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.
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.
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?
Striking contrast with the Scottish independence referendum, which was encouraged and facilitated by the UK government.
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.
Barcelona is the nicest city in Spain.
I don’t think Madrid is going to let them leave easily.
Seville is the 2nd nicest...IMHO