Dumped it years ago. Buggy and annoying sums up my experience. Switched to Razor Comms first (worked fairly well) but they stopped it so we switched to discord.
that's why that meme made me grit my teeth when I first saw it on 9gag. Europeans all know this but very vocal "shut up and stop it with your hopes of separation" trend is mostly coming from out of Europe, US in particular. why they have this UK-Spain bias? who knows? proof, though, that you can get the same exact person on either side (and just as riled up on either side) with the story you present them with. perhaps the people pulling the strings are just testing their current manipulation strengths? (a scary thought to have) Idk. either way I stand split by this topic. on one end I'm a person of the world, I believe in one global nation so separatist talk irks me. on the other the duchebags in this story are clear. Cold-War era chinese-style oppression of peaceful manifestations? what is this? this can't be spain? you tell me it's spain but it sounds like a dictatorship.
The catalonian government isn't being terribly nice either, calling referenda they have no legal power to enact, and being antagonistic to spain. They knew what they were doing with the referendum, and they knew that spain would never allow it. Spain acted within their power to stop it, and did so. Anyone who stood before a voting booth knew that what they were doing was illegal. I'm not making a judgement here: My point is solely that Spain isn't breaking laws or rules here, the Catalonian government is, they knew they were, and people involved in this seperatism know what they're doing too. The many tens if not hundreds of thousands of anti-separatists demonstrators also show that it's hardly a done deal in Catalonia, let alone Spain. The referendum wasn't a majority of the population. Keep in mind that when Spain acts, they act for those Catalonians who don't want to separate too. In the end, it's their mess, and they'll have to figure out how to continue. We've already seen how Brexit is progressing (quite poorly) and the political mess it brings. To me, it seems they want to eat their cake and have it too, since a lot of their income is from exports and EU membership (there's a ton of international companies there), and there's no way in hell they'll ever be allowed into the EU. The EU has no business in this. What Spain does is legally theirs to do. Deposing the Catalan government is their power to do, in legal provisions made. As long as no major ethical boundaries are crossed, we have no role but to be neutral ground. Personally, i find it sad that negotiation and diplomacy have such a low standing in the world currently, in a time we need it more than ever. Everything is simplified to black and white, us versus them, against or for. Any middle ground is torched and poisoned, and anyone who just wants a reasonable outcome is asked to choose an extreme. Not sure what you mean by this. The UK and Spain are united in their situation: both have to deal with internal strife and separatist sentiment. Belgium also has it's two (or three if you count the german part) split. These countries will act to ensure stability, and if that means stopping separatism elsewhere they'll do it. It's also why Spain would never allow Scotland to join the EU, since it would imply similar guarantees to Catalonia. Just as the UK would never allow Catalonia to join for the same reason. Belgium is unclear since the power balance is different. And again, Catalonia isn't united in it's bid for sovereignty, and Spain is acting in the interest of those Catalonians too. This isn't some easy us vs them, it's something that will require some top-tier diplomatic action. I think that if future Catalonian leaders can still the dissent and offer greater cooperation to Spain, they'll find that Spain can offer greater cooperation to them. But what comes of it remains to be seen.
@Devak well in the US especially for the republicans there was immense support for brexit. the opposite is true for spain. this is illogical and really raises questions.
I think it's because the US itself falls into the Spain/UK/Belgium category, since it too has separatist sentiment (e.g. Texas and California have both had recent dreams of secession). that makes sense to me. As to the brexit thing, i think it's because it means that the US can now exert even more influence on the UK, while diminishing the power of it's competitors. After all, the US rise to power in the past century is in a big part thanks to all it's competitor superpowers being destroyed. China isn't rising but rather returning to a power it once held. Germany has always been a powerhouse (even before it was Germany), and it's little surprise that it holds such influence in the EU. In a sense, it took some 50-60 years (and probably a few decades more) for the world to return to it's natural state of power, and in a natural state of power the US is not nearly as dominant as it's been since the Cold War.
@Devak yes but by that logic why doesn't the same opinion apply to spain for the us? Us on online media is clearly anti calatalogna separation. why?
That i don't know. Maybe people feel the country is divided and project their desire for unity on Spain?
