[notspanishflu]

I replied to jayniz, maybe you didn't see it.

It's in the article 1.2 of the Spanish Constitution:

> La soberanía nacional reside en el pueblo español, del que emanan los poderes del Estado.

(The national sovereignty resides in the Spanish people, from which emanate the powers of the State.)

[ryanlol]

That certainly doesn't seem to outlaw people casting votes for independence.

[foldr]

http://www.loc.gov/law/foreign-news/article/spain-constituti...

[ryanlol]

This doesn’t seem to contain any information relevant to the legality of voting. It merely discusses the validity of the referendum, which is a separate issue.

[foldr]

Surely the two issues are intimately related. It's because the referendum is illegal that it's illegal to vote in it.

[ryanlol]

I don't understand your logic. Could you try to explain this using common legal concepts?

The constitution merely invalidates the referendum, it doesn't actually make it illegal. However, obviously it's criminal to spend public money on organizing an unrecognized referendum.

Given that the referendum itself isn't criminalized, it seems ridiculous to argue that simply by participating one would be violating the law.

It's also important to keep in mind that even the Spanish government has not attempted to argue that it's illegal to vote. This is just a meme being spread on online forums by people who mostly don't even understand the difference between the constitution and the criminal law.

[foldr]

I'm not an expert on Spanish law. (Are you?). I don't know whether merely voting is illegal or not at the level of individual people. But the issue seems largely moot, as it wouldn't be feasible to prosecute individual people for voting.

[justin66]

Indeed. It seems somewhat akin to "Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

[notspanishflu]

But doesn't mean that.

In law there isn't something like 'oh it seems this legal precept means...'

All legal precepts have carefully chosen words and a spirit in which they're based.

[justin66]

Nothing about (the English translation of) that sentence supports what you keep asserting. If a Spanish high court decided that's what it means in a decision, that's fine, but you should probably link people to the text of their decision instead of repeating the phrase over and over again as if it's magical.

[notspanishflu]

It means all the Spanish people have a say when talking about sovereignty, not only a part.

That's why is illegal a election for secession with only a part of the Spanish census.

[ryanlol]

It still certainly doesn’t make it illegal to vote. This constitution merely tells you what’s a valid referendum and what isn’t. It’s not against the law to participate in an “invalid” one.