"Basically, the code recurses a sha256 computation 1714 times to get a lookup key, and then once more to get a password for decryption."
This is an Easter Egg. Barcelona fell on September 11, 1714 during the War of Spanish Succession and with that Catalonia's freedom as well. September 11 is the National Day of Catalonia.
Also, at 17:14 of each and every game of FC Barcelona in Camp Nou Stadium, Barcelona fans claim for independence [1].
So it was not by chance that the coder chose 1714 for the encryption algorithm.
Wasn’t this the succession war between Habsburg and Borbon dynasties?
I’ve seen some depictions in paintings [1] where you can see soldiers from the Habsburg (wearing the Catalan berretinas) porting a Spanish flag... I believe it was more a war for two different models for Spain, not for independence or anything like that. Sounds like revisionism to me.
Generally, nationalist movements appropriate historical events (particularly wars), which were not at the time national in character, in order to create a historic narrative for their nationalism. See e.g. the place of Battle of the White Mountain (Thirty Years' War) in Czech nationalism, or the place of the Battle of al-Qadisiyya in Iraqi nationalism.
Generally establishment movements just start brand new wars (or re-open old ones) in order to create a current narrative for their nationalism. See e.g. Thatcher, Blair, Bush (1 and 2), and now Trump
The war was between European powers and had many ramifications in different places. For Catalonia the net result was that it lost its political institutions and became a province in a centralised state.
Getting rich as in- getting flooded with indio mined cheap silver, driving inflation of the currency ever onwards, while mercantilism ruins the competition ability of ones industry?
The Crown of Aragon, which controlled the territories of modern-day Catalonia, was an independent state in all ways aside from military and foreign policy. The union of Castile and Aragon was a dynastic union, with very few shared institutions until the Kingdom of Spain was established in 1716. Aragon itself was a fairly decentralized state with constituent principalities having their own Corts and legal systems (rights referred to as "Furs" or "Fueros")
> was an independent state in all ways aside from military and foreign policy
It was still an absolute monarchy with the same monarch; it's not like the Aragonese were free to choose their own destiny. Still, the Constitutions Charles promised them to uphold must have given them something, I just don't know what it was. That's why I'd like to know how they compare to the current rights granted by the autonomía.
Most European monarchies were not absolute. The nobles, the burghers and the church could of often have substantial powers. A king ruling a bunch of regions with varying degrees of autonomy was the norm.
The King of the Corona was far from an absolute monarchy, and there limits to what the monarchy could do. The Fueros were a kind of primitive Constitution pacted between the king and the kingdom (mostly the nobility), and nobody was above it.
Of course this put severe conatrains to the royal power, and the Habsburg had been trying for a long time to get rid of the Fueros and it was the first thing the Borbons did when they took over the Corona.
What were these limits? What did the Constitutions allow the nobility do against the will of the king, assuming a king that wanted to uphold them?
> nobody was above it.
It's not like there was an independent judiciary branch with the power to enforce that against the nobles or the king. Case in point: the king decided to eliminate them and he just went and did it.
It was not an absolute monarchy, that's the point. There was a balance of power between the king, the church and the nobility. A comparison with the current statute autonomy seems difficult since it was an entirely different form of government.
Apparently the flag in the image posted was Photoshoped. The Spanish flag in 1714 was white, both for Habsburgs and Bourbons. Looks like flag revisionism to me.
It was officially adopted 70 years later but it had been used in war ships far earlier than that. That’s where it came from: I was made to be easily identifiable while at sea.
Off topic: I don't know if it's Firefox, GTK or some other component at fault but all tooltips in the browser last for an unreasonably short amount of time and it's really hard to read something more than a couple of words. I have to either view the page source or freeze the process.
I wonder why a tooltip is supposed to disappear in the first place.
The situation is very similar to password storage, where you want to not make it trivial to brute-force moderate-entropy passwords even if your database gets breached. We have functions designed specifically for that: scrypt, argon2 etc. https://www.npmjs.com/package/scryptsy is a pure JS implementation of scrypt for example.
Even with scrypt the situation is not great, but using sha for this kind of thing is no longer state of the art. If people are willing to (a) download and run a program rather than rely on the browser and (b) willing to wait half a minute or so for the result then you could easily tune the scrypt/argon parameters up to 11 but at the cost of quite a bit in the way of usability. If "must work on smartphones without extra app downloads" is a requirement you're pretty limited in what you can do this way.
Another solution might be to use real servers but host them on the "dark web" - get Tor a bit of publicity in Catalunya!
EDIT: in response to a few posts that briefly appeared and then disappeared again - IPFS is fine. SHA256 for authenticating a page is fine. I'm only objecting to using raw SHA-anything as a key derivation function as in the section "A static database".
I'm not sure what you mean by "the crypto is not ideal"? I was under the impression that there are not yet collisions for
SHA-256 https://github.com/ipfs/faq/issues/22
The attack mentioned on the page is brute-forcing someone's details from partial information:
"it can be used to “fill the gaps” of information about any citizen. If you know someone’s birth date and the area where they live, you can obtain their government ID by trial-and-error on that website."
The mitigation is slowing down the number of guesses/second that an attacker can try. In a well-designed key derivation function, an attacker with 100x the resources should only be able to try out guesses 100x as fast. That's what scrypt/argon2/bcrypt/PBKDF2/... try and achieve.
SHA and other general-purpose hash functions tend to be easy to parallelize, at least in parts, and you can get huge speedups on GPUs or even better, FPGAs/ASICs. That's why no-one serious still mines bitcoins on CPUs and the big mining syndicates [hire planes](http://uk.businessinsider.com/cryptocurrency-miners-rent-boe...) to ship GPUs a little bit faster.
This has nothing to do with collisions. It's to do with hash functions being designed to be fast, and key derivation functions are designed to be slow and memory-hard.
I downloaded the Bitcoin mining app in 2010, opened it once, got bored of waiting for it to sync with some server, then shut and forgot about it for a few years. It might be a funny story to tell my grandkids if BTC is still around
Yup. For one example of a software package that can use GPUs to accelerate password cracking and hash brute forcing, folks can look at hashcat: https://hashcat.net/hashcat/
Scrypt is tweakable for RAM and runtime constraints. From that PBKDF, it would make sense to use something like HMAC-SHA2 with another magic nonce, and then private information plus previous PBKDF output hash together as the authenticated part. If you want to get really tricky, add another random secret hash.
And, they probably should’ve used HMAC-SHA2 to derive the public primary index key insead of a hash function directly.
Thanks for the article. After reading it, I went and added an IPFS node to my Kubernetes deployment on Google Cloud and then mapped the /ipfs and /ipns endpoints through Kong so they would be served by https://api.wisdom.sh/<ipfs|ipns>/. This effectively gives people yet another domain they can use which doesn't require installing the IPFS client. Any IPFS site wil work through the proxy, but here's the site under discussion: https://api.wisdom.sh/ipns/QmZxWEBJBVkGDGaKdYPQUXX4KC5TCWbvu...
I think it's because the named version is being used (ipns) which may or may not be involving a lot of requests to the network to resolve (perhaps to the main node even). I've resolved and pinned the original content here: https://api.wisdom.sh/ipfs/QmXj5GjZ8WApwq79EyAeNZ2E6pQkJmbrj...
Alternative approach: Instead of using the IPFS2HTTP gateways (that can easily be censored, as gateway.ipfs.io has already been censored in Catalunya), run a IPFS daemon locally that cannot be censored (but is not anonymous either).
I live in Catalunya and wrote this tool for doing just that, in a easy way. It 1) starts a go-ipfs daemon locally, 2) opens up the referendum website in your default browser, via localhost.
If you're interested in accessing the website from inside Catalunya, give it a try: https://git.io/vdGUx
I am not familiar with IPFS internals, but is there no pattern to the IPFS traffic that the ISPs can shape/block?
Too bad about the entire IPFS domain being blocked, because besides the host, HTTPS traffic has safety in numbers. If only there was a way to proxy through google.com or some other popular domain too important to block.
Thanks for mentioning domain fronting! It's also been used by Signal to circumvent communications censorship in Egypt [1]. We want to bring domain fronting to IPFS by making libp2p's websockets transport capable of it. [2]
Fun fact: advanced networking setups like domain fronting are impossible to address in a URL/URI scheme. Check out multiaddr :) [3] A domain-fronted service could be addressed as something like `/dns4/google.com/tcp/443/tls/sni/google.com/http/example.com/ws`
I don't think that's tough if a country has said you need to be able to filter traffic. Assuming it is a simple pattern (e.g. whatever their NAT busting bootstrap is), set of ports, etc they could easily push filter rules to their downstream network devices if the law makes them.
I tried to go get your project, but got a bunch of "unrecognized import path" errors. Looks like you're pulling a dependency off of IPFS, do I need to set something up for that to work correctly?
being a catalan expat with some expertise in computers, is there any useful way that i can help this weekend? (I am not afraid of losing anonymity nor being condemned or prosecuted by the spaniards, I actually would find it rather amusing.)
Download and run the IPFS daemon for your OS (from ipfs.io) and access the banned websites/files locally. That will make you serve them to other people.
I'd be interested in any way to help out too. As part of the Scottish independence movement, our Catalonian counterparts are comrades & allies. Other than solidarity protests over here, I'd love to help in some way.
Its a funny old world mate (I'm English) and I despise seeing censorship like this. I will also see what I can find in my toy box to assist Catalunya in expressing themselves democratically.
(I would rather GB stayed in one piece but if push came to shove, I'd probably do the same here in similar circumstances - there is no excuse for this heavy handed nonsense)
It's not often I find myself agreeing with a UK unionist but it's a point of honour that the Scottish referendum 2014 passed off largely as an orderly point of democracy. Westminster is often seen as heavy-handed North of the border but everyone is proud of that expression of democracy (however there are still words to be had about subsequent political events!).
No, but Tony Blair suspended the Northern Ireland assembly several times and reimposed direct rule from London, which is probably where the Catalan issue is headed, because everything is illegal from the state's point of view.
Texas has had secessionist movements also for some time, but it'd be also illegal to do a binding referendum, and Washington would take the required steps to stop it.
The notion of a referendum being "illegal" is farcical. No democracy should prohibit people from deciding to get together and conduct a poll on something.
The idea of a referendum being "illegal" may be counter-intuitive, but I don't think the situation is as simple as you suggest.
For example, secession (not to mention sedition or treason) is illegal in many jurisdictions, and is a natural thing for sovereign countries to want to prevent. It is also natural for the sovereign central government of a country to put limits on what a regional government can and cannot do, with the usual principle being that the regional government cannot do anything outside of the powers specifically given it by the central government (regardless of what powers the inhabitants of that region want).
You're right that "people" could "get together and conduct a poll on something", but if this was informally conducted it would be hard to prevent double voting, and not accidentally disenfranchising certain people, and there would be little recourse against these self-appointed pollsters stuffing their home-made ballot boxes.
At the same time, if a regional government spent money, or used people's personal information, for a purpose they were not legally permitted to, then those would potentially be crimes themselves, regardless of the issue of secession.
The questions worth debating are "How much autonomy should regions of sovereign countries be given?", and "If a region isn't legally given that much autonomy, what is most peaceful and just means for that region to attain it?"
Secession can certainly be illegal, but that simply means any outcome of an unsanctioned referendum is legally irrelevant.
As far as I can tell, Spain is going to great lengths to curtail the rights of citizens to express their opinions on secession. They're free to ignore the outcome of this vote, but raiding ISPs, shutting down political pamphlets, and reading private mail are not the actions of a democratic country—they're tactics straight out of an authoritarian regime.
Secession is also illegal in the US (and we fought a war to prove it), but you don't see federal agents arresting people for starting ballot initiatives in California or shutting down Vermont secession websites.
Neither do you see the government of California or Vermont organising a binding vote to secede from the US in 48 hours (while maintaining the US citizenship!).
Radical Independence Scotland and friends will be outside the Spanish embassy in Edinburgh, all of Sunday; we absolutely support your right to self determination as the Catalans did during our recent bids for independence. Solidarity, comrade.
> Catalan officials can just distribute the hash of the main page file, and everyone else can be sure that all content linked from that file has been published by the catalan authorities.
How does the hash of the main page guarantee that content linked from that page is authentic?
If the Spanish government wants to redirect or modify the contents of the page, then you would get a different hash than the one provided by Catalan officials.
IPFS is immutable and hash addressed, so 'modifying' something yields a new address. Existing documents that point to the modified thing will still point to the old version, unless their links change as well. Effectively, sharing a hash address to the main page is sharing a snapshot of the site.
There are two types of links in ipfs. Static content that works by hash of the content. Dynamic content that is signed by the owner of the bucket.... I think I haven't looked at it for months
Perhaps you missed it when IPFS was used to make the Turkish version of Wikipedia available after the Turkish government blocked access the Wikipedia website: http://observer.com/2017/05/turkey-wikipedia-ipfs/
You say "the code recurses a sha256 computation 1714 times to get a password for decryption, and then once more to get the lookup key", however in the code above the search string is computed as var search = sha256(key);, note it's using key and not passkey, which means, assuming that is correct, only one round of sha256, so roughly 1715 times faster to crack.
It seems weird that the sensitive part (ID number + birth date + post code) would be encrypted the most weakly, and the public part (voting station) would be encrypted the most strongly. Maybe I'm reading this wrong or the code author involuntarily made his encryption quite weaker.
Althought crypto is not hard to beat, specially knowing some user data, that is not also an issue.
The only information you would get by knowing some of that data is where somebody is supposed to vote. An information you can already infer from the Zip code. There are, at most, four possible voting sites for each zip code. In some (several) small/medium villages there is only one voting site, so, not to much to learn from decrypting.
Besides, the census (voting places) information is usually (in normal elections), placed (via paper printed listings) on voting places. And there there is more information (full name, for example).
This may have been stated already, but the DNI final character is a control one, it can be computed from the characters and the algorithm is well-known. So there should be no need to brute-force it.
Out of curiosity, where on the actual website is the crypto code? (It's way harder to follow than your simplified version :) )
Also how are they distributing the initial hash - physical signs? I figure the easiest threat from Spain is to get people to show up to the wrong polling stations, which don't have them on the voter rolls, and then cast doubts on the validity of a referendum that has a huge number of provisional ballots. Since you don't actually need to staff polling stations, this attack only really requires a single person setting up a cloned website and distributing a different hash (although it gets easier if e.g. the postal service is willing to help you send out the wrong hash).
The code is in the bundled file at [1] (look for the "calcular" function).
The hash was distributed in URL form through twitter by both the Catalan president [2] and the catalan economy minister (who is the 2nd in command actually) [3].
