Catalan referendum: preliminary results show 90% in favour of independence

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/01/dozens-injured-as-riot-police-storm-catalan-ref-polling-stations

by tomp • 9 years ago

63 88 9 years ago

There are reports of people voting from two to 4 different schools. Wondering what methods authorities used to ensure there was no fraud on these referendum.

hyper_reality• 9 years ago

I suspect that will be one argument used by the Spanish authorities as to why the referendum was invalid.

rasz• 9 years ago

There is no need for any additional arguments beyond whats in Spanish constitution.

droopyEyelids• 9 years ago

Sounds pretty amazing, with all the violence and militarized police abusing the voters, for some people to be dedicated enough to go through it four times

confounded• 9 years ago

What would you propose in a situation where voting gets you beaten, and schools hosting ballots get smashed up?

hjrnunes5• 9 years ago

They organisers knew the courts had instructed police to stop it.

If they wanted to protest then they should've organised protests and demonstrations, which are perfectly allowed in Spain. That would be the democratic way. Not to insist on breaking the law and disobeying court orders.

farresito4• 9 years ago

I voted. I can't talk about all the schools, but the ones I checked made sure (electronically) that you didn't vote twice, but of course there's a chance that some people did indeed vote more than once if for some reason they manually wrote down the name.

lacaza5• 9 years ago

Check this out:

https://twitter.com/key_opinions/status/914529367543382016

https://twitter.com/juanmalamet/status/914448261964029957

https://twitter.com/yuyudecai/status/914577981812674566

qeternity• 9 years ago

As much as I'd like to see Catalonians have a voice in this, given that the referendum is was ruled illegal it seems unlikely that the "no" vote would come out in droves. One crime in protest of another?

orbitingpluto• 9 years ago

How do you think externally forced legality factors into self-determination of a group of people encapsulated linguistically and geographically into a larger nation?

If this was a referendum in Tibet voting to leave China, would you have a different position?

peteretep2• 9 years ago

And indeed, turn out was pretty low

richardknop3• 9 years ago

Lot of people were stopped from voting though. Police shut down hundreds of polling stations and intervened in other stations trying to stop people from voting. 42% turnout under these drastic conditions when police is beating up people on streets is not low imho.

sgc2• 9 years ago

Yeah ... if you are willing to take a boot to the face to vote, you probably want to change the status quo. But the boots to the face then validate the results and the rest will be history.

bjterry• 9 years ago

Game theoretically, the fact that the Spanish government was so dead set against the vote implies that they thought there was a significant probability that it would be over 50% regardless. It seems like if a government resorts to violence to stop separatism movements, that violence is prima facie evidence that the separatist sentiment potentially represents the majority of a region.

I have actually been surprised by Spain's response to this. I have always assumed that self-determination was a principle that modern Europeans actually believed in, rather than something that was only a political convenience. I don't know that much about history, though, so perhaps I could be more cynical on the topic.

sgc2• 9 years ago

I don't know if you have spent much time in Spain, but they have a tendency to be pretty heavy handed even when they don't need to be. It is a large contributor to the Basque separatist movement for example. I am still waiting to get better numbers on how many people voted etc. since the reports are wildly disparate, but I wouldn't be surprised if the move was more to send a message to other separatist movements than to deal with today in itself.

Regardless, I think the bigger take away from these events is that they have made their bed and now must lay in it. Almost any result of this vote could have been more easily dealt with in almost any other way they could imagine.

twiss• 9 years ago

According to the article, 2.26 million Catalans voted out of 5.3 million registered voters, so the result is highly significant. Even if only 21% of the people who stayed at home would have voted yes (unlikely), "yes" would still have won.

Mikeb852• 9 years ago

It's absurd that in a Western 'democracy' you'd have the national police out to suppress a referendum and attack peaceful voters.

Good job Spain, you just legitimised the referendum and gave Catalonia a ton of international sympathy.

freehunter2• 9 years ago

You're right. I've never been to Spain, I know no one from Spain, and I don't really know anything about Spain, but I do know that using a militarized police force to stop an election, even one that is technically illegal, is pretty messed up and will only serve to further prove the separatists right. If you make peaceful protest illegal, you make violent revolution inevitable.

