[Discombulator]

> That's another topic, why can't the EU sort them out?

What do you think the EU should even do about this, based on which principles? To me this is entirely unclear.

There is no right to secede from a country, in fact, the territory is usually part of the identity of a country, also legally speaking.

[dcabrejas]

100% people talk about the catalonya issue like they should just be able to break free without understanding the first thing about the issue. It just proves that people are so easy to manipulate with propaganda-like videos that catalonya pro-independence parties put online. I wonder what they would think if it was their countries that were trying to be broken.

[aianus]

I’m from Canada and we let the separatists have a referendum and tried to change their minds. The referendum failed. I don’t know anyone who took it personally or wanted to invade Quebec to make them stay or violently stop the vote.

Quite frankly I find it baffling that people care so much about violently forcing provinces they don’t even live in to stay in their country.

[dcabrejas]

No-one is violently forcing provinces they don't even live in to stay in their country so I'm not sure what you are insinuating there.

People were disrupting public order and doing an illegal activity (referendum) with public money. Normal people couldn't get to work or go to the doctor because people were blocking roads.

That is what police is for basically, I am glad we have police to protect us.

Maybe your constitution is different than ours, I don't tell Canada how to rule itself. I find it baffling that people think they can tell other countries how to govern themselves from so far away!

[aianus]

> No-one is violently forcing provinces they don't even live in to stay in their country

What I saw in the news at the time was that the rest of Spain shipped in armed goons from outside Catalonia in to beat people up who were trying to vote in the independence referendum.

Did that not happen?

[TheSpiceIsLife]

> There is no right to secede from a country

> legally speaking

I don't see how any of these things matter.

If there's no right, if there's no legal means, then wage war. Die trying.

I'm not suggesting I support either position, but pointing out that, ultimately, laws and opinions don't matter.

[logjammin]

_Wage war. Die trying._

Yes. That's ultimately why the Cataluña thing is a paper tiger issue: Catalans are too rich and too soft to really break away.

I'm not saying they're not allowed to have grievances, nor that they don't have any legitimate ones, but these people live extremely comfortable lives in a highly (_highly_) autonomous part of a relaxed, modern, Western nation. The independence stuff is mostly posturing. There's a good saying in Spain about this these days, roughly translating to "Catalans don't want to secede; they want to be secessionists."

It's cosplay revolution, and the rest of Spain has a good case for losing its patience with it. They want to break away, but no, sorry, the rest of the country is not allowed to have a say in the matter? Some Catalans (a minority, everyone seems to forget!) want their own country, but they also want it to be handed to them voluntarily by their "oppressor" in Madrid? They want to commit crimes but they expect not to be sent to jail?

At this point I'd almost be grateful for a Catalan Lenin of some sort; at least then we'd know there's an adult in the room.