As an outsider, it's strange that nobody here seems to question whether the referendum really makes sense.
Forgetting about Catalonia for a moment, isn't it fundamentally amoral that a part of the country where prosperity has (by mere chance) concentrated suddenly wants to split off? Isn't this taking wealth-inequality to the next level?
Of course the people in a prosperous part of the country want to split off. Absolute democracy seems to result in an undesirable situation, because do we really want to live in a world that converges towards little selfish islands?
On the one hand, look at these maps [1], that show the results of the general spanish elections since the dissolution of the dictatoship. Do you see the upper-right part that is nearly always different than the majority? That is Catalonia.
Catalans also have a different language, a strong sense of being a nation (their "local consitution" says so!), etc.. Money is one of the reasons, but not the only one, not even by a long shot.
> Catalans also have a different language, a strong sense of being a nation (their "local consitution" says so!), etc..
And none of those things is being repressed, I have to add. As a Catalan friend pointed out, they speak and teach Catalan in schools, have complete freedom to vote on issues of their region, etc. I have to agree with the GP that it's mostly the economy doing a bit better than the other regions, which leads Catalonia to a "why should we have to support these others" mentality.
The pro-independence movement didn't really take off until the Spanish Constitutional Court thwarted 17 articles and redacted 27 more from the latest "Catalan constitution" (Estatut). A "constitution" which had been approved by the Catalan Parliament, the Spanish Parliament and the Catalan citizens themselves in a referendum (in that order).
Likewise, the latest Spanish education law (LOMCE) includes an article making it MANDATORY to offer a Spanish-as-the-vehicular-language education if any parents ask for it.
How is that "having complete freedom to vote on issues of their region"? You may mean "... so long as Spain as a whole is fine with them". How complete.
Couldn't you make the same point for any region? I'm free to do whatever I want to my house, as long as my district is fine with it. My district is free to do whatever they want, as long as the country is fine with it. The country is free to do what they want, as long as the EU is fine with it. And so on. It's the cost of living with other people, and there are benefits to that too.
The United Nations have sanctioned the self-determination right [1]. Quoting wikipedia:
> It [the self-determination right] states that a people, based on respect for the principle of equal rights and fair equality of opportunity, have the right to freely choose their sovereignty and international political status with no interference.
Hence, your argument breaks down at some point. The big issue is how to define that point, because the right definition does not include qualifying criteria for what constitutes "people" and what doesn't.
Based on their strong national identity, pro-separatists in Catalonia consider that they have this right. There are many issues and arguments supporting both sides (although most state-nations are against any kind of wide applicability of the self-determination right for obvious reasons).
In any case, nobody, neither in Catalonia nor elsewhere advocates for that right for your family, your district, etc. because you don't have a national sentiment, you don't feel like a separate ethnic and so on.
We can discuss whether Catalans constitute an ethnicity separate from the Spaniards or not, whether the self-determination right applies in this case or not, and so on... but please don't use the "If Catalans can, my family should also be able too" because it is just derailing the conversation.
Catalan here.
There are historic and cultural reasons to split also.
The economic rationale behind your post is absolutely correct. However we don't want to split because we don't want to share; we want to split because of the missuse and economic opression and the unending corruption that plagues Spain. We don't think ourselves of so-prosperous at all in that sense - and at the same time I'll admit corruption is always an issue in democracy, but Spain's case is taking it to ridiculous levels.
Let me post sources in few for what I'm saying, on the phone right now.
And Pujol(ex president of Catalonia with money in Andorra, and some of his son in jail) cases? The 3% percent... From Huelva to Girona all sucks and the corruption is everywhere.
Pujol one day said: "if I talk everything is going to be destroyed" because everyone knows that the other stole money but nobody talk
I didn't say you more. I said some examples to say that in all the country it's the same with the corruption. I said anything about the vote in this comment
There's nothing sudden at all. They effectively lost their independence 300 years ago but the drive for independence has always been there (along, famously, with a few other parts of modern Spain). They have their own language, their own culture.
Their desire for independence has been around for hundreds of years.
But even if that wasn't the case: what's wrong with that? Why would a few million people that want to form a sovereign state have to be held hostage by the others just because they're wealthier?
It depends. Is Catalonia rich because the federal government pumped money and resources into it? If so, then I would say yes, it's wrong to try to break off.
But, if Catalonia is rich due to their own industriousness, and effectively prop up other parts of the nation by sending more of their own money to the federal government, then no, I don't think there is a problem with trying to break off.
They were basically granted monopolies by law, and it's industry priorized over other regions, when not directly pouring money into it. That was while the spanish little industrial revolution and even the francoist regime.
Sorry, but this is not fully true. Catalonia has had a long story as merchants and as a prosperous land for most of its story. Specially Barcelona. It was not Franco who promoted businesses there. It would be utterly unfair to say so.
Further, the current investment of Spain's government is far beyond expected. Key infrastructures like railway, airports and ports. If Catalonia represents 19% of the GDP and 16% of population is nowadays receiving in a sustained manner 8% of the country investment.
Said that, I don't have anything to argue against the terrible situations other regions suffered from. But this should not diminish the dynamic economy in Catalonia, which would be unfair to relate to Franco.
> If Catalonia represents 19% of the GDP and 16% of population is nowadays receiving in a sustained manner 8% of the country investment.
That does not mean anything now is it ? The problem is to know if 8% is enough or not. And even if it is not enough, is there anything in the 92 other percent that is unreasonably spent ?
For example I pay way more in tax than I receive from the State. Is it a problem ? It depends: I'm not sick or in trouble there is nothing that the state can really do for me. If I were sick then I would like to receive some of my money back in healthcare. The amount should be the same than to anyone with similar problem. If I receive less, then and only then I have room for complain.
Here in the UK, the North complain about just the opposite: how much money is on already wealthy region, completely neglecting the crumbling infrastructure outside the South-East.
No the treaties that led to the EU were to prevent Germany and France having huge destructive wars every 20-50 years - something it has done very well so far.
EU was formed for opening up the market in a way that the economic benefit will be more for richer countries. In return, there are many benefits for other countries, but lifting up poor country was not that much of an aim.
Because Catalonia was granted monopolies and a lot of economical favours by law in the last centuries, eve when it was detrimental for other regions, like it was with the textile industry, car manufacturing and so on.
I agree with you that the wealth inequality is an issue.
But I also find it amoral for anyone to try to stop someone else from ruling themselves.
It would seem a large part of the problem is the morality of strongly enforcing strong property rights in itself.
In other words, if you see the wealth inequality as sufficiently amoral, then that should not be enough to stop independence, but there might perhaps be worthwhile arguments over what terms to negotiate independence on.
But it is harder to have sympathy when Spain as a whole has not done more to redress that wealth imbalance earlier.
It's like saying that the Industrial Revolution started in England by mere chance. In a way it's true, but does that mean that England has a moral obligation to share its wealth with the rest of the world?
Valencia is also in the same line, but there is a dirty secret that nobody wants to hear and much less admit.
Franco, being the same horrible dictator that killed a lot of innocent people, favoured actively Catalonia's economy over other provinces, for decades.
Is true that he discouraged them to speak in Catalonian language, but also discouraged people to speak in Galician language (and Franco was born in Galicia). At the same time give them priority in the efforts to rebuild industry and infraestructures after the civil war. Catalonia is richest than other parts of Spain, in part because Franco wanted 1) having a cluster of industries next European frontiers and roads to trade and obtain foreign divises easily, 2) money from tourism 3) conjurate the revolts giving the area a special silk-hand treatment after the first iron years passed.
Specially in the late stages of franquism, a massive exodus of workers from other parts of Spain migrated and stablished in Catalonia atracted by the favourable conditions to work and live and the "smell of freedom".
I'm aware that this counts as black heressy for millions of young people in the area, but well... nobody will stop them to read history books about post-war if they want. Ask your grandpa. Everybody in Spain has an uncle or some cousins in Barcelona.
Oppression is not something allowing you to became one of the more modern and rich places in the country; oppresion, to me, is what happened to Extremadura in the same period for example.
Valencia was one of the places I was hinting at (although I suppose they removed the river that originally made it a convenient place for a port).
Anyway, I wasn't completely aware of that part of the history, thanks.
That said I don't quite agree that Catalonia wasn't oppressed. I'm not qualified to say which regions were oppressed the most, but economic prosperity isn't the opposite of oppression. If anything the real dark truth is that oppressive authoritarian dictatorships can be quite effective, and even prosperous.
Other regions were oppressed AND kept down economically. There was even innovators, like Barreiros, a galician-born car and truck manufacturing brand that was cut off from growing more because of SEAT, that had quite a big impact in Catalonia, in terms of capital flows, jobs etc.
This is true. Galicia has been continuously kept down since centuries so that Madrid could take the spotlight.
Part of my family is Galician, I'm Portuguese myself. Still, instead of breaking Spain apart I would actually prefer to see the whole of Iberia working together as a union.
The main problem seems to be where the capital would be placed since only Castilians would want Madrid. I only wish that we could agree on a small but memorable place like Santiago de Compostela as centre for that union.
Fragmented even more, our Iberia has little voting power in regards to negotiating with France and Germany in the European Union. If Catalunya has to separate, so let it be. In the end of the day we are all together on the same boat, can only wish that we could row together too.
I still think an Iberian federation is possible in the future. The main impediment IMHO is that the Castillian/Spanish political leaders - and hence probably their voters - never understood the multi-national nature of this gorgeous peninsula. Mediterranean greetings my fellow Iberian :)
Castella follows a model similar to France in regards to centralization, where Madrid should be central to Iberia. Other regions openly refuse (or reluctantly conform) to that location since they know that Madrid will mostly only serve its own interests.
This was the reason why Portugal split from a joint Spanish kingdom centuries ago.
Then we should see the foreign interests. France and UK profit from fragmentation in Iberia. Smaller countries are easier to place against each other instead of being an economical threat to them. Portugal remains a strong UK ally over the centuries while Spain sides with France, and now further fragmented as Madrid doesn't open the hand to a decentralized model.
Really sad. People in Iberia consider themselves more or less as part of the same family (which is true to large extent). We should be working together.
>Forgetting about Catalonia for a moment, isn't it fundamentally amoral that a part of the country where prosperity has (by mere chance) concentrated suddenly wants to split off? Isn't this taking wealth-inequality to the next level?
Nope. There's nothing "sudden" about Catalonia splitting off. Franco went out of his way to incentivize it, and while the governments that followed him haven't been genocidal, they haven't exactly encouraged anyone to remain.
Of course it sucks for Spain, but they very much made their own bed.
I don't think it's about the money, but about having a different culture that's not being respected by the central government. I've recently read about a lot of (very reasonable sounding) Catalan decisions that got blocked or reversed by Madrid.
With this referendum too, this article gives me the impression that it might be Madrid's unreasonable reaction to it that might really drive the independence here. With this kind of response, I don't blame the Catalans for wanting independence at all.
The part that makes it even more confusing for me is that their party, Podemos, is a real left party which you'd expect to be against increasing income inequality.
I expect that the situation in Spain is much more complex than we give it credit for.
Lots of left flavored parties are for "income equality, except for foreigners"
PVV in the Netherlands or Dansk Folkeparti in Denmark come to mind. I don't know enough about Podemos to know where to put them, but there's nothing contradicting about left leaning parties and nationalism.
Well the article on DF also says "While overall considered part of the radical right, its policies on most economic issues would rather place the party in the centre to centre-left."
We try to squeeze too much meaning into the 1-dimensional "left-right" that it really doesn't mean anything at all.
> It's immoral to forcibly drag people down when they'd do better on their own
Will really do?
There is a group of people that mainly buy the Catalonian products. Guess who? well this is embarrassing, the evil non-catalonian spaniards. It seems that they forgot to mention it or include such small fact in their economic big plans for a brighter future (without your main clients).
This is bussiness almost becoming pure radical art. They are publicly declaring that will not stand a minute more in the same room as the scumbags that buy their products and support their families. "Keep walking customer, there is nothing to see here".
It is true if by "fly like an eagle of finances" you mean "sink as a rock full of crabs", of course.
>Of course the people in a prosperous part of the country want to split off. Absolute democracy seems to result in an undesirable situation, because do we really want to live in a world that converges towards little selfish islands?
Did you ever consider the possibility that maybe the people in Catalonia somehow work harder/smarter/better than in the other regions of Spain? In which case the rest of Spain would be the selfish ones, wanting to mooch off Catalonia, just like a lazy brother always nagging his richer brother for money. In my experience, often when Person A calls Person B selfish, it's because Person A expects Person B to do something for Person A without Person A doing anything back in return, which to me seems particularly selfish.
Well, if you know a bit about the economical history of Spain you could clearly see what happend here, which is not a case of selfishness but planned economy, keeping some regions down in favour of others.
> The ones that oppose the referendum also do it for selfish reasons. They don't want to lose something that in their view belongs to them.
Is not so complicated to understand. Spanish constitution grants clearly and explicitly that all citizens co-own the country and (unless this right is retired for things like committing a crime and losing their freedom) they can benefit of the use of any public space. The ramblas are also mine, as from millions of other people. Not, is not "my point of view", and not, is not "debatable". All Catalonian people are also co-owners of Doñana and this is not debatable either (not even in the hypothetical case that the current and temporal president of Catalonia wouldn't stand Andalucia).
They will lose this rights, and many other, because somebody is starting flames every day and acting as a troll for fun and profit since years
What was happened in Spain was just tyranny of a minority using people, women, elder and children as human shields with the purpose to steal people from their rights, by any means. Some people came from their home with urns closed and loaded with ballots, before voting. I ask you, second-person plural, was it funny to use your computer skills helping scammers to commit a big fraud?. Sorry, but I can't see where is the fun. Some people got beaten and there is a man in the hospital with a severely damaged eye.
What you would expect from the police in case that somebody would announce that, for a small ramson, will not distroy unilaterally the future, bussiness and current rights of millions of non-independentist people in 48 hours? Would you negociate and pay?
To fight for your constitutional rights and for the respect to the law is to fight by saving the society from falling into the law of the jungle. Is the opposite to "being selfish" and benefits everybody.
I just left Barcelona a couple hours ago, the capital of Catalonia. Everywhere you look, Catalan flags, signs demanding 'democracia', demanding freedom.
I'm told this is just normal for the region, but if this is normal then independence is eventual.
Well, it is normal since independentists have controlled Catalunya since 40 years ago. It used to be that 20% of the population was independentist through, now is over 50%.
For example, they choosed school principals among independentist so now over 85% of them are Catalan language teachers that tend to be independentist. This way kids could be directed to be independentist too.