Even if it's illegal to declare independence, it should never be illegal to vote on anything. I have no stake in the outcome in any way, but at this point I'm rooting for independence. Spain has really proven that they're not worthy of ruling over Catalans if this is how they're treating them during a simple election.

hjrnunes5• 9 years ago

That is ridiculous.

There was a court order to stop that action.

What sort of democracy is it when you can just ignore court orders?

If they wanted to protest then they should've organised protests and demonstrations. If they really wanted to make a point, organise a symbolic voting and have someone face the charges.

To go ahead with the whole thing was reckless. The courts cannot afford to allow themselves to be ignored.

That's the very opposite of the rule of Law!

jmspring• 9 years ago

Spain is a relatively "young" democracy by Western standards. It took Franco's death in 1975 for Spain to start the transition to a modern democracy. That said, the Basque region has been trying to separate for awhile. Catalonia wanting to do so just happens to be a bigger fish.

Mikeb852• 9 years ago

It's young, but given the fact it's a fairly integral part of the EU and NATO, you'd expect better from Spain.

jlmorton• 9 years ago

I wonder, what would happen in the United States if California decided it wanted to secede, the Congress passed a resolution opposing it, the President said it was illegal, and the Supreme Court concurred and ruled the vote itself illegal.

Would the US allow the vote to proceed?

It certainly is illegal for any US State to secede, and we fought one of the bloodiest wars in the history of the world over it.

justin664• 9 years ago

Would the US allow the vote to proceed?

It'd be unconstitutional to interfere in California's referendum process. The referendum wouldn't have any legal force, so why bother interfering anyhow?

jessaustin2• 9 years ago

California probably will have a succession vote, along with several other West-Coast states, after the Rs gain control of 37 legislatures and pass a series of bigoted Constitutional amendments. I hope that such votes are not violently suppressed, and I'm glad we're seeing object lessons in how awful that tactic is. This isn't the 1860s; we don't have a Lincoln.

Y7ZCQtNo393• 9 years ago

The optics (at the moment) seem to be the most important issue here. Whether or not the vote is legitimate is quite irrelevant in immediate aftermath. This is a government using physical force against its citizens for, of all things, voting -- a core democratic principle.

Democracy must be tolerant of peaceful protesting. An "illegal" vote (depending who's lens we are viewing this from), to me, is a form of peaceful protest. Candor, mutual respect, and peaceful organizing are some of a few tools democracies have to solve problems without devolving to unrest and violence. If we assume we highly value avoiding violence (and we should), governments need to tolerate the use of these tools, from time to time.

By banning the use of these more moderate options, the national government is essentially promoting dissenters to even less desirable options so they have at least some form of expression. I think we should be surprised the national government chose to use such force when it had far less invasive means for dealing with the consequences of this vote, e.g., courts.

bassman90003• 9 years ago

It was an illegal act, funded by public money. Had the government not acted, it would have set a bad precedent: that constitution doesn't hold weight in real life.

hjrnunes5• 9 years ago

It wasn't the government.

Spain has separation of powers. The courts declared the action illegal and directed the police to end it.

The organisers knew of the court's decision and still went ahead. That is reckless.

If they wanted to protest they could've organised demonstrations and protests - which are perfectly allowed in Spain.

argonaut• 9 years ago

I thought this analysis article was really thought-provoking and now I have uncertain and mixed feelings about the referendum: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/29/world/europe/independence....

Basically, when it comes to things like this there's a conflict between two international ideals: integrity of national borders and human rights. And there are some thought provoking ideas in the article. If you think about it, if all of Spain voted in this referendum (since this would affect the resources and borders of the entire nation), what would the result be? There are obviously major and critical differences, but if you look at another issue, Crimea, most people there would actually rather be with Russia. But obviously the rest of Ukraine didn't agree with that. And Crimea actually tried to hold referendums in the past that were blocked by the national government. The "referendum" that Crimea ended up holding (to legitimize the annexation) was declared illegal by the UN, but that's exactly what Spain's constitutional court did in the Catalan referendum.

