estelada

Although some seventy percent of the voting populace in Catalunya were in favour of holding a referendum on the matter of its secession from the Kingdom of Spain, prior to the police brutality and voter-suppression that occurred at the ballot-stations in Barcelona, Girona and a few other locations (prominent places surely but hardly not blocking all of them), the people were split on the issue with only some forty percent unconditionally voting for independence.
Spain’s central government maintains it is illegal and unconstitutional for a constituent region to declare its autonomy—and it is the government’s right and arguably its responsibility to try to kept its soverign borders intact and cohesive, like those currently strategizing over what a Kurdish homeland might mean for Iraq and Turkey (or for that matter, what the experience might be for the first US state to remove itself from the Union) or how the creatures of Brexit’s court rallied around Catalunya’s right to self-determination, but its violent response to stop voting altogether reportedly translated to an incredible outcome of over ninety percent—perhaps that show of might smacked too much like the totalitarian regime of Francisco Franco that came to an end a scant four decades ago. What do you think? In the aftermath of the plebiscite and the violence that marred it, Catalunya’s leadership have since softened the rhetoric of an immediate withdrawal and amid all this chaos it’s impossible to predict how things will progress moving forward.