[Darmody]

Same reason they wouldn't let one of their cities vote for independence of Catalonia. What about a small town of 100 inhabitants?

You can't just start voting to secede from the country you belong to. Voting independence for the sake of it doesn't make any sense.

[ipaddr]

Voting independence is preferred over military or terrorist tactics.

An independent town may want to separate but wouldn't have the resources.

[pvaldes]

> Voting independence is preferred over military or terrorist tactics.

I have a better idea, why not threat with stop breathing until their requirements are accepted?

Now seriously. This is a false dichotomy. Threatening an entire nation with terrorism until you have your candy and are allowed to stole the properties of the majority of your neighbors is neither acceptable, funny, or serious. Not when all that you have to sustain your utopia is a big mouth and guerrilla tricks seen in internet.

If suggesting naive adolescents to engage in terrorism is the level of the arguments, we need more adults entering the room. Blackmailing an entire country will often backfire.

[Darmody]

Giving me a billion dollars is preferred over terrorist tactics. The argument makes no sense here.

What if that town votes for independence and then votes to be part of, lets say, China? They would have enough resources then. But anyway, nobody is using the resource argument here in the Catalonian independence issue.

[smcl]

> Giving me a billion dollars is preferred over terrorist tactics. The argument makes no sense here.

You may not like it but it does make sense - countries have come into existence as a direct result of "terrorism" leading to civil war. Given the demographic breakdown of HN, it is very likely you live in one of those right now. Also remember that Spain struggled with violent separatist movement which was still active well into this century, so it is certainly not outside the realm of possibility.

[Darmody]

No, it doesn't make sense because we're not in a situation where we have to stop terrorism from happening. It's just a made up scenario, a false dilemma, terrorism or independence.

Terrorism in Catalonia was a thing years ago but it stopped. They never went as far as the ETA terrorist group from the Basque Country. And even then, independence was not an option. If you start conceding things under the thread of terrorism, where do you draw the line?

The Spanish constitution is clear. You can't claim/vote for independence. As in any other modern country we are subject to the rule of law so if they want independence, they should start by trying to change the constitution.

[smcl]

The point was that any government will consider ceding some sort of autonomy to a province that’s threatening to break away, if there’s a possibility that not doing so could result in terrorism. In Spain’s case they’ve had a similar situation in recent history, so you’d hope that they would be extra keen to avoid decades of train station bombings and such.