Postal voting is underway in the Australian gay marriage vote. Recent polls suggest voting has tightened a little, but I'm still expecting a Yes vote around 60%. Not as high as I would like, but we'll get this done.

This is a ****show that's going to get worse, but let no one believe that Catalunya is actually oppressed. That's a big joke. This whole thing started because the entire Catalan political class (Pujol, Mas, etc.) is headed to prison for taking bribes - just like the entire Spanish political class should be - and nationalistic types showed up to propose independence as a solution - and Spanish nationalists with nostalgia for Franco decided to ratchet themselves up in the polls by taking a hardline. It's a display of the worst sort of politicians - the leftist incoherent Junqueras the rightist Puigdemont joining forces to become founding fathers - and the incompetent, obtuse, cowardly Rajoy calling out the police to arrest breadmakers for transporting ballot boxes - it's a farce on every level - that by contrast manages to make David Cameron and Scottish independence movement look like saintly wise people - and it's only going to get worse this weekend.

What will happen - a small percentage of Catalunyans will vote overwhelmingly for indepence in a complete farce of a vote involving truckloads of national police arresting everyone that goes near a ballot box - Puigdemont will declare independence on the basis of a clear mandate - and Rajoy will send in more police ...

It can only get ugly. And no one involved at the top wants anything else.

Isn't Australia run as a representative democracy? Why is this being done as a referendum?

It is technically being done purely as a postal survey. The Prime Minister has promised to bring legislation to parliament if Yes wins.

Wow. This is very stupid.

The Catalan independence referendum is even better. Since the Spanish state has said the whole thing is illegal, you have to print your own ballot at home (and maybe bring your own ballot box with you to the polling station, which will be surrounded by police barring you from entering).

I tried figuring some of the Catalan stuff out last night. On the one hand it seems like a lot of the Catalonians are just trying to not support poorer areas in Spain and it seems the region is fairly independent as is, but on the other hand if the central government needs the police here then either they were wrong in the first place or their suppression of separtism will end up justifying it.

The underlying problem, from way back, is that Spain's territorial model is ridiculous. The "comunidades" are not all equal. In particular the Pais Vasco and Navarra have different funding regimes than the rest - oversimplying a bit, the taxes levied on residents of these regions are given directly to their governments - whereas the taxes levied on other regions are remitted to the central government and then redistributed. In Navarra's case this is because of its "foros" - such an arrangement has a long (centuries) history. In the case of the Pais Vasco it goes back to the Franco era (!) and functionally was a way of ameliorating independentist sentiments. This system is terribly unfair in the sense that it treats certain regions differently than others, and is completely incompatible with any kind of socialist worldview ... Catalunya wants a similar funding regimen. At least that's where are lot of this originates at the political level. The richest regions in Spain are Pais Vasco, Catalunya, Madrid. Any sane model has monies redistributed to poorer regions like Andalucia and Extremadura, but to jingoist politicians in Catalunya this has long been cast as Madrid stealing from Catalunya to give to Andalucia. Never mind that something like a third of the population of Catalunya (including some of the most zealous independence supporters) has its roots in Andalucia ...

The linguistic factor is important too, but has gained importance in the last two decades with the introduction of predominantly Catalan schooling in Catalunya. A lot of the complaints made in Catalunya - that the roads are crap and the trains don't run on time - are just as applicable in Murcia or Almeria - but if one wants to see them as Madrid oppressing Catalunya, it's not hard to see them that way.

The other major factor in all this is all the corruption scandals that are plaguing Spain. There is nothing special about Catalunya in this regard (Murcia's former president is facing jail time, Madrid's former president is in jail, etc.) except that independence offers a utopian solution to the corruption problem. All of Spain wants independence from terrible corrupt governance (it's no more terrible or corrupt than in Germany or the US - actually things may be better because it's acknowledged and there is some effort to clean it up, unlike in the US).

The current mess is exacerbated by the low quality of the principal politicians in both the central government and the Catalan government. Rajoy is a coward and do nothing (think of US presidents in the 1880s) with no personality and less idea. Puigdemont, Junqueras and crew are the worst kind of opportunists - they are genuinely guys dreaming of being founding fathers of the great Catalan nation - and have little else going on in their heads. One of them (I can't remember who) actually compared himself to Mandela. Rajoy and the PP are two steps from the Franco heritage they have never repudiated and compounding their inability to take any positive action to address the obvious malcontent in Catalunya, the only reaction they can imagine is the most colorless uninspired statist response of calling out the judges, police, and the army if need be - if Rajoy had the culture to think of Lincoln (which he doesn't) he would be dreaming of being Lincoln in the US Civil War, defending the house united and all that jazz. Instead he's really using all this because he correctly judges that it wins him votes in Spain minus Catalunya and leaves the leftist parties (PSOE and Podemos) in a hard spot (they can't really defend a unilateral independence declaration, but they can't really defend massive police action, so they are just marginalized and quiet) politically speaking. For him it's a win-win situation (one of his people said this the other day).

