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Fucking horrible scenes of Spanish police violence.
Absolutely.
Agree or not with the referendum, the violence is unacceptable - and given the Spanish police's reputation, deploying them in the first place was never going to end quietly. Madrid has probably pushed more people towards the independence movement than it would have if it had just ignored and downplayed the poll.
Yes to the first part. Not entirely convinced on the "just ignore it" part.
Catalan politicians claimed the right to declare independence within 48 hours of a yes vote. A vote either way was too close to predict. Acting in a way which made a vote impossible to call, from Madrid's perspective, was probably a safer bet than gambling on the result going their way. This is a cluster fuck for sure.
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Turnout was low last time. It probably would have been again, although I do take your point and you may be right. It's a bloody hard call to have to make.
The thing that gets me is that Madrid is trying to defend a constitution that was drawn up explicitly to try to stop Spain falling back into civil war, but because of the pictures on TV there are lots of people calling them fascists. I lived in Barcelona for a while, studying constitutional law ironically - I was well-exposed to both sides of the argument, and this whole situation feels purpose-built to descend into the kind of shit we're seeing now.
A PS - thinking on it some more, I think if you're going to use the state apparatus to block the vote, you have to be sure you can completely stop it happening. If you're not, you let it happen but undermine and discredit it. The alternative is what we have now - terrible scenes and people still voting.
(I'm not taking sides, for the record)
h2o
https://twitter.com/manelrainers/status/914460939197583362
Fucking horrible scenes of Spanish police violence. Agree or not with the referendum, the violence is unacceptable - and given the Spanish police's reputation, deploying them in the first place was never going to end quietly. Madrid has probably pushed more people towards the independence movement than it would have if it had just ignored and downplayed the poll.