The same happened with the local media, TV3, newspapers like La Vanguardia. If you were not independent public funds were not given to you. Those private media without the public funding could not live on their own.
Since 20 years ago they control education too, and kids are forced to speak Catalan as the main language, studing a very biased History full of lies like that Catalunuya was a reign in the past. They also put big sanctions on shops labeling things on Spanish until nobody dare.
They brought nearly a million muslim people to Catalunya to work so they do not speak Spanish, like people from Spain or South America does. This makes it the higher terrorist risk area in all Spain, including Ceuta and Melilla.
The problem was not independentist forces doing this, but the central gobertment that let this happen.
Now with half the population(controlling Catalunya) against the other (supported by the Govertment) there is a significant risk of civil war there.
A Catalan here. Quite a bad description, I think.
We should remember that Catalonia had its own language forbidden to even speak in the street for 40 years during Franco's dictatorship. Language and culture was kept alive thanks of people keeping it in secrecy.
When "democracy" returned, some of the competences they had before the war were returned to the government.
After 6 years of demonstrations of 2-3 million (out of 7million) asking to hold a referendum and receiving NO to any request, it was announced and proposed one year ago in order to agree it with Spanish government, but they would not even discuss it. In the end the unilateral way is the only way to hold this referendum.
Why shouldn't it be allowed to ask people's preferences? Isn't it democracy? People who doesn't want independence can say NO. Laws should serve people's desires, not forbid participation and opinion.
Another Catalan here, a Catalan that has lived in Italy and France.
In the dictatorship Catalan was forbidden, but now Catalan in Catalonia is the only language used in schools (the teachers are told to only speak in that language even to the parents, search for "immersió lingüística"), the official buildings, hospital papers, and so on. Is this what you would call repression or not-democracy?
Now, in Spain other languages (I am using the word languages again) are official, and they are the language the teachers use at schools. Do you know what they call other languages in France or Italy? dialects! They are not official, of course, nor used as official languages in schools or public buildings.
So Spain is even more democratic than Italy and France in that issue, but people are complaining in Catalonia because of the adoctrination, and millions of euros spent by the Catalan government. Don't fool yourself. A referendum in a moment of maximum propaganda by the Catalan government is really democracy?
The conservative Catalan government, as the conservative Spanish government, have a lot of cases of corruption, and since all this irrationality nobody is talking about that. Last week Spain freed two Catalan politicians from the current governing party from going to jail because of the Pretoria case, but almost nobody mentioned that. Do you really thing this chaos is not premeditated?
> but now Catalan in Catalonia is the only language used in schools(...), the official buildings, hospital papers, and so on. Is this what you would call repression or not-democracy?
Isn't this the point of autonomy? You decide what languages to teach/use in your institutions. We can discuss whether this is a good idea or not. Or whether what you say is true in reality or not. But it's the Catalans' decision, that's what autonomy is for.
> So Spain is even more democratic than Italy and France in that issue, but people are complaining in Catalonia because of the adoctrination, and millions of euros spent by the Catalan government.
Comparisons are meaningless in this situations. Maybe Spain is more "democratic" (if you say so) than France(which is not hard to beat honestly, considering the status of non-French languages in France). But one could also say that Spain is less democratic than Switzerland wrt languages, and that would be equally meaningless.
The question is whether the autonomy Catalonia receives is enough for the Catalans. That's for the Catalans to decide.
> Do you really thing this chaos is not premeditated?
Are you saying that all the Catalan citizens collaborating and organizing together have been manipulated by the elites for all these years? When did the manipulation start exactly? Would you mind sharing sources that support this?
"We should remember that Catalonia had its own language forbidden to even speak in the street for 40 years during Franco's dictatorship."
We should remember this is a false myth. Catalan was never banned. There were many works in literature and music using Catalan as language during Franco's dictatorship (1939-1975).
For instance, you can check the full list of works that won the Lletra d'Or awards, to the best year work written in Catalan. It started in 1956. Josep Pla, one of the most importan Catalan writters won that award in 1957.
> What Franco did was to ban Catalan language from public institutions.
Like schools. An entire generation missed out on learning Catalan at school like my own mother. Call it whatever you want but that to me feels like forbidding a language.
Yes, and after last elections the majority of the Catalan parliament is pro-independence.
Instead of proclaming independence, a referendum is proposed, which has the support of 80% of the population in Catalonia.
Yeah I know that. The point I was trying to make is that the referendum wasn't deemed illegal because "the government of Catalonia isn't allowed to ask people's preferences". It is allowed and it happens all the time.
How is being "forced" to speak the local language any different than what any other schooling system does? Do Madrilenian schools allows kids to choose their primary language, now?
They brought nearly a million muslim people to Catalunya to work
What you describe here happens not only in Catalonia, but in every other region of the world.
Every government has its media, they control education in a way or another, etc.
However, things get bad when your central government is perceived as acting against yourself in every single move they do.
I agree with you about the risk of this confrontation getting worse. That's why I think a referendum should be made so people can express themselves. People's Party is against, of course. They feel pretty comfortable talking about nothing but Catalonia.
As a Spaniard, I don't think there's any risk of civil war at all. The most that can happen out of this all is a vote of no-confidence in Congress against the government if they overstep.
You have never lived in Catalonia, have you? Sad to read things like that. Sounds like the speech that the Spanish government gives every other week. Deplorable comment.
Are you implying that catalans brought muslims to work there and that now terrorism is because of that? Aren't you aware this is a global problem and that the catalan government had nothing to do with it?
You shouldn't make such bold statements, less without providing any sort of evidence.
I never felt the need to downvote in HN until I read this.
What does the population in the rest of Spain think about Catalan independence? Would they be happy with Catalonia leaving if its population was in favour of it, or would they prefer that it be forced to remain part of Spain?
Catalonia would have trouble becoming genuinely independent without approval from Spain. Even if they declared independence, and didn't face military action, they'd only have the status of other unrecognized states like Somaliland or to some extent Taiwan.
Catalonia is one of the highest earning areas of Spain, constituting about 20% of the nation's GDP. Their secession would be about as well received as New York or California's from the US.
I have the impression that quite a few conservatives in the US would be thrilled to see New York and California leave, regardless of the economic implications.
I'm sure there are individual Spanish nationalists that think the same about Catalonia. Central governments, on the other hand, generally behave rationally (read: in their own interests) instead of emotionally.
No, the central government is as petty as it gets. For instance when the Canaries banned bull fighting a long time ago there was no problem, but when the Catalans did it recently the ban was overthrown by Spanish courts. Don't get me wrong, the Catalans did not bann it because it is not part of "their culture" or because it is cruel, they just did it to piss off Madrid :-)
Also now for the referendum, the central government sent four thousand police officers in cruise ships to the port of Barcelona to prevent voting. Does not seem particularly grown up to me neither ...
I have been thinking about this as I listen to NPR discuss Catalonia. Not being in Spain or Spanish, I think, what's the big deal, let them become independent.
Then I think about the secession desire of some in California. (I'm on the west coast of US). Personally I don't care. It doesn't really make historical sense, but whatever. Of course the talk is of the whole west coast seceding, and I live in Oregon. I don't want to secede, so that I have a problem with.
I suspect the main issue is money, but the secondary issue would be fear of a slippery slope of secession.
Actually, only slightly less than 50% wants independence. They are very vocal though. Also, since education in Catalonia is entirely in Catalonian (also they have their own history books), and use of Spanish in public is heavily discouraged, children will grow up in a mostly Catalonian environment, which makes it likely that that percentage will grow over time.
I'm from the US and my wife is from Barcelona. Her family all speaks Catalan between each other but they are perfectly happy speaking Spanish with me (as are all of their family's friends and associates).
Between my wife and her friends, they speak probably a 50/50 mix of Catalan/Spanish.
I have never heard or seen anyone in all of Catalunya be discouraging or negative in relation to speaking Spanish.
When I was first in Spain, the calls for independence were few and far between compared to now, but the situation hasn't improved so they continue to grow.
But the basis of those calls, from what I've seen, is primarily rooted in real, economic/political issues. They aren't calling for independence because they have a different language, but because Spain is not providing them with the fair share of resources they need to succeed and grow as a region.
I can think of a few examples myself, such as fines for business daring to exposing public banners in Spanish [1] or the impossibility to study with Spanish as a vehicular language [2].
Spanish is studied alongside with catalan. Out of 10 tv channels, 9 are in spanish. School is mostly taught in Catalan, so what? It's not a commodity, but you are abogating extinguishing a language for commodity?
However I just see for the first time your [1], and as a totally pro-independentist person that I am, I totally condemnd that. Thats blatant catalan fuckup, that is unacceptable and that is not what my independentist rationale claim for.
Well, the region grows better than almost any Spanish region (except maybe the metropolitan area of Madrid) and they saved their banks when the crisis hit them first ;-)
What the... You've never been in Catalonia, am I right?
1. It's false that the education in Catalonia is entirely in catalan. I've had tons of classes in spanish.
2. It's false that the use of spanish in public is discouraged. If you go to Barcelona I'd say that you're going to hear 50/50 spanish and catalan in public.
3. It's not clear if the percentage of people who defend an independent country are above or below 50%. It'd be great to verify it with a real referendum allowed by the spanish government ;)
It's OK to express an opinion, but please, don't propagate these kind of lies. They do no good to anybody.
> 2. It's false that the use of spanish in public is discouraged. If you go to Barcelona I'd say that you're going to hear 50/50 spanish and catalan in public.
Despite the efforts of the Catalan government, it will be much closer to 100% Catalan in the environments where they can dictate what language may be used. Do you hear 50/50 Spanish and Catalan in the media controlled by the Catalan government, for example? They push the usage of Catalan over Spanish as hard as they can, going beyond what is legally possible in some cases (see http://blogs.ua.es/sevila1/2016/05/30/nulidad-de-parte-del-p...).
I was not really expressing an opinion, but providing a counterpoint to the parent comment, which was really not based on enough data. I could have been a bit more detailed, sorry about that, and I wholly agree with your #3.
I've been to Barcelona for a few days around five years ago, keeping mostly to the touristic areas. Had to skip it last year on an Interrail trip due to lack of time, sadly.
The best "measure" we have right now for the percentage of independentists (and the one I assume you're implicitly citing) were the last Catalan elections the 27th of september of 2015. There are two problems with that measure:
- That was two years ago
- Even then, that was a parlamentary election, not a referendum.
This <50% metric has been widely cited by the media, but it is flawed IMO.
I think it is reasonable to demand a proper referendum, whether you want independence or not.
I'm not disputing at all that it's reasonable to have a referendum, and I understand that a huge majority there wants that, if, for some, only to vote against independence.
> and use of Spanish in public is heavily discouraged
Would help to know (for non Catalans, specially) what you hint at. My parents talk in Spanish everywhere and to anyone they want to with no problems. Have done so for all her life for my mother and more than 40 years for my father.
I assume you mean that public offices and positions require knowing and using Catalan?
I'm not from there, my information comes mostly from Dutch and English media. But I've read that all public schools are all-Catalan except for the Spanish language lessons, and shops with Spanish-only signs are fined.
For shops, that’s the language equality law. Not sure about the justification, but it’s not that hard to have dual signs (and written Catalan is easy to grasp for Spanish speakers). This law was introduced some 10 years ago.
For classes, IIRC it’s not mandatory (or wasn’t 15 years ago), just common. My chemistry teacher spoke only Spanish, and it was fine.
It is much more complicated than this. Yes there are a lot of flags but there are also lots of places where there are no flags.
In my building in Barcelona there are 10 flats. 2 flats have occupants who speak Catalan as the mother tongue, 4 flats with occupants who speak Spanish as their mother tongue and 2 flats with foreign languages.
The language divide isn't always an indicator of their views, in the building there are Spanish speakers who want to vote yes, Catalan speakers that will vote no and a general consensus that everyone would just like the legal option to vote regardless of yes/no leanings.
That's not correct. In mother tongue terms, 55% of population in Catalonia has the Spanish as his tongue (mother/habitual tongue), and 35% Catalan. The "economic power" is in hands of Catalan-"ethnic" people, though. Source (official): https://www.idescat.cat/pub/?id=ed&lang=en
If I'm recalling correctly from NPR this morning, nearly 100% of Catalan people under the age of 40 speak Catalan, while very few over the age of 40 do.
This is the result of the language having been made illegal, then not illegal, then taught predominately by the school systems.
Is it possible the 55% who speak Spanish primarily fall along those demographic lines? Is it also possible that some portion of that 55% speaks both Spanish and Catalan?
Sincere question. I know very little of the situation.
100% of us speak Spanish and actually it's very common to use both languages in a conversation when more than two persons are involved :) it's just natural for most of us. Actually I learned Catalan when I was 18 so I usually speak in Spanish and it is not a problem at all... And I'm very proud of being bilingual. In any case I would love to be able to express better myself in English :)
(anecdote) That precisely describes my personal experience of people in BCN and BDN, at least as a foreigner that keeps coming back as a tourist.
I also have a friend who has been teaching English as a Foreign Language in BCN for at least a decade now, and he and his wife tell a similar story.
"In any case I would love to be able to express better myself in English" - you already have a fluent grasp of English. You spelt it's with an apostrophe which is spot on and come across as a native writer - for a given value of "native" 8) Good skills mate.
55% of population has Spanish as their mother tongue, but that's not necessarily what they speak now. Is there any poll showing what they actually speak daily?
Like I said, I've read the above official link. Multiple times, by now. Nowhere do I see a reference to the habitual language. Only to the Primera Llengua, which is
Llengua o llengües que la persona ha parlat primer a casa seva. Es considera que aquesta llengua ha estat transmesa familiarment i adquirida en el procés de socialització de l'individu.
This is not the habitual language. So, where is it?
The above official link has many sections. Here is the link for the official language poll ("Enquesta d’usos lingüístics de la població 2008"), which includes mother-initial/identification/habitual language details (official data):
EDIT: Seems like that's the old poll. There's a new one from 2013, in which both Catalan and Spanish grew as the habitual languages. It still doesn't reach 55%, though.
The US federal government would simply do what it always does in these situations: ignore the referendum, allow it to proceed, and intervene when "votes" turn into "actions". (Even then, as with cannabis legalization, sometimes the feds ignore "illegal" state actions as long as they aren't too threatening to federal authority.)
While that's true, its only a small, mostly racist white minority that is really serious about secession. And don't forget that the Catalan people have their own cultural identity for hundreds of years. i.e. they have a legitimate claim of being different from other Spaniards and thus wishing for their independence.
> the Catalan people have their own cultural identity
Spain is divided into 17 communities. Each has their own cultural identity.