Very complex issue and not as cut and dry as I had thought it to be.

coenhyde• 9 years ago

I don't think it's appropriate to ask the citizens of the rest of the country if they support the secession. To create a simple analogy lets say you have a group of five people. One is a captive and four are the captors. Is it appropriate to have a referendum with all five people to vote on if the captive is allow to go free? No the four captors are always going to vote no. The captive has to escape without the support of the captors.

trothamel• 9 years ago

I'm sure if you went to any prison and polled the inmates, you'd find quite a bit of support for the inmate's freedom.

Without taking a position on Catalonia, I think one has to analyze the reasons they want to hold the referendum and decide if you find them compelling. When the USA seceded from the UK, the Declaration of Independence provided a reasonable list of reasons. By contrast, the main reason the CSA seceded from the USA - slavery - prevented their cause from being legitimate.

charlesism2• 9 years ago

The whole idea of a democracy is that the majority wins (which is why we need liberalism to offer protection for the minority). Every minority is a majority of itself.

This is one reason why trying to deal with secessionists in a democracy is so difficult (see also Canada, and Ireland).

bassman90003• 9 years ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_v._White

When, therefore, Texas became one of the United States, she entered into an indissoluble relation. All the obligations of perpetual union, and all the guaranties of republican government in the Union, attached at once to the State. The act which consummated her admission into the Union was something more than a compact; it was the incorporation of a new member into the political body. And it was final.

Similarly, Catalonians and the rest of Spaniards approved their Constitution in 1978, which states that matters like this shall be voted in national referendum, once approved by congress.

eesmith• 9 years ago

There's no need to argue via analogy.

Who gets to decide if the Principality of Hutt River (75 square kilometers, so larger than San Marino) can secede from Australia?

Only those who live there? Or can other Australians be involved?

demonshalo• 9 years ago

This to me is essentially eternal political debate between the collective vs. the individual. Do we "put down" the individual in order to promote the well-being of the collective (read tyrannical majority rule) or do we value the rights of the individual regardless of they impact the collective? I am personally on the side of the latter.

Secession is by definition a break out from the collective. So considering what the collective wants seems to me like asking the majority to vote for their tyrannical interest (very biased way of doing things).

kcorbitt2• 9 years ago

In a divorce, you don't require that all parties agree that divorcing is the right decision. If a single party wants to dissolve the relationship, that is sufficient.

There's more nuance when we're talking about entire states, but I believe the same principle should apply. This particular vote was irregular enough to not really be legitimate, but the Spanish government should recognize that some sort of Catalan referendum has a right to take place.

ssambros• 9 years ago

If a single party wants to dissolve the relationship, that is sufficient.

Interestingly enough you will find that this is not the case in all jurisdictions.

derekp7• 9 years ago

That may work between two people, but not for a large enough group. For example, if a group of people owned a large enough amount of land to be self sufficient, should they be able to separate their land from their country? Even if it is a few dozen people, and a few square miles?

jwhitlark• 9 years ago

But if you are the wealthier party, you will be required to pay support...

The problem with easy non-mutual dissolution is that a party with a temporary advantage can transform it into a long term gain at the other party's expense.

nine_k• 9 years ago

Integrity of national borders against infringement from outside is good because it prevents aggression. Separation within the borders can be violent or not; for instance, separation between Czech Republic and Slovakia was a slow and entirely peaceful process. Most of the time, though, there is a significant faction that does not want to let go of a part of "our land", even if they have no ties to it and never even visited it.

nsnick• 9 years ago

This will end up as a shooting war.

sundvor• 9 years ago

Well, blood has already been spilt - seems like the Spanish PM _really_ doesn't want democracy to take place:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/01/dozens-injured...

What a disgrace.

kcorbitt2• 9 years ago

...that's extremely unlikely. Independence doesn't have anywhere close to 90% support in reality, it's just that the pro-Spain faction didn't turn out to vote.

Retric• 9 years ago

As far as I can tell, US independence had minority support (~40 - 45% of the white population) they however where willing to fight. With others either neutral or Loyalists.

scythe• 9 years ago

Scottish referendum: allowed, failed

Kurdish referendum: suppressed, succeeded

Catalan referendum: suppressed, succeeded

It's a little too early to call it a pattern, but it has the appearance of one.

vxNsr• 9 years ago

British referendum: allowed, succeeded

peteretep2• 9 years ago

You could interpret that as the Scottish referendum having been allowed because it was thought unlikely to succeed.

dna_polymerase• 9 years ago

It's a bit early to call both the Kurdish as well as the Catalan referenda 'succeeded'. The Kurds will face difficulties with Turkey and Iraq. The Catalans will have their very own set of problems, I don't think anything is decided right there.

richardknop3• 9 years ago

Counter example: Brexit referendum - allowed, succeeded

davidcollantes• 9 years ago

A 90% of less than 40% of the voting population is minuscule.

richardknop3• 9 years ago

No it's not miniscule. That's 36% of all eligible voters. Donald Trump won election with 26% of eligible voters. Obama and GWB won with around 30%.

