Catalonia can have that in Spain, this romantic idiocy won't lead to anything good.
There are issues worth killing and dying for, but this isn't one of them.
(and I don't want to take sides either, seems like dumb behaviour by both sides that will lead to an escalation).

You're in America, morolf is in Germany. I wonder if there's a difference in thinking.

well, given the pictures that were seen yesterday: confiscated ballot boxes, police action against voters, ...
the result numbers are meaningless. add to that the fact that it was declared illegal beforehand and the referendum might as well not have happened. The result will have no political weight.
What stays from yesterday are the pictures of the police action, not the voting results.
Not sure how that plays out in the rest of Spain politically, but at least in the eyes of the observing world the Spanish government is the clear loser from yesterday.
But viewing it pragmatically I don't think the Independence Movement really gained anything either.
In the end the only sure result is that a political solution seems further away than ever :/

And the cynic in me wants to add that, as ugly as the pictures are from Spain, this isn't really some new quality of police violence.
"police clashing violently with political activists"
you see that headline quite often, just go back to like any G8/G20 summit ever.
there will be a lot of noise in the media for a few days and then things will just go back normal.
Don't expect the EU to swoop in and take a stance against that.
No foreign politician is going to burn his hands by intervening in matters of territorial sovereignty of another state.

One can't see stuff like that and tell me there aren't rich people high up just massively trolling the world.

Rarely yeah, but UK did grant Scotland a referendum. Maybe they learned from US independence war. Also, Finland got its independence from Russia (thanks Lenin; Stalin tried to take it away later though during WWII).

Does it work the other way too, BTW? Ie. the motherland can kick out part of its nation? Everyone I know (both of them) feels Aland needs to be detached from Finland. Åland should be made independent, both as a state and physically (ie. detach their island from the continental shelf and sent sailing on the Atlantic, towards the Greenland).

They get all kinds of perks from Finland (autonomy, lots of financial support, tax reductions etc.), yet they just keep whining whining whining, as if we still owe them something. The last straw was a week or two ago when in the Nordic countries' council (which has representatives from Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Finland AND Åland), Åland rep voted against Finnish (and Icelandic) becoming one of the official languages of the council, along with Sweden, Norwegian and Danish.

We don't need them! Let them go! Even against their will!

(In reality, our political powers wouldn't want to let Åland go because it is a good showpiece to other countries "See how well we treat our minorities?!?". That's pretty much the only benefit we get from them; we can grow our own potatoes, thank you very much.)

Scotland is a wonderful modern day examples of independence referendums being done right. And they ultimately voted to stay. Why can't Spain do it too?

Even Indonesia managed to do a decent job in Timor-Leste and they had a particularly violent recent history. In those circumstances it seems insane to me that a modern democratic country can't handle a little referendum. Its like not letting your partner go out on a Saturday night in case he or she meets someone else.

I had never heard of Aland. Thank you for the info, very interesting!!
Catalans just wanted a vote. No suggestion of killing or dying.

I wonder why the word police is in quotes, the way I see it this is pretty consistent behaviour for them. I'm more surprised about everyone else's reactions, actually.

We should be glad there weren't any batches of rubber bullets with "extra gunpowder".

Our Independence referendum was not done right. We had everyone that could interfere do so and act like complete butt holes in the process. Obama lectured us Scots on Independence, wtf did it have to do with that pretentious twit!

It wasn't simply "Yes, no? Here's why!" it was endless fear mongering from the Government, BBC, SkyNews, America and their then arse of a President and the EU Empire. Of course SNP were so far up their own arse that it made many simple not want to vote.

even soft or rubber ammo can be a risk.....they should not be using anything against their own people at al, cause in a democracy you should be able to to have a peacefull referendum.
Anyway maybe the democracy of today should add a k to the word right after the c.

??? i tried to reply but the spinning icon kept on spinning again...
anyway my reply is not processd and i dont have a copy :D so i am surprised this reply got throuhg cause it kept spinning ....

sometime gog is terribly slow, mostly the forums...i just checked my speed and it is okay any page i visit is very fast.

1. Giving an opinion is not interfering.

2. Just because the Scottish people were to stupid to vote the right way, doesn't mean the process was wrong.

3. You had a peaceful vote. Look at Timor-Leste in 1991 if you want to see independence done wrong. First world entitlement.

Sure, but they already killed a guy about five years ago with rubber bullets. This is business as usual.

Catalans did a non-binding vote in 2014, and even then it was illegal but the goverment did not interfere, and they voted YES. They have been trying to negotiate with the Spanish goverment since then, but both sides have not made any progress (the Spanish goverment because they didn't want to, and the others because they wanted to do it fast). After a while, the Catalonian parlament has decided they want no more of this bullshit, they broke every democratic procedure at the start of September to force, without any consent, this voting process and declaring it will be a binding vote.

Basically, they wanted people to vote no matter what, and since Europe also told them that it was illegal, they resorted to do the opposite, show how bad the Spanish goverment was to the world. The results of the voting process don't matter (well, the Catalonian president has declared that they will start the independence process even if only 42% of the poblation voted and 90% of that percentage voted YES), the important thing is how violent, repressive and dictatorial the Spanish goverment is. Hell, a lot of people voted MULTIPLE times since there was no way of verifying who already voted and some of the ballot boxes were already filled before the start of the voting process.

EDIT: As it has been pointed out later, the results of 2014 were an outstanding 80% yes for independence. I stand corrected and half of the message was meaningless. I have modified the message, although I should delete it entirely.

Even though my Spanish is a little rusty, it's a surprise that I even forgot the meaning of "Sí". Because apparently that's what 80% of the votes of 2014 said, and you claim they voted NO.

"Alternative facts"? lel