What I like about travelling around Spain (and I must do the Canaries and Balearics some day) is the microcosm of different regional flavours, e.g. Asturias and Galicia have bagpipes, the Basque country is a foodies delight, Andalucia has flamenco & Moorish palaces, the Canaries have a whistled language etc.
Now I get the Catalans feel "different" but when I see the graffiti around the place saying "X is NOT Spain", I wonder which Spanish identity they're referring to.
>Now I get the Catalans feel "different" but when I see the graffiti around the place saying "X is NOT Spain", I wonder which Spanish identity they're referring to.
Fake Spain, such Andalusian or Castillian identified both as proper Spanish.
I'm hesitant to call them racist on a whole (though there most likeley are racists among their ranks) but the Republic of Texas group and their spiritual successor the Texas Nationalist Movement have been around for close to three decades now.
For what it's worth, that was also the 100 year anniversary of the war. The two happened to coincide.
Even in South Carolina where there was so much controversy around having it at the state house...the reason it went up in the first place was supposed to be temporary (4 years) for that purpose alone.
That it never came down when it was supposed to the real issue.
There are also many many people and windows without flags ;) Once they become an independent country, it will be one where ~50% of the people doesn't want to belong to it. Let's see what kind of "democracia" will they apply there.
Well, that's happening already: half the population does not want to belong to the state. The "democracia" here is you don't vote and never will. What can be worse than that?
No, that is not what is happening. Spain is a state where the majority of the people wants to belong to the state. Catalonia would be a state where half of the people wouldn't want to belong to it. I wonder if the future Catalan government will allow referendums so that such people will be able to split from Catalonia.
Besides, not voting is also democracy. Most of the Spanish people don't want to allow these kind of referendums in Spain. Therefore, Spain is doing what the majority wants (== democracy).
I agree that "not voting is also democracy".
However I cannot agree about not allowing to vote, which is the case. It's a political issue, which should be solved like it was in Scotland.
In the name of what, a group can decide over another on what is it allowed to do? Because of the frontiers made after conquering when using force?
"In the name of what, a group can decide over another on what is it allowed to do?"
Of course that a group can decide over another group which is a subset of the former. Otherwise, any city of any country, or any group of individuals, could decide to vote and set their own rules for whatever they want.
Pure rule of the majority is a perversion of democracy (this holds both on the Spanish and the Catalonian level). Taking minorities into account and giving them appropriate rights is just as integral a part of democracy.
"decide over another group which is a subset of the former"
A subset of the former in the name of the frontiers set by a centralist monarch who won a war and forbid language and institutions in Catalonia in 1714. Check the law that supports my comment:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nueva_Planta_decrees
"Otherwise, any city of any country, or any group of individuals, could decide to vote and set their own rules for whatever they want." --> And do you think this is wrong? I think self-governance is the future. Not to go against anyone, but to decide more about everything. Not to put a paper in a ballot every 4 years.
>No, that is not what is happening. Spain is a state where the majority of the people wants to belong to the state. Catalonia would be a state where half of the people wouldn't want to belong to it.
Current Catalonia vs future Catalonia is the proper comparison. The one you made is just manipulative crap.
Should the people in Hungary have asked the Habsburg government or the population of the rest of the empire whether they can have their own country? Should the Slovenians, Czechs, Poles or anyone else?
Should the Irish have asked people in Britain to kindly let them have their own country?
>Besides, not voting is also democracy. Most of the Spanish people don't want to allow these kind of referendums in Spain. Therefore, Spain is doing what the majority wants (== democracy).
Well; just a point; inside Catalonia there's also a part that wants to separate from Catalonia; the Aran Valley; with their own culture, history and language; and Catalonian Government has never ever wanted to hear about that.
Indeed, in the brand new Catalonian Independency Law, it's stated at the very beginning that Republic of Catalonia is (will be) a non-severable country; exactly like the Spanish Constitution article that doesn't allow Catalonian referendum... Just committing the same mistakes that they denounce?
"it is nearly-impossible for any actor to block access to this content because it is replicated around the network automatically, using peer-to-peer encrypted connections that would be very hard to identify and block at the ISP level. "
It's right that the connections are encrypted, but it's NOT correct to say that content is automatically replicated (but it's a common misconception). Instead, content who is wanted by other peers is the only content that gets replicated. You need to explicitly "pin" content to help replicate it.
This is different from Freenet where content is indeed pushed out to other peers in that fashion.
You do NOT need to explicitly pin content to help replicate it. Any content which is requested via IPFS is replicated by the daemon, up until it is GCed. The only thing that pinning does, is prevent the content from ever being GCed
The spanish constituion explicitly states that Spain is an indivisible country. Hence, the Constituional Court (that is elected by the parliament) has ruled out that any referendum about independence is illegal.
At this point, the government says that both them and the judiciary powers are just defending the democratic rules, and Catalonia's government is the one at fault for all this hassle.
The problem is that it is accepted that there's a wide majority of catalan people who want a referendum, and here we are...
> and Catalonia's government is the one at fault for all this hassle.
My interpretation of GP's comment was about the draconian approach towards silencing internet activity. Is it believed the raiding of ISPs, outright blocking of websites, etc is the fault of Catalonia's government or Spain's?
Internet activity that promotes illegal actions is already illegal, and there are laws in spain allowing for these raids and closures.
Edit: "Getting away with it" is mostly a question of "which side are you on?". Independentists and most non-government supporters think that what's going on is outrageous, whereas government supporters are totally fine with it.
These laws where passed mainly to fight against piracy (think thepiratebay). Of course the excuse was that it was a tool against terrorism and pedophilia though ;)
Think out of the box.
Is moral a law that forbids people speaking? Self-determination is in the human rights and Catalonia has more than 1000 years of history, culture and language.
Democracy cannot be illegal, so this banning must be disobbeyed.
Without disobbeying, woman and black people would not vote nowadays, so history proves it is a good way to take down immoral legal laws.
EDIT: UN experts say that Spain must respect fundamental rights in Catalonia. Freedom of expression, freedom of press and power separation is at stake.
I've heard pro-independence people twisting facts for over 20 years... Not surprised anymore.
Democracy is deciding new law based on current law following people's desires... Like it or not, every day meter of Catalan soil belongs as much to a Catalan woman as to an Andalusian man...
Nobody in his right mind would say that Catalonia is an oppressed region by Spain's government... Quite the opposite actually.
> Democracy is deciding new law based on current law following people's desires
This does not seem like the correct definition to me.
Suppose that a country is an absolute dictatorship, with the exception that the citizens may vote on the color of a bikeshed, and their word goes for the color of the bikeshed regardless of the dictator's preference for the color of the bikeshed, and that this is all enshrined in law.
This would not be a democratic country.
Democracy is based on people voting on the decisions being made.
"deciding the new law based on the current law" is not a fundamental part of democracy?
That is not to say that I don't think that "deciding the new law based on the current law" is valuable. I strongly agree that it is valuable. But it is not, I think, an essential part of what democracy is.
You are right in that just voting does not a democracy make. But in the same vein, restricting communication and organization of groups does not immediately a dictatorship make.
The current status is complicated and a failure of politicians' ability to do their job, but the fact is that trying to split the country unilaterally is currently illegal and wrong from at least some very sound points of view (another comment put it very well: Catalonia is as much of the Andalusians as of the Catalans).
So the government is now forced to stop this - they would otherwise be letting Andalusians be robbed. It is their job to block the referendum. It was also their job to avoid this situation by creating avenues of dialogue though... So in my opinion their next task in their job is to resign.
Democracy is listening the majority of a group, without forgetting and respecting the minorities.
You don't argument why Catalonia is not opressed. Banning all the laws emerging from its parliament is not respecting.
Sorry Spaniards, we will vote. It's not about you, it's about us. It's not about us feeling superior or supremacist. It's about deciding our way, as we think too different in too many things. We can be good neighbours.
> [Catalonia is oppressed:] Banning all the laws emerging from its parliament is not respecting.
Not all laws emerging from its parliament are ruled unconstitutional by the courts. And unconstitutional laws enacted by any parliament in Spain are banned by the courts, Catalonia or not. It's not really a matter of respect.
That's why Spanish Constitutional Court tore down articles of the Catalan Estatut (sort of regional constitution) that are accepted in exactly the same terms for others and are even covered in the Spanish Constitution.
E.g. "Catalonia is a nation". The Spanish Constitution says "Catalonia is a nationality" while the Andalusian Estatuto says "Andalusia is a nation".
TÍTULO PRELIMINAR
Artículo 1. Andalucía.
1. Andalucía, como nacionalidad histórica y en el ejercicio del derecho de autogobierno
que reconoce la Constitución, se constituye en Comunidad Autónoma
en el marco de la unidad de la nación española y conforme al artículo 2 de la
Constitución.
I'm a native speaker, yes. You say "The Spanish Constitution says Catalonia is a nationality". It does indeed (emphasis mine):
La Constitución se fundamenta en la indisoluble unidad de la
Nación española, patria común e indivisible de todos los españoles, y
reconoce y garantiza el derecho a la autonomía de las nacionalidades
y regiones que la integran y la solidaridad entre todas ellas.
The Andalusian estatuto almost uses the exact same words, "nacionalidad historica" in the "unidad de la nación española". Can hardly be considered against the Constitution. Agreed?
One can argue that "Cataluña es una nación" is a valid interpretation of the Constitution (I won't, because I'm not a constitutional lawyer and I don't think you are either), but you can't really use the Andalusian estatuto to support that the Tribunal Constitucional gives inconsistent rulings. (And has the Andalusian one even been challenged? I don't think the Tribunal Constitucional can strike down laws that haven't been brought to them).
That's the thing: The Andalusian hasn't been challenged, while the Catalan is scrutinized to the detail and the party that's now in government gathers 4 million signatures against it: https://elpais.com/elpais/2006/04/25/actualidad/1145953019_8... (They wanted all Spain to vote on the Catalan Estatut!!! Would they do that for all regions???)
Again, neither of us are constitutional lawyers, but for an argument like that you have to present and challenge the arguments used in the actual sentence. Conspiracy theories without backing are only useful to those who gain political capital out of them.
And for the record, I read that, back in the day, Ciudadanos asked the Defensor del Pueblo to bring the Andalusian estatuto to the Tribunal Constitucional. Not sure if he did, or who can and cannot bring laws to their court.
> Like it or not, every day meter of Catalan soil belongs as much to a Catalan woman as to an Andalusian man
Like it or not, Catalonia will break away from Spain if it wants to and there's nothing Spain can do to stop it short of murdering thousands of people. That's the choice Spain will have to make when it comes down to it.
> there's nothing Spain can do except murdering lots of people
That would be horrible, for sure, but don't worry. Using my disheveled imagination I think that asking the people responsible of breaking the laws to explain their behaviour in front of a jury could be one (very obvious) thing that Spain could do. It seems that they are doing it yet, in fact.
> Spain must respect fundamental rights in Catalonia. Freedom of expression, freedom of press and power separation
Spain respects fundamental rights in Catalonia and anywhere else in the country; respecting them is the supreme law of the land. Anyone who violates those rights will have the courts after them the exact same way as the courts are acting against this referendum.
Censorship in internet. Opening private letters. Political detentions and raids to political parties offices, searching for posters and ballots. Bringing 10000 policeman by boat to avoid a vote.
I was actually quoting from your link. "The measures we are witnessing are worrying because they appear to violate fundamental individual rights". They are worrying because they appear to violate those rights. Of course, any such actual violation can be brought to court.
And all violations that have happened have been brought to the Spanish and European court. In some years I am sure Spain(or the rest of it) will have to pay for it.
Threats to the press, threats to polititians. Closing websites, chasing teenagers who fork a repo in github, opening mail, spying communications.
It could be argued that this platonic view is not very factual. If you look at how corruption is dealt with and the reticence to apply the same constitutional laws you can get a sense of how things work. There were numerous members of the royal house we could talk about, or politicians...
I mean, yeah. And a while ago a president pardoned a guy from the other party that had been sentenced to 10 years in prison for kidnapping.
I think there's still a stretch from "there are corrupt politicians and the monarchy and president have a lot of undue influence over the judiciary" to "Catalans don't have freedom of expressions or are oppressed".
"Catalans don't have freedom of expressions or are oppressed" -> Catalans don't have the right to express themselves about independence? Is this taboo?
Even the US has precedent on banning speech that will "incite imminent lawless action". And compared to countries like the UK or Germany they are a bastion of free speech.
I agree free speech laws in pretty much every country are unethical because they are arrayed in a way to ban speech that might risk the dissolution of the nation, but every single country has those laws because its governments trying to protect themselves.
"And compared to countries like the UK or Germany they are a bastion of free speech."
Care to elucidate me on what basis that statement lies? I am a UKoGBnNI citizen who has also lived in DE for a few years in the West Germany part in the 70's and 80's and have friends who are native to DE.
In the UK we have laws banning inflammatory speech of various types that are clearly categorised and so does Deutschland. Both countries also, I think, have citizens who pride themselves on being able to pretty much speak their mind freely. I think both are very liberal states in this regard.
I do feel that some of my civil liberties have been eroded over the years but I in no way feel that my right to freedom of speech has been compromised in any way. I may live in a country that (worryingly) has more CCTV cameras pointing at me than you can shake a stick at but I do not believe that my right to express myself coherently and freely is damaged in any way. I'm not happy about say RIPA and co but we have a formal, legalised right to freedom of speech in the UK.
You are obviously not a US citizen because you seem to believe the US is one "thing" or a single country. It isn't and yet it is. It is a federation of states with a few odd bits tacked on (just like the UK -
not) which means that there are federal laws, state laws, county laws, city laws, bye laws and made up by someone laws. This is also how most "normal" countries work.
No, you do not have as much freedom of speech in the UK or Germany. If you tweet something offensive about e.g. Muslims, or anything else that the police deem to be "hate speech", you will be arrested. And British police have in fact been aggressively enforcing this. In Germany, the restrictions are even more severe. Both German and British governments claim and exercise the power to scrub the internet of extremism, to "protect" citizens from certain viewpoints.
You misunderstand the nature of the Bill of Rights and freedom of speech in the United States. The Bill of Rights are in the federal constitution and are enforceable in the federal courts, against any level of government (federal, state, or local).[1]
One of the central free speech doctrines in the United States is the prohibition on viewpoint discrimination. That means that our laws cannot treat any viewpoint differently than any other. If you are allowed to stand in front of the courthouse and scream anti-racist slogans, then you must be allowed to stand in front of the courthouse and spew all the racist hatred that your heart desires. Communists, fascists, anarchists, democrats, republicans, racists, reverse-racists, white supremacists, black supremacists, holocaust deniers, and even people calling for the overthrow of the US government, they can all speak their minds in America. There is no jurisdiction in the world that guarantees free speech as totally and absolutely as the United States does.
