But there is only ONE state in Spain. There are some people that seem to want to "secede".... We are fine with that, as long as they do it outside Spanish territory. Maybe they should move to France and try to do that stunt there... I don't think their police will be as soft with their "secesion" attempts.
I think Catalonia considers themselves to be a state, I mean, they even have their own president and police.
Some people never seem to learn from history.
Here in Canada, Quebecois sovereignty was not a big issue until Pierre Trudeau overreacted to a small amount of violence by a small group of separatists (the FLQ) by invoking the War Measures Act at a time when the majority of Quebecois still wished to remain in Canada.
The result was tragic. Separatist sentiment swelled and Canada faced a serious constitutional crisis.
Fortunately, Trudeau was smart enough to learn from his error, let democracy run its course, and after a series of nail-biting referendums Quebec is still part of Canada and separatist sentiment is on the wane.
Luckily, the UK had enough sense to approach the Scottish separatist crisis democratically and let the people speak. The people decided to stay.
The heavy-handed response of the Spanish government only served to increase support for Catalan independence. The world saw images of bloodied elderly women and ballot boxes being seized.
Then the results came in from the mostly rural areas where voting was not prevented. Polls had shown that a majority had opposed separatism, especially in Barcelona. It seems they prevented mostly non-separatists from voting.
What the world saw was acts of violence against democratic process and a landslide victory for the separatists at the polls. This was a total public relations disaster for the Spanish government. All they had to do to prevent this was to let the referendum proceed. They'd already declared the referendum to be "illegal" and so they could easily declare the results to be null and void if the Yes side won. If the No side won they could have used it to reinforce unity.
Instead they dug themselves deeper in a hole. The American civil war was a blood-soaked disaster with resentment still smoldering to this day, and the Spanish civil war was even worse. Violence is not the answer.
When will they ever learn?
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weeeee
like BCH ... not new.
