Catalonia is outside of the law

Ridiculous to apply a universal right of secession to anyone who wants it. States will no longer have any authority at all over the areas that they have powers.



Potentially the problems that an entirely anarchic society would cause?

Ridiculous to apply a universal right of secession to anyone who wants it. States will no longer have any authority at all over the areas that they have powers.



Potentially the problems that an entirely anarchic society would cause?

Nope. Without law, democracy is meaningless: it can only exist within a framework of established rules. In Catalonia, these rules are quite clear: the relevant demos for exercise of such constitutional functions is the Spanish one.

Democracy without a grasp of this would be nothing short of chaos. Instead, it requires that minorities accept the decision of the majority. In terms of centrally controlled powers, it is clear that even a majority of Catalans is still a minority of Spaniards.

This will be the the Spanish constitution, approved by 95% of people in Catalonia in the referendum in 1978 (higher, incidentally, than the nation-wide result).

There is a difference between working outside of the law in an authoritarian, undemocratic state and breaking the law in a liberal democracy where all people have a fair and equal involvement in the democratic life of the state.

On one hand, I think the Catalonians should be allowed a legitimate referendum if they want one, but on the otherhand, at the same time, I cannot think of a good reason why each individual should not be allowed to declare their house an independent nation.

Power to the people. Not the state. State officials are servants of the people. Not the other way around.

It is ridiculously simplistic to consider this purely as a binary question of 'right'. A moment's thought reveals it to be a more involved question of power, politics, and diplomacy.

Certainly a stable democracy requires laws. But those laws require popular consent, and what happens when that is lost, as it surely has been in Catalonia?

Legal niceties be damned, you cannot just foist laws on an unwilling population.

I agree that an archaic society would be bad on the whole, but my point is that it is not easy for me to determine to what extent individuals should have the right to self-determination, which I may well consider the primary right.

It's not in any way a moral judgement - that's an entirely practical contention I made: that for states to exist, there has to be the authority to keep them unified and to be able to enforce democratic decisions.

It's not "neither here nor there", it's a complete involvement in the democratic life of the nation-state. The police, of course, had a right - in fact, a duty - to enforce a court order on the illegal referendum: that is quite proper.

I do accept that it seems some police officers behaved irresponsibly, but we know already that several of the high-profile photographs used over the past few days as evidence of police brutality were not as they seemed: being from entirely different protests, or even from completely different countries.

In any case, the police being truncheon-happy with demonstrators gives a proper right to have that investigated. It does not mean the rule of law collapses entirely.

There is a difference between popular consent and universal agreement. I could point out that 95% of the Catalan population approved of this particular rule, but that's not the core of my point. Instead it is this: that a minority will always disagree with any decision and democratic assent is given on the basis of clear and understood rules within a system of laws.

That some people, or even a group of people, within that structure disagree is not only not a problem - it's pretty much to be expected. We don't, for example, expect the electoral map of the UK to go entirely blue or entirely red depending on who gets into government.

On a sub-state level, we do this all the time. A law that is supported in the rural Midlands may be very much opposed in London, or radically supported in Northern Ireland but opposed in Edinburgh. Can you seriously justify saying that we shouldn't extent, say, laws on same-sex marriage to the Hebrides simply because the people there may oppose it?

So what you're trying to say is that regions should just be able to walk out of the nations they are currently a part of, even if it infringes the constitution? Under this logic, should "freemen-on-the-land"/"sovereign citizens" be deemed to be independent nation-states if a majority votes for it? Your logic leaves much to be desired.

So... they were only following orders?

I also doubt organising a referendum would have led to a wholesale collapse in law and order, but I guess who knows?

The Catalans are an ancient, distinct people with a strong regional identity, a powerful regional government, and completely legitimate political ambitions. I think it is absolutely ludicrous to suggest their right to self-determination must be subject to the will of the rest of the Spanish regions, simply because they are currently in union. We both know that would never happen, and I don't think Catalan separatists are obliged to just accept that reality.

