The BBC reports Spain Issues Deadline to Separatists .
Spain’s government has given Catalonia’s separatist leader five days to say whether or not he has declared independence, government sources say.If Carles Puigdemont confirms he has, the sources say, he will be given a further three days to withdraw the declaration.Failing that, they add, Madrid will invoke Article 155 of the constitution.
Article 155 has never been used before, so we are in a kind of Brexit situation before Article 50 was triggered. The article legally exists but there are disagreements about how far-reaching it is, how it would/should work (and how quickly) in practice.Reports in Spanish media have suggested that if the Spanish prime minister were to activate Article 155 in the absence of a response from the Catalan president, pro-independence parties in the Catalan parliament would then declare independence.
What Really Happened Yesterday?
From Eurointelligence Email
As we noted yesterday Catalan separatists are increasingly pointing to Slovenia as a model for Catalan independence (after the 10-day war in 1991, Slovenia agreed a three-month moratorium on its declaration of independence during which no serious talks took place, and at eventually independence was internationally recognized).
Yesterday’s events in the Catalan parliament, before a thousand accredited international press, was more like performance art. Nobody knows at this time whether Catalonia declared independence or not. In the end, Catalan Premier Carles Puigdemont delivered a speech in which he first appeared to declare independence in accordance with the referendum law that had been voided by the Spanish constitutional court. Then, he proposed that the Catalan parliament suspends the effects of the declaration in order to allow a window for negotiation with the Spanish government. This left everyone dumbfounded.
Legal and political commentators largely didn’t seem to know what to make of a parliament session that didn’t take a vote, and the signing of a separate declaration outside the plenary. If we had to take a view of whether independence was declared or not, we would say yes. The first half of Puigdemont’s speech was an enumeration of Catalan grievances with Spain’s constitutional order. It felt like the preamble of the American Declaration of Independence: “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another…”
As to the meaning of the suspension, it’s just a ruse in our view. If the Spanish government does nothing, the Catalan authorities can carry on with independence. If the Spanish government cracks down, they can complain that the response is disproportionate as they didn’t declare independence. And to compound the paradox, if the Spanish government reacts to the events as a declaration of independence, it is validating it as such. But paradoxes are a feature of formal logic, not of narrative logic. One needs a cultural anthropologist, not a political scientist, to disentangle the meaning of what transpired yesterday. And we are neither.
Today, Spain gave Catalonia five days to respond. The most likely reaction at this point is for Catalonia to take those 5 days then Madrid will activate Article 155.
At that point, anything goes.
Majority Math Fake News
Some readers keep telling me a majority of Catalans were against independence. Mainstream media, especially the Guardian keeps hammering that point, referencing polls taken in June.
Please, we just had a vote. 90% voted for independence. Here’s the independence vote math
The Catalan government claims Madrid confiscated as many as 770,000 votes. Let’s call it 600,000. If so, at least 2.88 million people voted, a turnout of over 53.8%.
Of the stolen ballots, what percentage were yes? Numbers suggest around 90%. Let’s call it 75%. That would make it nearly 2.5 million yes votes. That’s not quite a majority (assuming everyone voted), but for it not to be a majority, nearly everyone who did not vote would have had to vote, and nearly all of those would have also had to vote no.
While it’s plausible to assume most of the abstainers were anti-independence, it’s not plausible to propose 90% would have turned out and 90% of them would have voted no.
Simply put, at the time of the vote, a majority wanted independence. The only reasonable challenge is a dispute of the numbers posted in the above image.
Rajoy Impact
Prime minister Rajoy’s attempt to halt the vote by sending in troops was likely a key determining factor leading to the Yes vote.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Good analysis Mish. Rajoy is screwed no matter what he does. My bet is he sends in troops to squash this and deals with the bad press as it comes.
(And we have not excluded all the duplicate votes for “Yes” cast by those who voted “early and often”.)
(If the 770,000 number overstates the stolen votes by 90,000, the assuming again 90 per cent. of those votes were cast for “Yes”, the the tota for “Yes” falls to a minority of the registered vote.)
If we deal with the alleged 770,000 stolen votes, assume a similar percentage were cast for “Yes”, then the total for “Yes” becomes 2,737,038 (i.e. another 693,000 votes) which is 51.51 per cent. of the registered vote – but given the flawed nature of the referendum and the apparent impossibility of verifying the 770,000 stolen votes number, is that really sufficient margin to implement substantial, disruptive and likely irreversible change that sees a western liberal democracy dismembered?
2,044,038 voted “Yes”, meaning 3,269,526 did not vote “Yes” – in a capaign where there was no organized “No” vote because the constitutional court had forbidden it and where the central government told voters (under pain of legal sanction) not to participate.
And here is the independence vote maths again:-
Backlash votes helped to put Trump in the White House; they will probably lead to a new, financially stressed Catalonian Country.
Backlash votes helped to put Trump in the White House! They will probably also lead to a new, financially strained and short lived Catalonian State.
Agree, Rajoy’s heavy handed violent effort to suppress the vote had the unintended consequence of backlash votes.
The Guardian is a mouth piece for the globalist bankers.
… thus hiding a leaf in a newly planted Chesterton forest.
… and the whole planet goes kaplooie in WWIII
… As Nairobi comes to a climax, the UN attempts to calm things down; but a poorly timed jibe triggers a withdrawal from th UN by North Korea. In the absence of other information…
What happens next? Somewhere in Nairobi, a butterfly flaps its wings. A Nairobi guard, almost high from too little sleep, and mistaking the movement for an enemy unit, cocks his weapon. The noise triggers his bunkmates…
One more time…”As we noted yesterday Catalan separatists are increasingly pointing to Slovenia as a model for Catalan independence…” The Slovenian model may not be the best for Catalonia. Slovenia’s geographical location was at the north of Yugoslavia and separated from the Serb-dominated Belgrade government by Croatia whose inhabitants despised the Serbs. It was far more difficult for Belgrade to march on Slovenia than it would be for Madrid to march on Catalonia. I’d prefer this thing ended peacefully.
“As we noted yesterday Catalan separatists are increasingly pointing to Slovenia as a model for Catalan independence…”
“As we noted yesterday Catalan separatists are increasingly pointing to Slovenia as a model for Catalan independence…”