Also given the circumstances where police shuts down hundreds of polling stations, seizes ballot boxes, imprisons local authorities and starts beating people on the streets, that's a good turnout.

gtirloni• 9 years ago

I understand the freedom argument but it's probably coming at a very high price for little practical gain. It seems a form of Brexit, based largely on emotions without a clear path forward.

Catalonia becomes a nation state and then what? Are they now an island in the EU? Easy trade with all other regions in Spain now has to go through taxes and trade agreements? How much is debt increasing?

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/21/heres-how-bad-economically-a...

throwaway57522• 9 years ago

Funny you mention Brexit.

https://thinkprogress.org/assange-catalonia-independence-0a8...

http://www.smh.com.au/world/on-catalan-independence-julian-a...

Seems to be modest pattern emerging.

thescribe• 9 years ago

If you are ideologically opposed to large and powerful nation states you'd almost categorically support breaking them into smaller states.

noncoml• 9 years ago

I think it’s more similar to the Scottish independence referendum than to Brexit.

Even if there was no good reason for independence to begin with, police violently trying to stop the referendum makes now the best argument for independence.

Edit: And I say that as a strong supporter of a tightly unified Europe with a single constitution, government and all.

lacaza5• 9 years ago

I feel a little bit disappointed with hacker news having this superficial and anti-analytical article in the front page.

As a Spaniard id like to address some points brought up here in the comments. I've read people comparing this with Crimea, thoughts on self determination, thoughts on the repression by the government, etc.

The first thing is to question the referendum itself: there was no census, there are people from Madrid voting, people voting twice, people inserting 4 votes at once, etc. The percentage of Catalan people voting this probably doesn't even get to 15%. And the people how came to vote were the only the ones who believed this referendum was democratic (99.9% of people who want the independence).

Then there's the legitimacy of this referendum. In order to make this referendum, the catalan parliament approved new laws without majority and breaking the Catalan laws in a dictatorial disgraceful manner. This referendum is illegal and unconstitutional. There are millions of public money and public space used in order to carry on with "crime of sedition", using the political force against the law in order to rebel against the institutions. If anybody recalls past dictatorships, many of them had these kind of referendums.

After knowing how this referendum was done and why it was illegal and anti democratic, I'd like to address the people who can't conceive liberty with rules. Referendums on self determination are unconstitutional by law in Spain, I can agree on a change on the constitution. But to change the constitution in order to allow these referendums you need a national referendum, because your changing the constitution of all the country, not just Catalonia .

I will finally argue on self determination and try to clear some superficial comments I've read.

The first and impulsive thought all of us have is to think that everybody should decide about everything. But in reality, that extreme liberty can take on someone else's liberty.

If you allow catalonia to self determine their independence and then they do get independent, the next will be país vasco, then Galicia, then Madrid, and so on. The problem with this is not that the country would disappear (I'm not very patriotic) the problem is you're creating extreme inequality by regions. If Madrid gets independent they become rich because they give a great percentage of their gdp to Spain in taxes. But andalucia or Extremadura would become extremely poor. If you have a little bit of socialistic view, you can understand this is wrong. It's against redistribution, against equality, against globalization, and pro-isolation, xenophobia and discrimination.

Also, Catalonia can never be compared with Scotland, their history is null in contrast. Their identity is as special as many other regions of spain.

[0]Here are some tweets on how the referendum was done:

Guy votes 4 times https://twitter.com/key_opinions/status/914529367543382016

People voting https://twitter.com/juanmalamet/status/914448261964029957

Fake census on a small town https://twitter.com/yuyudecai/status/914577981812674566

justin664• 9 years ago

This referendum is illegal and unconstitutional. There are millions of public money and public space used in order to carry on with "crime of sedition", using the political force against the law in order to rebel against the institutions.