It's a classic example of how politicians operating on the basis of strategy and ambition and lacking real quality take a solvable problem and turn it into a disaster.

The fear is that something violent will happen next weekend, and then no one really has any idea where this leads.

This image (not a joke) of the boat used to ferry police to Barcelona a few days ago sums the situation up:

this is really interesting, estefanio

I know almost nothing about Spanish politics, so please forgive me if you already touched on this, but where do the Basques fit into it all?

It sure is. It's basically an attempt by the conservative wing of the ruling centre-right Coalition to muddy the waters and hope the issue somehow goes away, like maybe young people who don't even know how to post letters won't return their votes. This vote is estimated to cost $A 122 million ($US 1.3 billion if you scaled up to the population of the US) and is completely non-binding. If they wanted to, after a Yes vote the government could just say "lol we were just kidding about having a parliamentary vote" but of course that would be electoral suicide. I'm assuming a vote in Parliament would always pass, since same-sex marriage is party policy for the centre-left Labor Party and leftist Greens and there are enough Coalition MPs who would join on a conscience vote. Plus the issue getting voted down after a Yes postal vote would also invite the wrath of the electorate.

The depressing thing is that polls indicated 70% support for this charade of a vote, I guess it's not surprising that when you ask people who don't know much about politics "hey, would you like to get a vote on an issue or not get a vote?" they say they want a vote. Also virtually all No voters would support the vote since they are toast if the issue goes to Parliament.

It's pretty clear that Big Postal is behind the whole thing.

Very possible, Australia Post has been in terminal decline for a while.

I found out yesterday we have until November to return the votes. God Almighty, this thing is going to drag on.

The Basque country has a financing regimen that's different from what most of the other regions have. One of the things Catalunya has long wanted is a similar arrangement. That difference, and its relation to the two different independene movements, is somehow at the crux of the thing, although you won't see it much discussed, and right now the noise and propaganda of base nationalism washes out all serious discussion. The basic logic is - taxes paid by Catalans go to the central government to pay for lazy Andalucians - but the Basque taxes go directly to the Basques. It's the same logic Germans use when thinking about Spain.

The police confiscated 10 million ballots in various raids. It seems to me that we are just waiting until some idiot escalates this conflict by making some kind of attack.

thanks estefanio for the sum up. Very interesting.

Riot police moved into some polling stations and some rubber bullets fired at people queuing to vote.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/li...onia-vote-live



https://mobile.twitter.com/SoheilKha...966144/video/1

Images like this won't help the Spanish gov.

wtf Spain

From Homage to Catalonia

Rajoy and his government seem to be cowards. Imagine events like this and the president of the nation makes not even an appearance in public.

The only conclusion is that the federal government, in addition to its massive incompetence, is ashamed of its bad faith. Of course they have the cooperation of the fools governing (if one can call it that) Catalunya. Both sides want trouble, and now they are getting it.

So what I am asking myself now: I havent heard much of any nation condemning this vote. On the other hand a lot of countries warned about the independence vote of the kurdish people. I dont see how any european country could accept an independent Catalonia but denying this right to the Kurds.

Most EU leaders that have commented have said that it's a matter for Spain and its rule of law. De facto supporting the Spanish Gov approach, though, admittedly, stopping short of cheerleading the head cracking. Lots of them have their own issues with mildly to openly separatist regions, so will not be supporting Catalonia.

The Belgian Prime Minister did condemn the violence, but didn't say anything to support Catalonian independence afaik.

If these numbers are halfway accurate then the Yes vote has already won.

I know the vote is non-binding but there's little chance of Yes winning by that size margin and it not becoming law is there?

Yeah close to zero chance of that happening. It has the numbers in Parliament just based on asking MPs what their views are, plus I don't think the ruling Coalition would risk allowing the bill to fail, as voters would be extremely angry if we have this expensive and pointless postal survey and then they don't even abide by it.