Americans are self-governing people. We don't need someone to tell us what we're allowed to think.
[1] This wasn't always the case, but the Supreme Court has held since the 1920s that the 14th Amendment "incorporated" the Bill of Rights to the states. Before this, most or all states had free speech provisions in their own constitutions anyway, but enforcement was not uniform. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_of_the_Bill_of_R...
The UK's libel laws are rather regressive (although they improved a bit recently for the GB bit the NI bit of the UK still has the old laws). There are books and documentaries which are available everywhere except the UK for this reason.
On a government level the UK regularly imprisons people for facebook/twitter posts (that would be protected by US first amendment).
> ... you seem to believe the US is one "thing" or a single country. It isn't and yet it is. It is a federation of states with a few odd bits tacked on ... which means that there are federal laws, state laws, county laws, city laws, bye laws and made up by someone laws.
Free speech laws in the US are strictly governed at the federal level, not at the city / state / county level. Your comment accordingly makes no sense. The states are legally unable to make any laws abridging freedom of speech. Every time a local entity has attempted such, it has ultimately been struck down by the federal government, which retains supremacy over many rights (and will ensure those rights with force against a local entity if necessary, as when ending segregation).
Governments usually do not like to give up the money making portions of their countries and neither does the population of the rest of the country. You never see a poor part of a country seceding (well, other than Quebec maybe).
Ireland from the UK, Slovakia from Czechoslovakia, Kosovo from Serbia, the bits of Poland that were in Austria-Hungary or Germany from those two empires, pretty much every single European overseas colonial possession... Not to mention all the widely-supported secessionist movements that have failed militarily in the Indian northeast, in the Chinese west, or in the Russian Caucasus.
Of course, Americans prefer to imagine that political conflict everywhere is all about money rather than actually confront the idea that people other than themselves have collective identities and cultures.
Slovakia was much poorer than the Czech part of Czechoslovakia. The decision to split was made by the politicians rather than the people in a referendum though. Seems to be working out quite OK for everyone so far.
Is that relevant when we talk about GDP ? Even if little money flows from Barcelona to the central government (I don't know if this is or is not the case, since I don't live in Spain), that shouldn't make a difference, since "GDP measures the monetary value of final goods and services - that is, those that are bought by the final user - produced in a country in a given period of time (say a quarter or a year)."[1]
There are 16 billion per year going from Catalonia to Spain without return.
But not only that, the centralisation of government powers and agencies have created a problem where many big companies have to be in Madrid even if most their operations are in other parts of the country. That makes their taxes to be paid in Madrid instead of e.g. Valencia, Bilbao or Barcelona. The amount of taxes lost because of this is HUGE and much worse than the 16 billion per year above.
An independence would bring back 100% of the former and a good chunk of the latter. Hopefully that would help Catalonia grow at the pace its economy can and then it should be able to contribute back to Europe much more than now.
Contributions have to be sustainable.
Edit: This comment is now at -1. Please argue instead of downvoting. You're acting against HN's rules.
CNI (Centro Nacional de Inteligencia), like CIA in Spain, is working a lot to hide this comments and arguments. You can see a lot of comments which are the same speech as Partido Popular.
In the Catalan media they appear in waves, polluting all the comments and making the discussion unbearable.
They are also holding cyberatacks to the Catalan News Agency so we cannot inform outside.
They have also closed aerial space, so drones cannot fly and take pictures of massive demonstrations tomorrow if we cannot vote.
To be fair however, it was known how the war would proceed before the outset!
In the words of General Sherman:
You people of the South don't know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization! You people speak so lightly of war; you don't know what you're talking about. War is a terrible thing! You mistake, too, the people of the North. They are a peaceable people but an earnest people, and they will fight, too. They are not going to let this country be destroyed without a mighty effort to save it… Besides, where are your men and appliances of war to contend against them? The North can make a steam engine, locomotive, or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or pair of shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical, and determined people on Earth — right at your doors. You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with. At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, shut out from the markets of Europe as you will be, your cause will begin to wane. If your people will but stop and think, they must see in the end that you will surely fail.
People are not rational however, and the wealthy landowners were facing the extinction of their wealth... so they started a war.
> the wealthy landowners were facing the extinction of their wealth... so they started a war
As someone who doesn't know much about American history: What happened to the wealth of those Southern landowners after the war? Did they get to keep it?
Some of it. Many of those who survived lost a good portion of their capital. But they kept title to their land, and used that leverage, voting power, and racist solidarity over time to claw back much of what they had previously enjoyed from exploitation of the emancipated slaves.
The South was still devastated by the war. But being largely agrarian to begin with, loss of capital wasn't quite as hard a blow as losing a factory.
Much of the "wealth" was the people they enslaved, so they did not get to keep it. The American Civil War is seen as a huge and enduring economic loss (but moral gain) for the southern states.
... was drafted 40 years ago by a Franchist establishment concerned with maintaining a certain degree of continuity. It's not surprising that the people most oppressed by Franco are not particularly happy with the result.
Besides, the Wilson doctrine is usually more relevant for this sort of movements than whichever piece of paper is supposed to be law here or there. A population cannot be denied the right to self-determination, which includes splitting off if they really want to. It can be a stupid move (see Brexit), but people must be given the possibility to democratically discuss it and vote on it; because otherwise things will eventually go full Balkan, and you never want to go full Balkan.
The options then (1970s) on offer were:
1) remain as a Francoist dictatorship
2) accept a new constitution with some democratic principles (but adherence to things like the unity of spain, the convenient 'forgetting' of fascist crimes and torture etc.)
Given there were no other options, and few people wanted to return to dictatorship, the new constitution was adopted. But that doesn't mean it wasn't a shotgun, Hobson's choice between dreadful and merely bad. Why should people continue to adhere to it?
That isn't how things happened. Before the Constitution was even drafted, Suarez had put forward, and the francoist institutions had approved, the "Ley para la Reforma Política":
Read the first two articles of that law; Spain was no longer a dictatorship. The last clause of the law enacts it as supreme law of the land.
It is following that law that the first Congress of the new democracy (with the mandate to write a Constitution) was elected, using the same procedure we keep using today to elect our Congress. In that election, the francoist party of Fraga lost immensely to the centrist and marxist parties.
If the Constitution they wrote didn't pass the popular vote of the referendum, general elections would be repeated and the process would start again.
It never was a choice between accepting the new Constitution or going back to a dictatorship. It's called "Transición" instead of "Revolución" because the francoist regime turned itself into a democracy following its own laws and procedures.
> If the Constitution they wrote didn't pass the popular vote of the referendum, general elections would be repeated and the process would start again.
That's a very optimistic view of the situation. In practice, the instability resulting from not completing the process would have had dramatic consequences. Among other things, there was a Cold War on which could have easily started a new civil war.
> the francoist regime turned itself into a democracy following its own laws and procedures.
But exactly because the prime mover was the regime itself, there was always a chance it could go back on its steps. Compromises had to be made to ensure the transition would go through smoothly, as it's always the case.
What I meant isn't that someone would have decided to start the process again, rather than that's what the law established. The choice presented to the people in the referendum wasn't "accept this or go back to a dictatorship", as the parent commenter believed. I don't intend to say the politicians involved had an easy job coming up with the appropriate compromises; far from it. But the fact that the support the Constitution got in Catalonia was so overwhelming is definitely not because "it was either that or Franco".
People voted for a dramatic improvement in the status quo, not necessarily for a perfect document. It was drafted by 7 hand-picked representatives, 4 of which were basically franchists, and ratified by franchist institutions before being put to a popular vote. Had it been written in a more democratic way, by an assembly of people elected democratically, maybe it would have been different and more respectful of different identities; but it wasn’t, because franchist interests were still very strong.
> It was drafted by 7 hand-picked representatives, 4 of which were basically franchists
Two out of the seven writers of the Constitution were Catalan (~1/3 of the writers for ~1/6 of the population). One of them a communist. The other one, exiled during the dictatorship for supporting Catalan nationalism.
> ratified by franchist institutions before being put to a popular vote
Before being put to a popular vote, it was ratified by the Congress that resulted from the first free elections in Spain in 40 years. The francoist party of Fraga only won 16/350 seats in that Congress; comparable to the 11 seats obtained by the Catalan party of Pujol. Half the seats had been won by centrist voters, and the other half by marxist voters.
This Congress was our "assembly of people elected democratically", that could tell the writers to go back to their drafts until the result was to their liking. Those seven writers, by the way, weren't "hand-picked": they were picked by that Congress, among their members; they were all freely-elected representatives.
> The francoist party of Fraga only won 16/350 seats in that Congress;
The prime minister was still an ex-Franchist and the UCD had plenty of old hands around. The Franchists still had huge relevance in the army. The drafters were still moving with a somewhat limited room for manoeuver.
> could tell the writers to go back to their drafts until the result was to their liking.
Not really. These things don't happen in a vacuum, the longer the process and the higher the risk that it things could go pear-shaped. There was active terrorism and of course cold war activity. Compromises were made, which were good for the times but not necessarily the best overall.
Of course the situation was delicate, and required a great deal of negotiations and compromises; that's when democracy shines most, when all parts compromise to reach an agreement.
I'm just stating that no, the writers of the Constitution weren't "hand picked", rather selected by Congress among representatives elected democratically; and no, it wasn't ratified by francoist institutions, rather by a democratically-elected Congress (and later on by a referendum). That's just revisionism that gets spread to fuel Catalan nationalism.
It is completely feasible. In fact Spain was the project of many different kingdoms (or "nations" by modern standards): Basque, Aragon/Catalan, Galician and Castilian.
Not only that but many modern leftist political parties advocate for self determination freedom within our constitution.
So the fact that the Catalan parliament with a simple majority of separatists are claiming unilateral referendum of independence in a free country is just to gather momentum.
Not true. Spain was the union of three kingdoms: Castilla, Aragon and Navarra.
In fact you can see it in the flag, it has a shield with the chains of Navarra, the lion of Leon, the Castle of Castilla and the colors of Aragon(which are the same of Spain and Catalunya flag) over a Granada fruit(for Granada conquest).
Basque was never a kingdom,either Galicia or Catalunya. Asturias was a kingdom, later becoming Asturias and Leon kingdom, then growing again and again against the muslims in Alandalus.
To say that Basque was a kingdom is an enormous lie that unfortunately is told in Basque country as they control their own education.
My grandfather was Basque, he spoke Batua, the original Basque language in his village. He could not speak complex abstractions or communicate with people in villages 40 kms away as every batua was different. The language was unified less than 100 years ago(with the abstractions simply being invented at this time)and called euskera, a recent invention. Now kids there are brainwashed being told that this was the language that people spoke 3000 years ago.
The places in Spain that after industrialization are rich are rewriting History in order to look better themselves, specially if you are nationalist.
It is indeed possible to change the constution, but:
1) You need 3/5ths of the camera to do so.
2) There is only one significant state-wide party supporting self determination (podemos, which a very young party that entered the scene only in the last election).
3) The major parties (PP and PSOE, which would be like the republicans and democrats in the state) are both overtly against self determination.
In any case, having to change the constitution amounts to having to get the support of 3/5ths of spain. This is hardly self-determination, don't you think?
I may agree it's really hard, but the response is accurate. It is still possible. These kind of restrictions exist to defend people of tyranny.
The same restrictions exists in Catalonian Parliament for things such as changing the "Estatut". It is not right for a simple majority to enforce their will over the people their opposition represent. Therefore the referendum is not legal, nor legitimate.
Tyranny is a group not allowing another group to decide what to do.
Hear yourself: "the referendum is not legal".
Such a nice view of what democracy is.
So willing to vote and say goodbye to this bla-bla-bla-this is not legal, that is not legal.
Good bye opressors. My deceased family in the war the dicator won will be really happy if we can finally separate. Too many open wounds you have never tried to heal.
> Tyranny is a group not allowing another group to decide what to do.
It's easier to separate Communists from non-Communists, because each of us gets to vote to only one party, than Catalans from non-Catalans. And even though Communists are a clear minority in Spain, you'd be hard pressed to find one that equates "not having a majority in Congress" with "being victims of a tyranny".
If your family lived under the dictatorship, you should be sensitive to what they (and many others) suffered and fought, to not use lightly words like oppression and tyranny.
The problem here is that all the inheritants of the Franco dictatorship and their mentailty are still in the power, thanks to the Spanish transition in which the Dictator passed the power to the King. Then promoted a bi-party politics where the minorities would never be able to change anything.
It is not fair and Catalonia is fighting (again) to change it.
After Franco, Spain has been governed for 6 years by centrists, 21 years by socialists, and 14 years by the PP.
The fantasy of "the Transición didn't take the francoists off the power" would need the likes of Felipe Gonzalez be "mentally francoist". It's no more than a feel-good fantasy.
The fact that you need to convince the majority to change something, while individuals are constitutionally protected, is really how democracies work. If anything, nationalist minorities have wielded much more power in the Spanish Congress than other minorities with more voters, due to quirks of our electoral law.
So if they succeed to split would you call it tyranny not to let pockets of Castilian speaking minority areas in Catalonia claim independence? Maybe joining Spain? Where would this end (maybe there are pockets within the pockets within the pockets)? It is a practical shitty situation. Do not make it sound SIMPLE. Do not use the word tyranny when it does not apply.
And the rich leaving the poor seems like a right wing thing to do. Maybe Franco would agree that the smaller "upper class" need protection from the tyranny of the poor. Or maybe money is not the biggest part of the equation, maybe it is just a nationalistic disgrace of the same kind that forced Castilian as language onto Basques and Catalans during Franco. Maybe we will get a Franco like situation in Catalonia where minorities are not allowed to teach/speak Castilian. I think that would be a disgrace for every decent person killed by the butchers of Franco and other "nationalists".
And what is the lesson to learn from all this, should all nations start to force minorities to speak the national language just because if we give minorities relative freedom and power they will claim independence? And possibly treat our minorities left bad?
What's wrong with independence of small groups? The more governments - the more competition. Why are we against big monopolies in every area, except the state services?
There is nothing wrong with extinction of a government and replacement by more successful government, if it happens amicably - it's competition.
Just like with corporations, surely you are not worried about extinction of small firms, and sometimes that small firms outcompete the big corporations.
Then, let us Catalans be stupid and go to extintion ourselves. We will probably be fine. If you want us to be in Spain, please seduce us instead of forbid us everything.
I haven't heard of any new independent country asking to be part again of the former one.
Yeah, the tiresome "seduce us (with mo' fresh money)" argument again.
