darthdev's comments

“Now we have a big contract with Vodafone, and every month Vodafone has to give machine readable data to city hall. Before, that didn’t happen. They just took all the data and used it for their own benefit”

So, now Vodafone AND the city government has this data about the citizens. How is this fighting against surveillance? Am I missing something? :/

If I remember correctly, this started because the opposition party at the moment (PP) appeal at the constitutional court the "estatut".

If you ask me, I think that was a political (dirty) movement to gain some votes. But the point here is that since some Catalans didn't like the court resolution, they started this "blackmail": "either you accept the estatut or we will secede". We are now at the threat of secession.

Note that the quoted texts are not literal phrases said by anyone, it is just to clarify my point.

You asked one example, here is one. There are many other examples of laws passed in the Spanish congress with the support of Catalan parties in exchange of political favors.

Secession is in fact illegal in most of the world countries (if not all). Auto-determination is a right recognized in the UN for regions under colonial rule. Catalonia is not a region under colonial rule, and in fact the UN does not recognize the right of auto-determination of Catalonia (Source in Spanish from a newspaper from Catalonia: http://www.lavanguardia.com/politica/20151030/54438498099/ba...).

Is the law is wrong? Maybe, in fact I might agree with the right to vote secession, but (IMHO) this needs to be done with great care, if not, any region of any state can call a vote for independence each time they disagree with the neighbors. In fact this kind of "blackmail" has been used consistently in Catalonia for years: "If you don't vote this bill, we will secede from Spain".

So, I don't think that the law that prohibit referendums for secession is completely nonsense. Exceptions of course can be made, but, is the case of Catalonia an exception? Before answer that, please, think if you have all the data to make that statement.

No. It is though illegal that a public institution (using of course public founds from ALL Spaniards) promote in any way an illegal action. The Spanish term is "prevaricación" (perversion of justice), is commonly used when a public servant use his power to make knowingly an illegal action.

Note: This is what I read recently regarding this issue, but I am not a law expert, so take this with a grain of salt.

Edit: typos.

While I might agree with the right to vote, there are some issues that the secessionist don't say ( IMHO they somehow suffer extreme confirmation bias, I won't say that they are stupid or uneducated ).

The region of Catalonia has a lot of independence inside Spain, similar to a federal state. They however say that "Madrid oppress them"; that is simply nonsense, all Catalan citizens, as Spanish citizens, and as EU citizens, has the same rights ( and obligations ) as Madrid citizens.

The constitution they disregard openly, has a section that explicit protects their language as part of our collective culture ( source in spanish: http://www.congreso.es/consti/constitucion/indice/titulos/ar... )

The referendum they are pushing, has not guaranties, they even don't have an official census, so anyone can vote several times in different places. Even if I were pro-independence, I wouldn't like a referendum like that.

They say openly all the time that the rest of Spain steal from them. Yes, they pay taxes ( as all the Spanish citizens ), and seems that paying taxes ( using the same laws as the rest of Spain ) is stealing. I won't say this is xenophobic or greedy, but there something clearly wrong with that argument.

Relevant: The European Commission says that they respect the decisions of the Spanish constitutional court. Source: https://twitter.com/PrensaCE/status/908707446297948160 ( English with Spanish subtitles )

In Spain this is quite normal ( they don't say it in the job offer, but is expected that you work more than 40 hours/week ). When you ask to get paid for those extra hours they usually laugh at you.

People outside Spain usually make jokes about Spanish "siesta", but in fact we are exploited in the same way this article describes.

( making jokes of course is ok, what is not ok is the exploitation )