Since the referendum doesn't have any legal force anyway, why did your government send out cops to use force to keep people away from the polls?

lacaza5• 9 years ago

I'm not defending the government here. I agree they over reacted.

Just a couple of things: it was the judicial institutions the ones ordering the repression. And the repression wasn't as big as the international press says, 96% of the schools were opened.

farresito4• 9 years ago

The only two autonomous communities I could see leaving are Catalonia and Basque Country. Madrid, despite being rich, has many more privileges than Catalonia.

What makes you think less than 15% of people voted? Did you by any chance get these numbers from the extremely objective and impartial newspapers abc, el mundo, or la razon?

I don't feel like arguing at 3am, so I will leave it at that, but reading things like our history is null makes me pretty sad.

lacaza5• 9 years ago

More privileges? Madrid has a higher gdp per capita but a lower gpd (fewer people), despite of having a lower gdp they contribute with twice the money: http://m.eldiario.es/politica/Madrid-deficit-fiscal-millones... (Leftist source)

What makes me think about the real percentage of people that voted is not any newspaper but things like this: https://twitter.com/key_opinions/status/914529367543382016

https://twitter.com/juanmalamet/status/914448261964029957

https://twitter.com/yuyudecai/status/914577981812674566

And finally, I'm very sorry if I offended you, I'm just saying that the difference between someone from Madrid and someone from Barcelona es less than someone from Madrid and Cadiz or many other cities. There is no special identity nor history compared to other regions. Your claiming the crown of Aragon, which was pretty much half of Spain... I don't think you could claim independence just because you belonged to something else (as every region before the formation of Spain) in the past... The only real argument is to say: a lot of people want it. I stated my points on that in my comment.

hjrnunes5• 9 years ago

He said it's null in comparison.

Were it Aragon calling for independence then his comparison would not make sense. But it isn't, is it?

girvo• 9 years ago

Also, Catalonia can never be compared with Scotland, their history is null in contrast. Their identity is as special as many other regions of spain.

I’m curious what you mean here, do you mind expanding on your opinion?

hjrnunes5• 9 years ago

Catalonia is and was ever just a region.

The comparison with Scotland would be apt if it were Aragon wanting independence, not a region thereof.

freech2• 9 years ago

You specifically mention that the comparison with crimea is wrong. And yet all your arguments apply to the crimea (and any other secession) too.

seszett• 9 years ago

It's a bit late to answer, but still:

The first thing is to question the referendum itself: there was no census, there are people from Madrid voting, people voting twice, people inserting 4 votes at once, etc. The percentage of Catalan people voting this probably doesn't even get to 15%. And the people how came to vote were the only the ones who believed this referendum was democratic (99.9% of people who want the independence).

If that's the case, this is really only the fault of Madrid for not allowing the referendum to take place in a calm, reasonable and controlled manner. I don't think you can disrupt an attempt at a democratic process (I know it is debatable, but you can not deny that for many people voting yes, they saw that as a democratic action) and then claim it is invalid because it was disrupted. By organising this disruption, the Spanish state has lost a lost of legitimacy in the minds of people who were already defiant.

It's a clear loss for everyone, and as the force that is legally in charge, the Spanish government is undeniably the one responsible for it.

bassman90003• 9 years ago

Seeing threads like this makes me want to go back, and ask for forgiveness for all the occassions in which I strongly voiced an opinion in matters I had absolutely no background, and for which I was utterly unqualified to talk about.

Because it's clear that most people here have no clue about how Spanish constitution works, how it was ratified in 78/79, including Catalonia, what are the consequences of using public funding for illegal activities, including polling, and how states have a say in their whole, and each of their parts.

Lesson learned. I'm sorry.

whiddershins• 9 years ago

Since the referendum was illegal according to the Spanish government, and involved violent clashes with police, it wouldn't be surprising if 90% of the people who actually showed up and voted anyway were separatists.

pako_crack3• 9 years ago

Wow, I didn't expect a sensationalist headline like this would sneak its way in in Hacker News. Be aware of fake and this kind of headlines before posting in HN!

Catalan referendum: preliminary results show 90% in favour of independence

Related Stories