I have a better idea, why you don't try to seduce me instead to call me thief (Spain stole us) and abuser (Spain oppress us and do not let us be free) and hit me all the time with a new surrealist occurrence (don't buy spanish products, here are a list of the evil companies that you must avoid if you want to be a good citizen)?
In the last 60 years, you have been offered a lot of gifs and privileges (that by the way, I don't enjoy), and is never enough. You are never, ever, happy. Always creating drama around, like an old crazy theater lady past her prime, always demanding to be loved, but giving in return dry sarcasm and a single uncaring kiss by christmas (when there are cameras around).
So thanks, but not thanks. I will pass this time. You are not so irresistible as you think and not so beautiful as you were 20 years ago. I deserve something better.
> I haven't heard of any new independent country asking to be part again of the former one.
This does not bother me, but there is always a first time for everything.
Correct. And because there are no tanks yet, the vote is moving ahead.
There has certainly been some disruption, but the people are mostly still forging ahead on all fronts.
The police have open fired on some of the pro independence people, sending a couple hundred to the hospital, but that is very minor in the vast scheme of things.
A couple hundred pro independence people in the hospital isn't that big of a barrier.
This is only the beginning. Every video of the Spanish military beating up an 80 year old lady with a ballot in hand is a propaganda Victor for the independence movement. They stop 1 person from voting, via their rubber bullets, and they create a hundred more pro independence people who were previously neutral.
Well played. You can exprime a lot of pro-independentist juice if you put a 80 years old lady in the position of being beaten and videotape all instead to try to defend her. Another point for the good guys.
Another possibility could be separatists thinking last week or yesterday "this is stupid, some people could be hurt!, for nothing!, why we don't stop this farce before... dunno... a 80yo lady is beaten or so?
I bet that the lady, or the child crying, would have appreciated that line of reasoning, but it seems that for separatists the more people hurt, the better. Curious if we think about it.
798 of then fortunately with minor or moderate injuries including more than 30 policemen (updated, it seems that were more than 400 policemen in fact, but there is not still an impartial count), and sadly 2 people with serious injuries.
2 seriously injured == millions murdered?
If you want to bang your head repeatedly against the walls and trow chairs against policemen, please don't tell me that is my fault if you end the day with some scratches, a headache, a panic attack or something worst.
There is a great solution for this, avoid being deliberately (with your little kids not less!) in a place where something illegal is happening and was publicly announced. Avoid to participate in the scam and specially to mock and challenge the police in their faces (with the obvious goal to elicit a violent reaction for advertising purposes), and you will be OK. Take care of yourself and think twice before to act.
Independentists are irresponsably scalating their constant provocation and salivating since years with the idea of a militar intervention with shiny tanks and hundreds of people murdered (preferibly non-indepentendist people). Thus they could finally justify having their much dreamed war of secession, doing a little clean of the zone, and feeling like warfare heros in their neighborhood. This is not what happened yesterday, thanks to all deities.
And today the basques had also asked for a referendum to be recognised as nation. As expected. Great.
I don't need to, neither feel particularly inclined this afternoon to teach you about how VAT is spent, exemption of taxes since 1518, or tricks of our democracy to allow some parties to have one deputy by each 50.000 votes whereas other parties need to be supported by 500.000 voters to obtain the same results in the same election
Just google it, spend a few hours reading legal documents and history of the country and will find the answer by yourself.
Surely Catalonia should accept independence of Spaniards pockets, though I realize that in practice they probably won't. Why do you think there should be a forced limit for recursion?
Can your neighborhood struck trade deals with India? Then maybe your neighborhood wants to team up with others around to do that... See where I'm going?
It already meets all the requirements to be a member, EU law is ingrained in Catalan law, it has the ability to negotiate and state structures. It just needs to be an independent country.
It would be better to be in the EU, but meanwhile that happens some bilateral trade deals with the EU should be relatively easy to accomplish.
If you're referring to recognition as a country, that's a separate and huge discussion. If Catalonia is not recognised it can't take its part of Spanish debt with it (might be up to 20% of the total) while being a rebel region not paying taxes and maybe under military occupation. How is Spain, which is still in critical condition with a debt of the size of its GDP, going to fare? This month Spain had to get a loan to pay pensions. This month!
So if Spain loses 20% of its GDP while keeping all the debt, how is it going to survive? And if Spain can't pay and falls, what's going to happen to the EU? You thought Brexit was bad? This is much worse!
A situation were the outcome of a YES vote is negotiated and Catalonia pays his dues is a win-win for every stakeholder: Catalans, Catalonia, Spaniards, Spain and the EU. Striking trade deals after that is pure pragmatism.
Just go through old papers about Slovenia or even the Baltics. It's all about realpolitik at the end and Catalonia has to be able to show its value to the world.
Which makes think about the ramifications for the future of the EU with a yes vote in the referendum.
A relatively prosperous region in on the European subcontinent that agrees to succeed will embroil the EU with more political and economic turmoil than it already has, and open the subcontinent up to more non EU influence.
Might be a boon for multinational corporations and some governments who have something to gain from a weaker EU.
At least something tells me that the recent former Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs at the US State Dept words from a leaked phone conversation on the EU a couple years ago probably stands true today of the perspective some powerful people have in the world on the EU…
I think Unidos Podemos supports the referendum (the leader has said he's against the separation but that it's Catalonia's choice). Then there's the "Republican Left of Catalonia–Catalonia Yes", which is pro-separation.
Still, together they only have 80 out of 350 seats.
The second biggest party, currently in opposition, is obviously blaming the government for the whole mess, but I don't think they have any intention of voting to change the constitution.
And this is not the end of the history. Would be naively opening the door to a full hell of pain.
Try to give one candy to calm a child having a tantrum in a room full of them and see what happens when the other children realize that crying, breaking toys and banging the head on the wall equals to be rewarded with sweets.
You allow somebody to break the law and jump over the constitution just because they are inconsolable otherwise. You fell in the trap. Now you must grant the same treatment to the rest. Similar referendums were demanded (and should have to be allowed in the very next day) for Euskadi, Galicia, Canary Islands, Asturias, Leon, Andalucia and only god knows what more. Two can play this game, and ten also.
The idea is not Germany allowing or not a referendum for Bavaria; or UK trying to please Scottland; the idea would be: you must now be forced to grant referendums for each single state in Deutschland or UK to make us happy "or we will stop breathing (and will create a permanent state of confrontation and street disturbs)".
Countries are not people, they don't respect or love each other, they oscillate between peace and war. The history of every major nation is a history of violence and conquest, not freely entered union.
So, why deny independence? Because only the optics have changed, not the reality?
> Countries are not people, they don't respect or love each other, they oscillate between peace and war. The history of every major nation is a history of violence and conquest, not freely entered union.
IMO that has not been true for last 70 yrs. Point to me a war that has been People vs People.
The fact of the current world is People Are Sovereign. If some >=N people domiciled in continuous region wants self-determination, thats their human right.
I suspect that those who want to separate Catalonia from the rest of the country wouldn’t agree with the human right of the people in the Barcelona metropolitan are to choose by themselves their own future...
True, countries are not people. But you "optics, not reality has changed" argument is very abstract. What is this reality that means that they should not be allowed to vote?
This analogy is repeated again and again but is a bad example. A divorce is not "a right", is an agreement regulated by law between two previously married people to put a legal end to the relationship.
The true fact is that I can't divorce from my wife without her permit and she could not divorce from me without me agreeing to sign the divorce papers. Does not match the case of one part splitting unilaterally. A better term for this case would be marital abandonment, and a even better term would be family abuse. There is not such thing like a "right to desert your family keeping the house for yourself only".
There's no federal government, it's not a federation.
Historically the central government has extracted money and resources from Catalonia. Catalonia was one of the first regions in Spain to develop its industry and definitely the strongest on that: https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolución_industrial_en_Esp...
These days it is widely accepted that the Catalan people send 16 billion per year to Spain that are never returned. That wouldn't be a problem if it wasn't because our infrastructures are underfunded and only around 35% of the budgeted investments were actually executed: http://www.elnacional.cat/es/politica/estado-ejecucion-infra...
But this is not just an economic grievance. The issue is way more complex and includes (but not restricted to) language, cultural and respect issues.
Edit: This comment is now at 0. Please argue instead of downvoting. You're breaking HN's rules.
What? You totally can, at least in most countries, as long as you can prove that your wife did something wrong. Can Catalunya prove that Spain did something wrong? Yeah: Franco.
There are some exceptions and many different divorce laws, but the example obviously should be taken in a spanish context, and not trying to suggest that Catalonia (typically represented as the wife) was cheating to its partner Spain (typically represented as man and violent abuser) so she "has the right to go". Would be against their own discourse.
"Shouldn't your wife be allowed to divorce from you if she wants" with an implicit (because you abused it) would be, on the other hand, an extremely rude example. I don't think that this passive-agressive possibility was even in the mind of the people posting it.
The fact that it is how this referendum was designed doesn't mean it's fair.
E.g. why would a foreigner that's been living in Catalonia for a few weeks, and plans to move away within a month to never return, have more of a say than a Catalan that spent 40 years there but had to move abroad two months ago in search of a job?
I was basing it on what the parent commenter said. I can't really tell if he's in the wrong or you are because, as you said, I haven't looked it up myself.
Even with your version my fairness argument stands. How is it fair that a Catalan expat isn't allowed to vote, and an Andalusian that might be there just for a few months is? Expats are certainly allowed to vote in General elections.
Ok that's better than if only currently-residing people were allowed to vote. The argument stands for Catalans living elsewhere in Spain.
But I grant that "you're allowed to vote if you can vote in the General elections as a resident of one of the four Catalan provinces" is probably as fair as one can practically get when designing this.
And if my children would want to commit suicide, steal and crash cars, or enter in a sect; who am I to deny them such reasonable demands?
... their loving father or something?
for Pete's sake, you, bad parent, they have rights!, and politicians that advise them well! Break the law, my minions, is funny (Specially to me, when I'll run with your money and deny to even know you... fools).
I mean, at this point do we need to clarify? Yes, the commenter is a fascist and yes that is basically what they believe, although it would be more about the rule of law than any kind of protection.
Dunno... Is the duty of the government from your nation to protect you?.
(tip: the correct answer starts with Y, but not for the spurious reasons that you claim. Is because, as citizen of your country, you have some constitutional rights. No matter if you are super-smart or a frozen cabbage sending your 11yo children to a warfield). Any nation must try to protect their citizens all the time (even from themselves if were the case). Spain is not different in that sense to any other country. Sometimes is not possible, sadly.
Constitutional rules are not written in stone though. If there is political will to change them, it usually can be done (often there are speed limits for how fast this can be done).
This is altogether a political issue, that the ruling party doesn't want the rules to be changed, but points to the constitution instead of taking responsibility for their stance.
Ask them about it :-) but I could guess their logic:
- They don't want people to vote.
- Maybe if it's suspended you should refrain from going on with it until there's a ruling.
- They know what how they want the ruling to be, so they act like it was done already. They're just working on making it legally sound in the meanwhile.
Choose whichever you prefer, all those are guesses. The fact is that there's no ruling and that's easily verifiable.
Luckily all court orders in Spain (like in most or all western countries) are explicitly reasoned in the order itself, so there isn't a need to ask the judge or guess. The people getting served those orders can publish the legal reasoning given.
Interestingly enough assemblea.cat's legal department has sent letters to the telcos because their site was blocked without a court order or any kind of notice.
And during the first days of sites blocked no telco provided the court order they were in theory served. In fact, not all the telcos are blocking the sites.
So yeah, western democracy and all that. It all smells incredibly fishy and ad-hoc.
I'm not a lawyer and I don't have an opinion on the Spanish government's or judicial system's concrete actions to stop a illegal law to take effect, but: the only websites, posters, etc. being seized are those paid for and organized by the Catalan government. Any association, political party, or individual is completely free to campaign for whatever they want, including independence.
We have a Spain-wide constitution. The Catalan government decided it has a democratic mandate by the people of its region to not abide by it. The NORMAL reaction by the state is to apply it, and stop the Catalan government from breaking it. It's only oppresive insofar laws and the judicial system are opressive.
Disclaimer: I'm a non-nationalist Spaniard living (but not born) in Catalonia. I don't particularly care about Catalan seceding or not (except for pragmatic concerns such as freedom of movement, etc.). I do care about whatever country I live in being able and willing to enforce its laws, insofar they are enacted by legitimate democratic institutions (and thus can be changed or repelled by democratic means) and there's freedom to disagree with them.
I also support a secession referendum for Catalonia. There's a very strong and majoritary demand for it that the state should address. But it needs to happen in due lawful process.
> The NORMAL reaction by the state is to apply it, and stop the Catalan government from breaking it.
It's interesting that you think so. I'd say the normal thing to do would be to issue a press release pointing out that the results aren't legally binding under the constitution and whoever wastes government money running a referendum on the thing might be held criminally or civilly liable.
Actually trying to STOP the thing is so expensive that it defeats the purpose of preventing the central government's money being wasted on the thing. It's so heavy-handed that it seems like it would just make Catalans who want to split more determined, and perhaps drive some to the other side. The most rational thing about it is that it might serve as a show of force to prevent other territories from doing the same. That part seems kind of sad.
If, for example, the State Of California, in the US, were to organize, without constitutional mandate, an "official" referendum calling for succession, Federal Marshall would be all over that in a blink of an eye.
And I'd agree that heavy-handed action gives the Calatan separatists quite a boost ... for the short term. But states don't really have choice about enforcing the law when a significant actor is visibly flouting that law. That's just how the law works, more or less everywhere it exists.
> If, for example, the State Of California, in the US, were to organize, without constitutional mandate, an "official" referendum calling for succession, Federal Marshall would be all over that in a blink of an eye.
It would not be illegal under federal law for California to hold a referendum on secession. It wouldn't mean anything at all. It would be legally equivalent to my planting a big red flag in the turf at a National Park and claiming that land in the name of Portugal. (it's a crime - littering - if you leave the flag there when you leave) The Federal Marshals could watch if they wanted to.
A number of actions taken by the state of California after the referendum would probably be illegal under federal law, unless the people of California held the referendum and passed it and the state officials in California simply ignored it. You'd expect that to cause a constitutional crisis at the state level in California, and that might eventually bubble up to the federal courts.
If the referendum passed and the state actually started to behave independently and take liberties with federal property, all sorts of things would start to go wrong for them. You don't really need to get heavy handed with federal law enforcement in that case. Not when you control the Federal Reserve Banks and pretty much everything else. There's a whole path of escalation you could follow in the courts before federal agents would start arresting people, but even if you want to get right to that you have to wait for them to commit actual crimes.
