out, what else does Scotland have to run their economy? Ever notice that Alex Samond (former SNP power broker) is now doing weekend talk shows in London? Does anybody care?
Given the circumstances, I am surprised that the independence vote was ONLY 90% rather than 100%. There was no incentive for those opposing independence to participate so… WHO were those 10% who didn’t vote yes?
Dear Intercept, can we please have proper news articles rather than opinion columns like this? It’s like reading the Daily Mail.
The Catalans did NOT “pull off” the vote, far from it. It was another disaster, just as the SAME vote 3 years ago was.
90% in favour, but <45% turnout. How is that a representation of the will of the people? And the voting was a sham with several journalists proving that they could vote multiple times.
How the Catalans can call this a success I don’t know. It was an abuse of law and constitution, a slap in the face of democracy and the sort of trick you’d expect from anarchists rather than “peaceful citizens” as they say they are.
The government was right to crack down on it, but I am NOT condoning the violence.
The sooner than Pudgemont and his cronies are put in jail and artickle 155 is invoked the better.
What we learned here is that Democracy is just another lie in Spain. A word that means nothing. Catalonia should go forward with their plans for Independence. Is there any more proof needed than the reaction to mere voting in a referendum.
The world should in turn sanction the rest of Spain, as brutally they did to North Korea and Iraq. There is no room in this world for oppressive governments.
Both NATO and the UN should ensure that Catalonia’s independence is assured.
You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. Democracy is a lie in Spain? No, democracy and a law-abiding government ensured that a percentage of one region in Spain did not fracture the whole. That a percentage of the population in Catalonia think their little Utopia idea is going to work doesn’t mean everyone else should suffer. Democracy protected itself from a revolutionary uprising from a very vocal, and very small minority of the Spanish population as a whole. What the Catalans did is called subversion. What they’ve been doing for 25 years is called manipulation. And no, the EU will not applaud and support a rogue leadership of this sort having their way. Neither will Spain. They will stand behind the leaders who are properly leading Spain, not the Catalan leaders looking to divide it. If that hurts, then tough shit. If Catalans are going to act like fools, they’ll be treated like them. And no, occupying schools and other buildings in secret and refusing to follow police orders isn’t democracy at its best. Political leaders manipulating people into acting in ways that would draw sympathy when the police had to enforce their orders is manipulation. If people got hurt, it’s on Puigdemont and his piglet Junqueras 1000% for enciting this kind of division and hatred of Spain in the first place with their nationalism and racism towards others. Open your fucking eyes and stop buying their bullshit.
Hogwash.
It appears that Catalonians believe they have not been properly represented in their “democracy.” Let us remember the U. S. Declaration states:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
Apparently “any form of government” has, in their eyes, become “destructive of [those] ends”, and so, it’s their right as a people to abolish it.
Or, do you disagree with the founding of the USA? Why is this right for us and wrong for them?
I think that is a bit demagogic.
We live in Society, and we are obliged to follow laws. The referendum was illegal and partial. You cannot do whatever you want, even if it is wanted by a huge group , a huge group that is not all of the population. That is not Democracy. Or if it is, it is a very poorly executed Democracy.
Allowing people to do illegal things is a bad example, and specially if this has so much impact in so many people. I do not defend the charges, but… please, travel and visit some truly oppressive governments. Lol. What would have happened in other countries if a region started ignoring the current laws and doing it in their own way? It would have been similar or worse. In France they would have sent the Army, probably.
And yes, in Spain there should be a law that allows referendums for independence. But also there should be more integration efforts between nationalists parties and the Government.
We all accept to follow laws, and there are ways to change them. Do you want to live in a place where law is not followed because a group and politicians who want the vote of that group are not interested in following it?
Finally, remember that Catalonia is NOT Scotland. It is not the same juridic entity (region vs country), therefore things cannot be done the same way. Québec is a more similar case, and please take a look at the Clarity act that Canada made, and its requirements and consequences. They are a bit tough, but I think that Spain should follow something similar. Also, take a look at the consequences for Quebec after all their unsuccessful referendums.
As someone with oddly no personal beef with either faction and although I think self determination is highly important in a rights dominated society, the rule of law makes that difficult. I am Irish and by tradition anti british ( lol) I have to commend the brits for giving the Scots an open and lawful referendum. One has to ask that did the Catalans have any other option but to call a referendum themselves absent State approval in the latter’s absence to acquiesce to one. However, on the other side, the referendum was highly flawed. Was there adequate discussion, equal time allotted to opposing views, was information given freely as to what independence would entail? The fact the the turnout was so low is worrying …for democracy itself. People assume it was low because people feared to come out and vote, that is an assumption only. The large protest against independence shows that the disparity between pro and anti independence may be highly than first imagined. To call the referendum a legitimate mandate is morally repugnant because it wasn’t. It was neither legal ( although from a natural law point of view it might be and moreover the non permission required to hold one made it difficult to abide by positive law) and definitely not reaching standards of probity and rigour required when holding such a divisive referendum ( as I said was information about both sides openly discussed and in a free an open manner, did the Catalan Government exercise the transmission of information fairly etc as would be required for any just referendum). Both sides have behaved poorly but I do have sympathy with the Catalans on ones aspect, the desire for self determination and the right to be at least given the opportunity, an opportunity denied. I also feel for the national Government because it could led to the fracture of Spain, a country already struggling financially. As for the EU? disastrous and I can never fathom how an emerging independent State would freely throw away its freedom by joining the EU which squanders sovereignty. Moreover, I cant imagine Spain and France allowing a candidate such as Catalonia to join the EU anyway, surely that was foreseen by MR P and his Catalan government?
Things aren’t much better here. We in the USA have only a pale shadow of real democracy, and if you think I’m mistaken, take a deeper look.
In the USA, one of the first places democracy is lost is by the screening process to keep people off the ballot. First, there’s this ridiculous “two party system” – which we don’t actually have but which many jurisdictions have attempted to codify into law. Then, both parties, but especially the Democratic Party, block any progressive candidates from even trying to run as best they can – it’s so rare that places like The Intercept have articles about the few who make the ballot. Nearly all media is complicit in keeping them down by calling them “unrealistic” and other, worse descriptions. They have virtually no chance of getting reasonable funding to compete in the media. It’s only a rare person like Bernie who even has a small chance and then the Democratic Party stole the primary from him so that they could try and force Hillary upon us.
Then, there’s the insecurity of the vote, which I don’t have space enough here to even summarize well. But the top problems are registration issues, likely unconstitutional but still used (and effective) “voter ID” laws, votes taken by unverifiable digital systems, lack of a paper trail, lack of vote counting integrity, and lack of proper oversight of the voting process by independent non-partisans.
…As bad or worse, we cannot secede like Catalonia is trying to do. The last time someone tried it a few hundred thousand people died and it didn’t work, either. While that secession effort was for a bad cause, no one in the USA can even try it for a good cause! YET, the U.S. Declaration of Independence says:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
Yeah, just try that today and watch how fast you are strung up!
EU-Parliament vote in the UK (since you cite the Daily Mail) had a similar turnout. Was that one invalid?
Under harsh and dangerous circumstances with many voting sites blocked and ballot boxes seized by The Guardia Civil, 47% turnout was a large turnout. In the recent US Trump/Clinton presidential election the turnout wasn’t much more at 55% and the world’s fate was allegedly at stake.
This article stated that no votes abstained from voting. This impossibility made me laugh.