When the 1916 rising against British rule in Ireland took place, many of the defeated insurgents were booed on the streets of Dublin as they were led to imprisonment: Such was the popular anger at the damage their ill-planned adventure had caused to many lives and the city’s infrastructure.
And then the British started to execute some of the leaders, and the tide of public opinion turned.
It is doubtful whether Catalonian independence had the support of a majority of Catalonians prior to the referendum on the First of October 2017. But the sight of peaceful citizens seeking to vote being baton charged, beaten and shot with rubber bullets by riot police will change all of that.
Despite deploying 15,000 police from outside Catalonia and injuring over 800 people, the Spanish state managed to close only 300 out of 2,300 polling stations and could not prevent 2.3 Million people from casting their vote – a 42% turnout – despite confiscating many ballot boxes. Many Irish referenda have been passed with less.
90% voted for independence, a resounding response to the violence.
In one ill-considered act the Spanish state has ensured its own disintegration. Catalonia will now declare independence. If the Rajoy government seizes control and organised new elections, they will be won by separatists. In the words of WB Yeats all is “changed, changed utterly: a terrible beauty is born.”
Someday…maybe fairly soon, maybe not…we will experience this kind of “terrible beauty” in the U.S.
it seems inevitable.
AG
AG, just wondering what you have in mind as the causal event. I mean, if South Carolina decided to secede again, wouldn’t you and I both say, “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.”?
Maybe, but the Controllers would crack down. Bet on it. Losing face that way? Other states might follow. Doubtful that they would let that happen.
AG
My guess would be that the problems would really arise if a rich state like California were to secede. After all it subsidises a lot of poorer red states.
The problem for Spain is similar – Catalonia is its richest province and subsidises a lot of poorer provinces.
Nigeria fought tooth and nail to prevent Biafra, its oil rich province, from seceding…
Southern California depends upon the Colorado River for water. THAT dependency cannot be untangled by wishful thinking. But even California has its red regions. 2017 isn’t like 1861, when there was a geographically contiguous region that wanted out of the Union, with little internal dissent.
OMG a word of sanity. people outside California don’t understand water issues AT ALL.
also different from 1861: the US military could and would defend its bases in California. Those bases would never conceivably be given away in a negotiated separation, and would allow the USA to very quickly win a war if California were dumb enough to start one. The USA in 1861 could not defend Fort Sumter; no imaginable independent California could defend itself against Camp Pendleton and the navy base at San Diego.
Could Colorado block the river, and what would it do with the water then? I.e. has it any option but to let it flow into California. Does California have alternate sources of water, or could it do a bilateral deal with Colorado for the water after independence? Could the California economy survive without the water?
The bottom line is that sovereign boundaries have historically tended to be drawn by armies – what they could or couldn’t defend, at least not profitably. Most of the British empire got its independence because the UK could no longer extract sufficient profits from them, or the costs outweighed the revenues, and the UK couldn’t afford to keep them after WWII on a non-profit basis.
Catalonia doesn’t have its own army, so the only way it could conceivably gain it’s independence is to either cause so much economic disruption that it isn’t worth it for Spain to keep it, or to agree to pay a post independence tribute to Spain, say by taking on most of Spain’s national debt.
Otherwise, holding on to Catalonia by all means necessary seems an existential issue for Spain, because Spain needs the revenue from Catalonia and Catalonian independence would be followed by Basque independence etc.
The only alternative I can see is if the EU, by mutual agreement, agrees to act as mediator and conduit for a financial settlement between the two. And things would have to get a lot worst than now for Spain to agree.
the river could be blocked; huge reservoirs in Colorado, Utah, Arizona and Nevada could soak up lots of the flow. The tap would be turned off in Nevada at Hoover Dam. There is a legal agreement between those states and California about who gets how much. Mexico is also supposed to get some but most years they get cheated already.
Only a part of SoCal is dependent on Colo River water, San Diego partly but they also get NorCal water via L.A.
thinking some more: Colo river is not just water, it’s electricity too. If the upstream states reduce the flow they’re reducing the hydroelectric generation that they depend on.
I remember visiting northern California dams as part of a field trip one year back in the early 1980s. Definitely drove home the point to us about how much of our electricity came from those dams. You’re on point as far as California’s other water issues go. I suppose eventually the state will build some desalination plants, but it will take years to build those up and the infrastructure to pipe in water from those to cities and rural areas. California secession is one of those silly notions that I hear about from time to time and am thankful when the crazy talk stops.
Carlsbad Desalination Plant
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It’s a start. The state will need plenty more. I recall talk of one in Santa Barbara, but there was sort of a “not in my back yard” vibe to how that was unfolding. That will need to change. Even if we avoid the crazy talk of secession for a moment, the realities of climate change are going to make the Colorado River a much less reliable water source before too long. In order to provide water to residents and irrigation to arid and semi-arid agricultural regions in the state, something will have to give.
BTW, keep in mind it has been ages since I lived out that way, and when I do travel back, I rarely discuss news with friends and relatives. Admittedly I am in the dark about a lot of what is going on in Cali these days.
I’m an ex-Californian the rest of whose family is still there in the San Diego suburbs. Those desalination plants need lots of electricity. I don’t see how a big desalination push can come without nuclear power, cuz I don’t think all those windmill farms on the mountain passes leading to the desert can supply what’s needed.
Then there’s the issue of decadal-scale droughts, which paleoclimate evidence tells us is the norm in the Southwest. Civilizations in that part of the continent have withered before owing to drought.
Gotcha. And nukes around fault zones. Yeah, thanks but no thanks. The nuclear plant near Trestles Beach in the San Onofre area always worried me.
There has been some very good coverage of this at dKos.
Check out Catalan Looney Tunes, which is from before the Guardia started breaking heads, and is quite entertaining.
and from today Spain: One Day Later (with a FAQ + Update).
Other diaries from those writers are also worth looking at. dKos being what it is, some writers seemed to favor the authorities.
I’m sympathetic to Catalonia mostly because of my fondness for the fictional Catalan nationalist Dr Stephen Maturin.
I’m wondering if the scary scenario for These United States is something along the lines of Yugoslavia. We’ve got the demagogue in charge, enabled by a legislative majority, and armed factions who regard people unlike themselves as Untermenschen.
Oh.
Untermenschen.
That’s something like “deplorables,” isn’t it?
So…the “deplorables” (as lableled by HRC’s campaign) consider the people who treated them as deplorables to also be deplorabes?
Uh oh!!!
We in a load of trouble now!!!
Neocentrist fools to the right of us (well armed neocentrist fools who at least supposedly control the military and other policing forces), independently aromed neofascist clowns even further to the right, and here we are way out in left field, waiting for the punchline.
Hmmmm…
AG
Noticed the EU has largely sat on the sidelines as these events have unfolded. In the meantime, it looks like the opposing sides in Spain are digging their heels. I get the sinking feeling that this story does not have a happy ending.
Bitter memories from the Spanish Civil War and it’s aftermath – the Franco era – are still very much alive. Hopefully people will have the good sense to avoid a repeat, even on a much smaller scale.
It’s been many years, but I remember reading some oral histories of the Spanish Civil War. Agreed that even a smaller-scale repeat would be awful. Will cooler heads prevail? I wish I knew. I get the sinking feeling that the current Rajoy government and the leader of the Catalan separatist movement are both spoiling for an escalation.