> If, for example, the State Of California, in the US, were to organize, without constitutional mandate, an "official" referendum calling for succession, Federal Marshall would be all over that in a blink of an eye.
California has, in fact, held initiatives (“referendum” has a particular meaning in California law which is slightly different than it's general usage) on things which violate the federal Constitution. The federal government has done nothing about the votes, though it has a role in challenging and overturning substantive actions taken by the State based on such initiatives after they've passed.
There's no real reason to think a secession initiative would be any different.
They have also blocked many websites not directly associated to the government. Heck, even the OP mentions the Gateway.ipfs.io HTTP2IPFS gateway being blocked. There are other examples such as:
Assemblea.cat (Assemblea nacional Catalana - Independentist association)
cridaperlademocracia.cat (Website protesting for actions perceived as political repression)
Empaperem.cat (Crowdsourced advertising campaign for the referendum)
I haven’t been able to find the court orders for any of the website blocks (only newspapers talking about it) but it’s all related to an order of the Constitutional Court that prohibits basically anything that promotes the referendum since it’s against the Constitution.
> Private citizens have been arrested for mirroring the websites with their own resources.
I very much would like to see a source for this, and, if the order to arrest them was given by the TSJC judge, what the reasoning was and whether charges were brought.
He was also taken to police premises, put on the phone with someone from Madrid and released.
Indicted for a crime here couldn't commit as he's not a civil servant. Also the judge authorised to get his online accounts and change the passwords (wtf). A terrible attack on civil liberties.
Thanks for the links! From them, he was asked whether he was under contract by the Generalitat to do it.
If they can't find any evidence of such contract, I expect the charges will be dismissed and his stuff restored.
I don't think the argument that he's not allowed to do it, by his own will with his own funds, will hold in court; if I understand the law correctly. I guess at most he might be in trouble regarding the Ley de Protección de Datos, IANAL and I wouldn't know. In any case if private data-handling is fine and still the law wouldn't allow it, that law needs to be changed.
I also expect charges dismissed. A detail about his stuff is that he didn't get a receipt (as per his lawyer that was not yet present), so his things were (in his lawyer's words) "effectively stolen by the police".
This happened before the "where to vote" part of the referendum site existed. It was just an informational static site.
Many other have been called to declare with "no specific crime" in the judge notifications also for mirroring the website, including at least one member of the Catalan branch of the Pirate Party. This has been seen by some as harassment to avoid more people mirroring the website.
>We have a Spain-wide constitution. The Catalan government decided it has a democratic mandate by the people of its region to not abide by it. The NORMAL reaction by the state is to apply it, and stop the Catalan government from breaking it. It's only oppresive insofar laws and the judicial system are opressive.
Of course, the American Revolution was also illegal by the laws of the British.
It's also oppressive in the sense of trying to rule people without their consent.
If you try to let people choose, but the other side says no, what's there left to do?
> If you try to let people choose, but the other side says no, what's there left to do?
Not much really. I think its really stupid of the Spanish Govt. to try to stick to formal constitutional means when there is a genuine, popular mandate for independence. What they seem to be saying is that a referendum is not allowed by current laws so it is illegal to have it. And their ham handed response is only agitating the region even more, legitimizing the separatists call for independence.
OTOH if they had provided a path for an actual referendum to be held, provided democratic means for allowing independence... who knows? Maybe there wouldn't be a popular mandate in the referendum. Maybe the central government could have worked closely with those people, parties and cities that wanted to continue being part of Spain and convinced more.
Its seems really rich of the Spanish govt. to claim they are following democratic processes to enforce a very undemocratic rule. They seem to be playing with semantics to enforce their will.
Disclaimer: Total outsider view, I'm neither from Spain or Catalan nor have I ever visited. My opinions are based solely on news reports.
> there is a genuine, popular mandate for independence
That remains to be seen. There are still less than 50% proponents of independence, according to what I read. The recent Spanish actions may have increased that number though.
That is exactly the point I am trying to make. If the Spanish Central Government had handled this better, it probably could have convinced more Catalan against independence. But its actions have antagonized more and it doesn't look like it will end well.
I'm not even arguing the Catalan government actions aren't _justified_, as the American Revolution may have been. My point is that the Spanish judiciary's reaction is just that of a normal, European, liberal democratic state under rule of law.
(It's my opinion that it's _not_ justified, though: there's a fair chance of getting through the necessary changes to allow a referendum and other self-government demands by following legal procedures, given the current Spain-wide political climate. I believe this is mainly a politically dishonest and populist move by the Catalan government. But that's besides the point.)
In any democracy or lawful state, independence movements are just a matter of nationalistic feelings. It's normal they are a tricky thing. They do not obey the principles of solidarity (in this case) or rational thinking. They live mainly from either supremacist or victimization arguments.
I completely disagree. Perhaps to Americans, wherein the concept of 'ethnicity' is culturally foreign concept, it can be complicated to put into the local, American framework for understanding identity.
People are different, cultures are different, ethnicities are different.
Why do you think that after 1000 years of war (in the case of the 'Germanics' - you could say 2000 years, i.e. against the Romans) - that places like 'Germany' still exist as a relatively coherent entity? Even when they were not 'a single state' they were allied.
The boundaries of Europe for some reason always seem to 'snap back' to something resembling an ethnographic map.
Why did the Greeks - who were never 'a country' in antiquity rallied together in defence against the Persians?
Far from being 'radical' it's actually the epitome of 'reasonable' and even 'pragmatic' that ethnic groups want their own states.
Every case is different: Catalonia, Scotland, Quebec, former Yugoslav states, heck - even Crimea ... but there's always at least some reason behind these movements - even if it does get caught up in 'stupid nationalism' or even, sadly, 'stupid racism' - those are usually just the extreme voices. Most people are not like that.
> Why do you think that after 1000 years of war (in the case of the 'Germanics' - you could say 2000 years, i.e. against the Romans) - that places like 'Germany' still exist as a relatively coherent entity? Even when they were not 'a single state' they were allied.
When has "Germany" been a "a relatively coherent entity"? The "Germanics" the Romans fought against have just as much in common with today's Germans as they do with the French or the Dutch–the French get their name from a Germanic tribe (the Franks), the principal historical difference between France and Germany is that the Germanics who invaded the Roman Empire ended up adopting the language of the people they had conquered, whereas those who remained beyond its borders kept their original Germanic language.
Moving forward, what we call "Germany" today is just the Prussian-dominated part of the Holy Roman Empire–"Austria" being the other main component–the separation of "Germany" and "Austria" is fundamentally due to dynastic politics (the Hohenzollern dynasty ruling Prussia vs. the Habsburg dynasty ruling Austria) and religion (the former being dominated by Protestants, the later dominated by Catholics)–the differences between Austrians and Germans are really no greater than the internal differences within each country, and the fact that they are two separate countries today is more an accident of history than anything deeper.
The only time that historic Germany has ever been a "relatively coherent entity" was in the Nazi period. (I think Hitler's role in Austria-Germany relations was sort of paradoxical, in that despite briefly unifying the two countries, he ended up associating the whole idea of unification with his own odiousness, such that Austria-Germany unification is a lot less likely now than it would have been had Hitler never happened.)
> The boundaries of Europe for some reason always seem to 'snap back' to something resembling an ethnographic map.
Yes and no. On the one hand, political boundaries often (but not always) end up following ethnic boundaries. On the other hand, ethnicity is often a deliberate political construction. Look at France – for many decades, even centuries, the policy of the French central government was to suppress regional ethnic/cultural/linguistic identities in favour of a homogenous notion of Frenchness. If people on opposite sides of France see themselves today as having a common ethnic identity, that is due to the deliberate policy of the French state, rather than something that happened naturally.
Catalan parliament has deployed a referendum law with +1 MPs, breaking regional Catalan law, silencing opposition and its own constituent powers. The referendum law states that any positive result from the referendum will result in a declaration of independence, with or without agreement with the central government.
Trying not to be get too biased, I'd conclude that Spanish central government is trying to protect the rule of law, state-wide or regional-wide, while also protecting those who didn't vote for separatists parties, which in 2015 elections were 52%.
Is the Catalan government a private organization? Or is it technically a part of the Spanish state.
Private organizations can organize, fund, and promote whatever referendums they want. And the Spanish govt. would just say they don't recognize the result.
But if the organizer is not a private organization, but instead a public institution, then it's likely abuse of authority and funds.
Spain has a constitution, trying to break it up is not "constitutional", even if you do it from Madrid. Saying that without taking sides. Its not a public/private debate, its all very much public.
If you play divide and conquer long enough you end up on your own.
The Catalan government is the government of the autonomous region of Catalonia. So, I'd say "neither". They are a public institution, but their authority comes from the people, not from the central state.
Sadly, Spain and many Spaniards can't see that. They keep claiming Spain "owns" Catalonia and also claim Catalan Devolution only exists because they "allow it"
Well, do you think it is worse than stationing four thousand police officers in cruise ships in the port of Barcelona? The Spanish government is determined to not let this happen. Period. Fortunately (and to make things more complicated) the parliament did not revoke the Catalan autonomy.
It doesn't matter that they can circumvent it. The fact that the Spanish government has taken such drastic actions means that the result of the vote will be completely meaningless and illegitimate. Opponents of the referendum who agree with the Spanish government will not participate.
The reason referendums don't have a minimum of votes is precisely to avoid boicots like the one that the opposition is trying to do, so if they don't want to vote it's up to them, but that doesn't make the referendum any less valid.
If the referendum unlawful, then some people will not go to vote, simply because they usually avoid breaking the law.
The result would be valid (from a probabilistic point of view) if "going to vote" was independent of "voting yes". But if the there is any correlation between "going to vote" and "voting yes" then the result of the referendum will be significantly different than the result of a referendum where any individual was forced to vote.
Here there might be a correlation: people in favor or independence or more likely to go voting than others.
A similar phenomenon may have happened in the us. If there is a correlation between "lying to polls" and "voting for candidate A" then the poll predictions can become very wrong.
"it is nearly-impossible for any actor to block access to this content because it is replicated around the network automatically"
This isn't entirely accurate though. It's only replicated if people request it. If everyone only requests the content through `ipfs.io` then the content will only be living on the original seeder, and the IPFS gateway nodes which run GC on a regular basis.
Depending on how the content is moved, it _might_ end up on a few other nodes (a way around nats, by using a third party peer to stream content between two peers), but I believe it's only ever moved through the network, and will not be stored on the nodes. If it is, it's only there till the next GC (disabled by default I believe).
Wow, this is super cool that they thought of / implemented this.
(I think your math on bits is wrong: I'm getting that log2(1010 * 23 * 365 * 4) = 33.4, not 28.)
A few notes on the crypto off the top of my head:
1. 1714 iterations of SHA-256 seems really low given that you're going to be looking this up approximately once per person. My 2010-era laptop can compute about a million hashes per second according to `openssl speed sha256`. A second or two to look this up is definitely comparable with what a human would expect the UX to be for a dynamic website run by a government; honestly I wouldn't complain about up to a minute as long as there was a clear progress bar. So you could easily change it from 1,714 hashes to 1,714,000 without impacting UX, and you should probably do that given the relatively small key space, which would give you a factor of 1000x on the brute force attack.
2. AES-256-CBC with no IV smells funny to me. I guess every message is encrypted with a different key, but the keys themselves are easily derivable (they're just a single SHA-256 hash of the lookup key, and those are all in the public filesystem). I cannot think immediately of an attack against this but maybe someone else can.
3. Your brute-force estimates are what's needed to enumerate the entire lookup key space. The practical attack here is what you've outlined, that you know someone's date of birth and zip code (which are likely in public records). and want their national ID for some identity theft. You're not trying to find some arbitrary person to steal the identity of. That means that the date of birth and zip code are fixed, and you only need to brute-force the DNI portion, which has only 10^5 * 23 possibilities. That's extremely realistic: I can compute 10^5 * 23 * 1715 hashes on my 2010 laptop in a little over an hour.
I guess they do the right thing by only using a part of the DNI string, so you still have three unknown decimal digits, and zero information about what they might be.
> (I think your math on bits is wrong: I'm getting that log2(1010 * 23 * 365 * 4) = 33.4, not 28.)
1. Totally right that I'm wrong, but I'm now getting 48 bits, not 33 ;)
2. That was a terrible mistake of my own. The lookup key is derived from the password, not the other way around. I've corrected the article to clarify that!
3. Yeah that's why I said you can do it with your laptop and not too much time ;)
Only using the latest part of the DNI is not that good though. The letter is actually a control character, which can be computed from the 8 numbers. Hence, if you have 5 numbers and the letter, there are only some possible 3-digit prefixes that lead to a valid DNI! How many? I would have to investigate further hehe...
I can't check, but isn't sha256_times(passkey, 1713) == passkey? (sha256_times(sha256(a), 1713) == sha256_times(a,1714)?) The encryption is then basically worthless if you have a list of all lookups. (I didn't see a dynamic in the sha256_times function.)
"In the where to vote? page, you are prompted to enter some of your details: DNI (national id), Birth date, Zip code"
Wait a second, can someone from the area explain this? Why on earth do they need your ID number just to tell you where to vote?
In my country (UK) 99% of the time all you need is a postcode and you can be told your voting place. (I say 99% because there are a few postcodes that are split across different seats and thus different people in the same post code have different polling places. Also just to note some areas are bad at publicly supplying this data. But my general point still stands.)
For most people that would suffice, but there are exceptions: people who moved recently, people who is not accounted for, etc..
This way, if you are not in the database you know that there's a problem and can ask the authorities to get it fixed before it is too late and you cannot vote.
That's a different question tho - what your talking about is "Am I registered to vote correctly?" and there is no way to answer that without a DB of personal information in some way.
(This could be handled better in the UK - at the recent election there was a website for last minute registrations which got lots of traffic, and afterwards they said a very large amount of people were already registered. But there is no easy system to check if you are already registered .... so everyone just used this site to sign up again.)
BUT
The article talks about answering the question "Where do I vote?". The assumption is the registration is correct, you just want to know where to vote.
In my country, this can be answered by a information system that contains no personal information at all, so I was surprised to see the DOB & ID bit in the original post.
Replying to my own Q to explain why I'm going on about this.
It seems to me the OP set out to answer the question "Where do I vote?".
And they did this by releasing a whole bunch of personal information on every citizen online. That, no matter how good the encryption or how slight the P.I. is, strikes me as a bad idea.
Who's to say that in 6 months a flaw isn't revealed in the encryption method that leaves it all open? Or in a year there isn't a breakthrought in brute forcing and suddenly it's easy to open? And while you could argue the P.I. is slight (DOB, ZIP and ID only) maybe it's actually very powerful to bad people when combined with other data sets?