Firstly, there is a very big difference between opposition to a specific law and the demise in popular consent for the body which creates it. As far as I know, if people in the rural Midlands are of a particularly strong opinion on something they believe the best way to effect it is through participation in parliamentary democracy. Which is dandy, but I can think of several cases where peoples have reached a somewhat different conclusion about the institution of parliament, such as the American colonies or Ireland.

Should the Irish (who were after all participants in British democracy) have just accepted the majority opinion across the whole of Britain?

Secondly, you're trying to reduce the issue to an absurdity, but we do have a regional government in Northern Ireland (well... sort of) which does exactly that! And I absolutely support the right of regional governments to do things I disagree with.

So if the constitution gives a dictator absolute power, the people should not revolt?

One issue I have with your position is your concept of 'democratic' decisions. You've already brought up the point of what the relevant demos is, but you seem to consider the question settled by the Spanish constitution -- the Spanish legal system being, as I keep repeating, what is called into question in the first place.

Clearly what is accepted as the demos among regional or national populations can shift, and so I think it is unduly rigid to consider that Catalonia has forever committed itself to operating as part of a Spanish demos simply by voting for it at one time.

They were implementing an order of the courts. That is what police are duty-bound to do - and I have no problem with them having attempted to prevent the Catalan Government from engaging in what appears pretty clearly to be a direct violation of a court order.

There is a distinction between "law and order" in the sense of public order and the rule of law. The latter is about government that is not arbitrary, that follows its own rules and acts in a proper fashion. Putting aside the content of laws, how they are democratically decided and so on, that rule of law is the basic, fundamental underlying requirement of a state to function in any credible way.

You're inventing something as a "right" to suit your argument there. The question of rights has been clearly decided by the courts and the Catalan Government had no right to do what it did. The people of Catalonia certainly do self-determine, as with their compatriots, within a democratic Spain where everyone has an equal democratic voice.

The law does not require acceptance by everyone - the nature of it is that it uses force to ensure compliance - but we should not be remotely surprised when that force is then seen in practice. As far as "legitimate" goes, I don't think any behaviour by the Catalan Government has been remotely legitimate in recent days. More than that, though, I think it's been quite dangerous.

Of course, the American colonies were never part of the UK and their case was expressly about what I'm supporting: people self-determining by an equal say in how they are governed. People in Catalonia have that in regards to the Spanish state institutions, the people of the 13 colonies certainly did not have that in relation to the British administration.

In terms of Ireland, are you actually contending that the IRA waging war against the British state was a positive thing? Over 2,000 people died as a result of that ridiculous skirmish. Irish Home Rule - and eventually a free state - was endorsed by the UK Parliament, but it was not on the basis of what the extremists wanted.

Indeed, the Irish Parliamentary Party, who didn't have links with militants with guns, set the basis for Irish Home Rule and made their case for change within Parliament. Their decline and the subsequent conflict with the British state and, thereafter, in the Irish civil war, did not improve the lot of the average Irishman.

Indeed, and Catalonia has a devolved government too. I don't really see the point you're making here. The Northern Ireland Assembly cannot, however, legislate in areas reserved to the UK Parliament.

No, because as we've already discussed on this thread, there is a difference between self-determining people participating equally in the democratic life of a liberal democracy, and people who are subject to rule by either an undemocratic government or in a colonial relationship where they do not self-determine.

None of these things apply in the case of Catalonia: Spain is a democracy, which Catalan people participate in equally.

So the Scottish independence referendum should've been a UK-wide referendum so the 5 million Scots can always be outvoted?

If you've have a look through some of my other posts on this thread, you'll notice I've mentioned this: the Scottish referendum was approved by the elected representatives of all parts of the United Kingdom. The section 30 order went through the UK Parliament.

Clearly didn't change the fact that you're saying it's entirely fair for the rest of the country to outvote a region on the matter of self-determination.

Based on your logic, China can invade all of oriental Asia today, then use its own constitution to stage a "nation-wide" referendum and have everyone else outvoted.

It's very rare that the colonial master will give up control, especially when there's a big difference in population. You're essentially closing off the path of a peaceful path to independence.