Posted on 09/20/2017 1:43:56 AM PDT by Nextrush
Spain's Guardia Civil police have detained a senior Catalan official and raided regional government ministries involved in organizing a banned independence vote.
Tensions were already high before the arrest of Josep Maria Jove, secretary-general of the Catalan vice-presidency.
Catalan leaders are defying a court order to halt the vote, condemned by the Madrid government as illegal.
One official called for peaceful resistance to protect the buildings.
"The time has come-let's resist peacefully, let's come out and defend our institutions," the president of the Catalan National Assembly, Jordi Sanchez tweeted.
The economy, foreign affairs, and presidency buildings were all targeted early on Wednesday, 11 days before the referendum..........
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
Now the police move in to stop the vote detaining regional government officials and seizing regional government buildings.
What happens next?
Spain has the second highest amount of unmarked mass graves in the world, only beaten by Cambodia. It could get ugly. Not Franco ugly but a lot of vendettas and scores to settle.
Somewhere, probably across the border into France....there’s boxes of ballots secretly waiting to be delivered during the night prior to the election. You can figure that virtually every single cop will be on a 24-hour shift and trying to halt or hinder the election.
The Spanish federal government could stop all of this by going to a redistribution system over taxes, and returning the wealth generated in Catalonia...back toward that state. If you go and figure out the deal...roughly twenty-percent of the national taxation income...comes from a region with roughly 10-percent of the population.
What I would worry about long-term, assuming the federal government wins in this episode...is that Catalonia will eventually convince a 2nd state to follow them and make this a wider issue.
Note as well, around Europe...there are probably twenty different regions which would like to break away and a successful Catalonia breakaway really hypes up the idea for other regions.
So in other words, Socialists upset about the effects of Socialism. Go figure.
The “independence” movement is now driven entirely by the radical left, which has become very powerful in Catalonia in recent years. Ominously enough, the “independence” movement has the support of Catalonia’s very large Muslim population.
Catalonia is a unique case. Since 1945....there are a dozen-odd regions of Europe that actually took off. Business, industry, tourism, etc...made these regions success stories. So here in Catalonia....making tons of money and out-pacing the other 90-percent of Spain. This started to come up twenty years ago...with Catalonia simply suggesting to revisit the distribution of state revenue. They wanted their ‘fair share’.
Spain can’t deliver that...because it’s helping to support three or four really marginal regions of the country....with no tourism or business growth.
Socialism only works if your revenue distribution system seems to be fair. The same issue came up in Germany...both Bavaria and Hessen suggested three years ago that the revenue distribution system was unfair. They took it into court. The federal government woke up and realized that the court might order them to change the system drastically. So four months ago....the German federal government designed a new distribution system...dumping roughly another billion Euro toward these two states. That settled the matter for now, and the court case was halted.
Same issue is brewing in Italy.
For a long time, the threat of “independence” was Jordi Pujol’s method of getting more concessions out of Madrid. But there has always, since the days of Esquerra Republicana and even before, been a powerful radical leftist influence in this, and many of them even dream of making Catalonia the next (Communist) Albania. I dont know why they’d want to be like that wretched, unsuccessful place, except that it was the most despotic and closed of the Soviet bloc countries.
Catalonia was completely controlled by the Soviets and Barcelona was the scene of some of the ugliest acts of the Spanish Civil War, committed by a combination of the Soviets and native Catalan communists and anrchists. These people never entirely went away and have revived, especially now that they’ve gotten together with Podemos.
In any case, one thing they never mention is the flip side, which is that Catalonia receives more government money per capita than any region in Spain. (Probably thanks to Jordi Pujols, who is now on trial for tax evasion.)
Also, speculation is that if it does become independent, it will soon become a Muslim enclave, since it already has the highest Muslim population in Spain. Friends of mine who live there are really afraid right now.
We’ll be in Barcelona in the middle of October for 6 days, staying in the Gothic Quarter right off of the Ramblas. We’re not afraid and if we were we wouldn’t go. We live in Almunecar, almost 1000 km away from Barcelona and in a different province but if things got ugly and we were afraid we would leave there also. I can’t imagine that if things got bad your friends wouldn’t have plenty of warning and time to hit the road. They should probably be preparing now just in case.
Sounds like if the vote is stopped, the next stage will be bombs and guns. How many crates of firearms could come in from the border with France or the Mediterranean?
The Catalans forgot that regardless of how much industry they had, their food was primarily grown elsewhere and you can’t fight a war without it. They remind me of NYC libs...
People say OUR Civil War still is an obsession.
Spain has only papered-over the multi-dimensional fissures, that are as fresh as they’ve always been from theirs.
The Corporatists and Globalists like big governments that cover large territories and their dirtiest dream is world government with a world set of rules to facilitate international business.
Like the Paris ‘Climate Change’ accord to create ‘carbon credits’ for big business and higher utility bills for small business and average working people.
Left-Right Schmeft-Right, this is anti-Globalist just like Nigel Farage is when he demands that Brexit be implemented by the UK government.
Everybody associated with our civil war is dead and so are their children. That's not the case in Spain. There is a road not far from my house called the N340. During the Spanish Civil War refugees fleeing Malaga for Almeria were strafed and bombed all along the way. They were still finding bones of the dead along the sides of the N340 in the 1960's. They also tried to declassify information on the identities of victims of government hit squads in 2015 and the government turned them down. Plenty of people are still alive whose parents either ran hit squads or were victims of them so I can see why it would still be fresh.
Striking contrast with the Scottish independence referendum, which was encouraged and facilitated by the UK government.
So the Tory Party could drive a wedge into the Labor Party and build up the Scottish National Party.
Since so many of the Scots supporting independence from the UK also support remaining in the EU, seems to me the phrase “Scottish independence” is an oxymoron. They’ll still be tugging their forelocks.
According to Wikipedia, Muslims make up only about 7.3% of Catalans. 52.4% of Catalans are Catholic, practising or not, 30.2% of Catalans are agnostic or atheist.
The same thing happened here in the mid-1800s.
That's only fair; it's a multi-multi generational blot on the entire area. It's their problem.
Something for them to consider, is that La Liga has said that FC Barcelona would be kicked out if Catalonia became independent.
There are really no other good soccer teams in Catalonia, so that would be a big blow to them.
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