Basically, if there was any way to create a data set to answer the question "Where do I vote?" without including any Personal Information (like you can in the UK) that is so much better, because then you have an open data set you can pass around freely in as many ways as possible with no fancy crypto needed and no worries about personal information leaking. You could even print the damn thing and put it up in the town square, no fancy tech needed.
ps. Some people are talking about the question of "Am I registered to vote correctly?". That does require Personal Information in a DB, no way around that. But that's not what the original article was about. That very clearly says "Where to vote? ... how is the catalan government supposed to notify people their assigned polling stations?". Being clear about the question really does help sometimes. :-)
"The app, available on Google Play until just before 7 p.m. on Friday, helps people to find their polling station via their address"
I downloaded and checked the app (I'm in the UK and I can).
I don't speak the language, but with a few google translate checks it seems clear that it asks for an address and gives you a polling station. No Id, no DOB needed.
So was it really necessary to release a DB of voters personal information?
Ohhhhhhh, is that the information I'm missing? So you have to know both the building you vote in and the specific table you need to go to?
In the UK, you just turn up at the the right building and there are signs to guide you from there. You don't need to know in advance what table to vote from. (Unless it's changed recently - I've had a postal vote the last 2 elections. Can anyone from the UK confirm?)
That would make the question "Where do I vote?" much harder to answer. In the UK, for 99% of the population it's a simple "My postcode -> building address" lookup table that contains no voter personal information at all. But if Catalan has to have "??? -> building address and which table" that is much harder.
Thank you, that sounds like the answer I was missing then.
But Q: If you only knew the building you had to vote from, and not which table, could you still turn up at the building and be able to vote somehow? Or would they really turn you away?
you can still vote if you know only the building, but it is more cumbersome because you'd have to check your name on the list for each table. I've done it once, and it takes easily more than 2h to find your table (mainly because there is often a lot of people who don't know their table either).
I'm not in any way saying you should be able to. You can't in my country either.
I'm just surprised that you need your ZIP & ID & DO to find out where you vote, because in my country you can find out where you vote with only your ZIP.
yes, you can simply check where to vote based on your zip code. The ID is needed for another, independent, check, to verify whether you are actually on the list of voters for that school.
Yes, I think my root problem here is that people are mixing up "Where do I vote?" and "Am I registered to vote?". These are two very different questions with different solutions! Anyway, thanks for your replies.
True, but irrelevant. I'm not talking about voter registration.
I'm talking about simply offering an information service that answers the question "Where do I vote?" - that's what the OP is about - and in the UK, 99% of the time you can answer that with only someone's postcode.
Ah, that explains why I saw various catalán sites being pinned on the IPFS pinning service I run (https://www.eternum.io), which also runs a public writable gateway (so you can access IPFS files, including the banned catalán websites, through it).
Having just gotten back from Barcelona, I have to say that the way the Spanish government is handling this is far from ideal. I don't very much support the Catalonian plea for independence (I haven't heard any good reasons other than "but our freedom"), but blocking sites seems... suboptimal.
As for the crypto itself, why not use bcrypt? Your users don't care if it takes three seconds, but it makes attacks entirely infeasible.
You can't just look at data from the internet without touching it, you need to download it. The same holds true when reading data from the IPFS network.
In the process, you make it available for anyone else who ask for it, but only for a limited time; until the Garbage Collector (GC) runs. If I remember correctly, the GC run once every hour or so, so you probably won't reshare the data for longer than that.
You need to pin the data if you want to keep resharing it. This effectively tells the GC to not touch it.
I don't understand why would you need to know a person's details to tell where he should vote. In Czech Republic, you can tell just from your address of residency. It's usually the closest one to your registered address. Therefore, it should be enough to publish just the list of locations and the areas they serve.
For those who want more background into what's going on, here is an excellent video from The Economist explaining the independence movement in Catalonia:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaQ4_v0fz6k
Agree they should have not use a bespoke algorithm but I don't think there is much of a security issue. Knowing where you need to go to vote is not enough to vote.
From my point of view, this rises a far more interesting question.
Do you guys think it could be possible to use blockchain to implement a secure voting system? I do and I got a few ideas about the main issues (authentication, authorisation, validity period and others) and will be happy to discuss with anyone interested on co-developing such a system... or if you know of one already do let me know!
Seems like if every computer can be a "poling station", authoritarian regimes/governments will have a more difficult way of stopping this sort of voting from happening. And maybe, only maybe, we can enjoy a free democracy.
I'm genuinely curious which part ipfs solves here? Given that it's still accessed via browser/domain wouldn't they just block the dns or even ip?
In which case this is no more resilient than say multiple domains and dns entries and proxying on from there to a central database (which could be run in a jurisdiction over which Spain has little control and which they would have to discover first anyways)
Data on IPFS is accessed over P2P, not over IP. ipfs.io is just running a gateway. Anyone could do that. In fact; if you were to run IPFS on your computer, you'd probably have your own gateway on your localhost.
Somebody would just make their own public gateway, and the government would need to block another domain. Of cource, running IPFS for yourself would take away any need to use a gateway.
I'm not an expert, but I think it goes like this: ipfs, similarly to torrent, is p2p. Given an address (that's a hash for the file), your client will look for other peers that have the file, and get it from them. Unless they find all the peers holding the file or start blocking ipfs traffic, there's little they can do to prevent access.
Under Spanish Constitution, supreme law in Spain, the right to determine the territory of Spain belongs to all Spaniards (article 2).
What some people claim as "democracy" or "the right to vote" is actually removing this right from the rest of Spaniards.
Aside from other claims and whether there are political or historical reasons, the voting has been declared illegal by the "Tribunal Constitucional", highest court in Spain. End of story, it's illegal, period. And Spain (mostly judges and police forces) are trying to defend the law.
Now a quick note on the alleged economical facts: no, Catalonia does not contribute 16 billion to the rest of the country, it's actually 2,4 billion (this is what Catalonia published last year). This is called "solidarity", and it is what contributes to other regions in Spain to grow and benefit the country as a whole. Madrid is also a significant net contributor. On the other hand, Spain holds 55 billion in debt from Catalonia, which is unable to finance by itself on international debt markets. So numbers don't add that quickly as it has been said here.
1978, shortly after the dictatorship ended, a time in which Spain was still dominated by cronies from that very dictatorship, and who proceeded to dictate the Constitution.
So in 1978 Catalonia's vote mattered and you're claiming today it does not.
Because it did matter in 1978, there's a law that says that 1-O voting cannot happen, it's illegal.
Only all Spaniards can vote regarding the integrity and sovereignty of Spain.
If you think 1978's Constitution was approved under some form of oppression, fight that, there are clear ways to change the Constitution. But do not support any illegal activities that remove rights from the rest of the people in the country.
The root of the democracy is the respect to the law. Not "voting".
Are you saying Miquel Roca and Jordi Solé Tura are cronies from the dictatorship? The Constitution of 1978 was voted freely in Catalonia, and it is that very same Constitution what makes the referendum illegal.
The original article doesn't take into account that DNI letter is calculated from the previous DNI digits with a known formula. So when you choose the numbers, you already know the letter. See for example: https://gist.github.com/afgomez/5691823
So Instead of:
10^10 * 23 * 365 * 4 = 33580 * 10^10 possible combinations
, we have
10^10 * 365 * 4 = 1460 * 10^10.
And we can represent it with 44 bits instead of 48.
To explore all possible combinations, we need then
1460 * 10^10 * 1715 = 25039 * 10^12 hashes,
instead of 575897 * 10^12 hashes
With AntMiner S9, we can do all hashes in:
25039 * 10^12 / 28 * 10^9 = 10.3 days.
If we want to specifically scam a target neighbourhood (imagine sending an email telling people "your local bank in your neighborhood asks you to reset your password), we can choose a fixed zip code, and all this could be guessed with a less powerfull machine (someone else can do the math).
Russia wants to break apart the bloc with Germany at the center to dominate its neighbors. It's a replay of Russia's tensions with Europe that date at least to the Napoleonic wars, and include WWI and WWII.
"Basically, the code recurses a sha256 computation 1714 times to get a lookup key, and then once more to get a password for decryption."
Other way around, no? The index is the hash of the decryption key (as it should be), it's just that the index is called "key" and the key is called "lookup".
If the decryption key was the hash of the index, then it would be trivial to decrypt every entry.
I would have used scrypt (memory bound and therefore hardly scalable in ASICs/FPGAs) with a higher round count, say that it takes ~1s to calculate the hash. That way bruteforce is infeasible these days.
Also I would have used other sparse information such as street number that hardly can be connected to a particular person.
"it is nearly-impossible for any actor to block access to this content because it is replicated around the network automatically, using peer-to-peer encrypted connections that would be very hard to identify and block at the ISP level. Maybe China could do it, but Spain definitely cannot."
I imagine because China has spent more time on the required infrastructure to make this happen. Spain is trying to stop something that is set to happen on Oct 1, so they have a finite amount of time to suppress the information.
By the same token, they're also not the home of a bunch of friendly companies that will implement the work, unlike China, and they don't have a long history of trying to stop the flow of information, unlike China, and they don't have a effectively infinite budget, unlike China.
I'm betting against Spain on this one. Go Catalonia!
China has the ability (primarily at layer 8 but also at layer 2) to fail closed in the case of unknown but suspicious content from outside, and also has (again, primarily at layer 8) enough control over ISPs to demand filtering on peer-to-peer traffic. Spain doesn't have that infrastructure, and deploying it would cause enough false positives to negatively affect the economy of non-Catalan parts of Spain.
If IPFS is not entirely stateless the protocol to set up the state will always have identifiable information, like how TLS is easily blocked in the same way. Also, a protocol-agnostic approach is traffic analysis with machine learning (this is being used to identify custom-protocol VPNs).
I'm not an IPFS expert, but my guess is they have the great firewall, so they can MITM every connection and inspect all of the packets for this type of content and do whatever to the originator/packets.
Does the great firewall just happen between outside and inside (Chinese) connections? With IPFS, you could have a direct connection to peers and you could have a direct link (same WiFi for example) where nothing leaves your network when downloading.
As long as one peer in the network has a outside connection, all peers could access that content via relay for example.
Sure, but they can easily pressure ISPs, Spain can do that too. The problem is spain has no leverage against outside computers. China has this via great firewall.
A possibly simpler solution would be to not have assigned places to vote that are based on your ID & DOB.
Just vote at the polling place most convenient to you, and announce available polling places on posters around town, or facebook & twitter if you prefer.
The reason that isn't done in any election is because, to prevent people from voting twice, each voting station needs a list of the people that are supposed to vote there.
That's a fair point but doesn't explain why ID & DOB are needed. I asked about this in another comment - in my country, you just need your postcode to find your polling place 99% of the time.
Interesting, but that doesn't answer my question. It's not in any way about voter registration.
I'm asking why can't you be told where to vote - the original thing the article is about - based on your postcode only. But I think I have my answer in another thread.
The letter in the DNI is a checksum of the numbers. Simply DNI mod 23 indexes a lookup table with the 23 allowed letters, so those 238 card days get reduced to only 10 days!
Is there oppression of human rights by the central government? Is there discrimination against catalans ?
In other words, what's broken that secession would fix?
Government could probably just block any DNS requests that want to resolve the ipfs.io domain. Though Spain probably does not have the censorship infrastructure deployed for that the way a country like China has.
This is why DNSCrypt [1] and DNSCurve [2] are a good thing because they encrypt the data between client and resolver. Although they can block all of the traffic to/from any known resolvers, that's draconic and a lot of work, and it is quite a list.
Mac/Homebrew users: brew cask install dnscrypt
Windows/Chocolatey users: choco install simplednscrypt (or alternative see [3])
Linux: should be in your package manager. Generally, searching for dnscrypt should yield some useful software. It isn't difficult to set up via command line IMO. There's probably howto's to be found via search engine as well.
I hope Mozilla shows leadership in adopting IPFS support in Firefox. I don't necessarily want it to adopt IPFS right now, but it should have a plan for when it thinks the project is "mature enough" to be adopted in a mainstream browser, but also it should be early enough that Firefox is the first to do it.
Maybe Mozilla should even get involved early in IPFS so that it can shape the protocols the way it would prefer them to work in its browser later on (while still ensuring the censorship-resistance vision of the project remains intact).
Why should they? Tor is managed by the Tor Project. It is bundled & shipped as TBB already, using Firefox. You already can use it if you want to, so why would they bother with implementing Tor in the mainstream version of Firefox? They could only offer it as option (because not everyone wants to use Tor all the time) and this option is already satisfied.
I'd guess the two biggest issues would be bloat and expectations.
Doing so is going to add bloat that is needless to the majority of people. If they add support for Tor, people are going to expect them to add support for more protocols, from torrents to freenet to gopher.
Yeap. It's true that the ax is older than Fascism, but its adoption on the symbol of the Spanish Civil Guard is from 1943 - right during the Franquist regime.
Upvote for balance because it's A) a reasonable suggestive misinterpretation and B) not untrue.
It's not like the swastika where it's so abstract. The symbol has such a specific detailed design that you have to be familiar with the history to know it's not a direct reference.
I'm not actually suggesting that they are fascists, similar symbolism is used in the US as well https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln_(1920_statue)#... . And the phrase "E pluribus unum" on American money also has the same roots as the symbol. But it is amusing to me, because the idea behind the symbol is very authoritarian and fascist.
Fasces are supposed to represent the general concept of law and governance. Since law is ultimately always about forcing (some) people to to do something that they don't want to do, the symbol does have violent connotations, but I'd call that truth in advertising - another take on Mao's "all power comes out of a barrel of a gun". So, it is authoritarian in a sense that the generic notions of government and rule of law is authoritarian.
Paramilitary is a militarized group that is not part of the official armed forces, which describes groups like the Civil Guard or Gendarmerie pretty well. A military branch of the government who works with civilian populations.
Voting is not necessarily democratic. Hitler won in democracy. Respecting minorities and not playing the victim card is more democratic indeed!
There are many republicans dead under catalan descending military charges, all over the peninsula. I don't think being born in Catalonia makes you less fascist.
But you can always play the victim card ans act like history never happened.
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This is an Easter Egg. Barcelona fell on September 11, 1714 during the War of Spanish Succession and with that Catalonia's freedom as well. September 11 is the National Day of Catalonia.
Also, at 17:14 of each and every game of FC Barcelona in Camp Nou Stadium, Barcelona fans claim for independence [1].
So it was not by chance that the coder chose 1714 for the encryption algorithm.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EneqR3oDpmQ