Fredbargate

Artur Mas, the president of the Catalan Government, the Generalitat, has given an interview to the BBC in which he talks about his region's bid for independence. His main theme appears to be: why can't Mariano Rajoy be more like David Cameron?

Both leaders are conservative with a small "c" as Cameron's brand of conservatism is very different from the repressive State that Rajoy is busy constructing.

"If we have a nation, either Scotland or Cataluña, and there is a large majority of the population that calls for a referendum, in a real democracy, what must we do? You have to sit down and negotiate, reach an agreement and let the people vote

http://www.panorama.gi/localnews/hea...11344&offset=0

cricketman

Well, the answer is political of course

Nobody in Scotland votes Conservative

So if Cameron can get rid of Scotland then the Conservatives will almost always be voted in.

The PP only really stand for one thing, a united Spain. If Spain is no longer Spain then they become a pointless non-entity

amideislas

Certainly a conspiracy to get rid of Scotland.

Cameron and his cronies have succeeded in too many things so far. This has to stop. It's not fair to Spain for the UK to prosper.

Perhaps the Scottish independence referendum should be held in Spain. Then Cameron and his cronies would never succeed.

steviedeluxe

Does anyone seriously think the Scots will vote for independence?

Relampago

Catalonia never was a country, like if it is Scotland that had king, flag and own hymn. Catalonia has its origin in the county of Barcelona that belonged to the ancient Kingdom of Aragon. So to compare Catalonia with Scotland is absurd, because Scotland has always been a country by own right, while Catalonia, not. Catalonia always belonging to Spain

chopera

Scotland is a country that "chose" to became part of a united kingdom through treaty, and can therefore quite simply choose to withdraw from that treaty. Scotland has always been politically independent in the sense that, as a country, it can always determine its own degrees of independence from other countries. It's just that for the last few centuries it has chosen to be part of the United Kingdom.

Cataluña can make no such claim, and as soon as Mas stops pretending otherwise, and stops playing with the sementics about calling Cataluña a "nation" then his cause might get treated with a lot more sympathy.

chopera

beat me to it

steviedeluxe

Er, is there a rule that states you can't become an independent state if you haven't been one already? I'm sure countries like Slovakia, the Ukraine, Pakistan and even Canada somehow bypassed that...
Not that I think independence for Catalunya is a good idea - it's become a big issue at the wrong time, and will hurt both themselves and Spain. But the lack of being an independent country in the past surely doesn't make a difference?

Fredbargate

Well a treaty with Spain as a signatory is not worth the paper it is written on.

chopera

Of course there's no such rule. Which is why Mas doesn't need to be drawing false parallels with Scotland and playing with semantics. If he can demonstrate that the majority of people in Cataluña wish to be independent, and I mean really independent rather than just calling themselves independent, then that should be sufficient to convince most people of their case. But from what I've heard the referendum question is in fact 2 questions that are incredibly ambiguous and manipulative, and completely sidestep the issue of what level of independence people are voting for.

Relampago

The great poblem that has Catalonia is the Catalan oligarchy, that has been the one that has really impoverished Catalonia. When it has been well with the rest of Spain for the money, they have never had problems, but now with the crisis they want to cover their cases of corruption, and poisoning to their population's sector with harangue of independence. Catalonia is one of the provinces of Spain that the different governments more has been have favored (until the own Franco), with the Vascongadas of Navarra, they have always had more competencies than the rest of Spain. The Spaniards pay to their autonomous police (because they get paid of the Ministry of the Interior, not of the Catalan Generalitat) that is the most expensive in the country. The economic embezzlement in Catalonia is unpresentable, because the Generalitat doesn't send money to Sanity, but the Generalitat (governed now by independence political) if sends millions and millions of Eurus to public entities of the régime, as TV3 or the newspaper " La Vanguardia ", authentic independence nurseries. This, and having given competences in education to places like Vascongadas or Catalonia, it has been a tremendous error

cricketman

Relampago, your argument and knowledge is about as good as your English i.e. wildly inconsistent

Retired in Euskadi

Give him a break; how many ex-pats could argue as he does in Spanish?

cricketman

With Google Translate, probably quite a few

Retired in Euskadi

Then if all they have is Google translate, I feel sorry for them. It's dreadful.