As a general proposition, I would prefer to maintain the territorial integrity of the Dominion of Canada. But, if Quebec - or parts of Quebec - wished to secede, I would recognize their right to do so. Likewise, I would have preferred to maintain the 1801 borders of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, but parts of Ireland felt otherwise - as was their right.
Though the fiercer nationalists might feel otherwise, the Irish benefited from a particular historical moment: 1922 was the era of the nation state, but not yet the welfare state. By the time the Scots came to hold their referendum a couple of years back, all the stirring Braveheart balderdash was hopelessly corrupted by calculations of which sugar-daddy - London or Edinburgh - was likely to heap the biggest bennies into your sporran. A welfare mentality is fatal to nationalism. It's why Quebec "separatism" is fundamentally unserious. And, if Northern Ireland ever decides to bolt the Union, it will have less to do with the Wearing of the Green than with the Welfare of the Green (or, more precisely, the combined welfare appeal of the Green and the Blue With Yellow Stars, Dublin and Brussels).
Nevertheless, if your national identity is not yet entirely hollowed out by welfarism, certain trends are discernible. Large units require a social solidarity that is harder to sustain than smaller ones. It's why England voted for Brexit: they felt that the European Union was, in essence, a racket by which they were required to subsidize their own eclipse. And that, also in essence, is why Catalonia voted on Sunday to exit the Kingdom of Spain.
Spain's constitutional court, Spain's government, Spain's national police and Spain's paramilitary Guardia Civil set themselves in opposition to the referendum and declared that it would not take place. As a result, TV viewers throughout Europe witnessed the extraordinary sight of the Catalan police, the Mossos d'Esquadra, and local fire departments battling with the Spanish police and the Guardia for control of polling stations. That's the equivalent of a standoff between the Sûreté du Québec and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, or between New Hampshire state troopers and the FBI plus National Guard. To obstruct their seizure by force, polling stations were occupied by ordinary Catalans, including children, volunteering themselves as human shields. Spanish policing has never been the most genteel, and a thousand Catalans required medical treatment. Nevertheless, two thousand polling stations stayed open and prevented the forces of Madrid from seizing their ballots. Of Catalonia's 5.3 million registered voters, 2.3 million were determined enough to get past the Spanish paramilitary forces and into the polling booths - and 92 per cent of them voted for an independent Catalan republic.
The Government of Spain did not acquit itself well last Sunday, nor in its reactions to the result. King Felipe declared that Catalans had shown "an unacceptable disloyalty to the powers of the state". His prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, pronounced: "There was no referendum." So be it. But, were he and his Sovereign graciously to "permit" an "approved" referendum, there's not much doubt how it would go: Catalonians are more serious than Caledonians in that respect.
Why is that? Well, in Great Britain, the south subsidizes the north; in the Iberian Peninsula, the north subsidizes the south. Catalans are fed up with paying for the economically moribund regions down the coast: around ten per cent of Catalonia's GDP gets sluiced off and shipped south.
As SteynOnline readers don't need to be told, Europe has deathbed demography, of which post-Catholic Mediterranean Europe has some of the worst - Spain's fertility rate in 2015 was 1.3 live births per woman, which is what demographers call "lowest-low" fertility, from which no society has ever recovered. According to its national statistics office, Spain by 2050 will have lost 11 per cent of its population and have 1.7 million fewer children under the age of ten, while over a third of its population will be elderly retirees. On those numbers, Spain is headed for societal implosion.
As SteynOnline readers also don't need to be told, the European Union's solution is to import Muslims to be the children they couldn't be bothered having themselves. Thus, the population of Catalonia is already about 7.5 per cent Muslim. But, again as SteynOnline readers don't need to be told, Muslims have a lower workforce-participation rate than native Europeans. As I write in my bestseller After America (personally autographed copies of which are exclusively available from the SteynOnline bookstore):
Turkish immigrants have three times the rate of welfare dependency as ethnic Germans, and their average retirement age is fifty. Foreigners didn't so much game the system as discover, thanks to family "reunification" and other lollipops, that it demanded nothing of them. Entire industries were signed up for public subsidy. Two-thirds of French imams are on the dole.
So in practice immigrants just add another group, aside from the elderly and the welfare class, for the ever smaller and ever more burdened productive sector to maintain in the lifestyle to which they've become accustomed. Catalonia has had enough: It would prefer to prop up elderly Catalans and unemployed Catalan youth, rather than the ever swelling numbers of the aged and the lifelong dependency class to its south. In straitened times, the social solidarity necessary for large-scale enterprises - not just the European Union but also the United Kingdom, Spain and a reunited Germany - starts to shrivel, particularly for the net contributors, for the ever more put upon functioning parts of society required to maintain ever more numerous armies of the dysfunctional. Once that happens, you start thinking of your own: in the Brexit vote, the English decided England was more important to them than a chimera called "the European Union"; on Sunday, the Catalans decided Catalonia had more purchase on them than a Spain with a 40 per cent youth unemployment rate and young Mohammedans landing on the beach for express check-in. You don't even have to be that prosperous to recognize that the Euro-globalism of the larger polities will ultimately diminish you: a week before the Catalan referendum, large numbers of East Germans voted like East Germans - because they understood that they could not afford the more prosperous West German virtue-signaling over Mad Mutti Merkel's Islamic open door. As I noted nine days ago, the German election was a microcosm of the deepening split between East Europeans and West Europeans on the issue of mass immigration.
The tensions of multiculturalism and economic sclerosis do not distribute themselves equally, and the Catalans will not be the last to resent the burdens. For years I've been saying about Eutopia that "united they'll fall, but divided a handful might stand a chance". In fact, I said it here:
For years I've been saying about Eutopia that "united they'll fall, but divided a handful might stand a chance."
Many of Europe's dominant "nations" are of fairly recent vintage, and beneath them lie older and potentially more viable identities - in the Catalan and Basque nationalities, the German states, the pre-Risorgimento quilt of Italian kingdoms and republics and city-statelets, the "home countries" of the British Isles. What will count will whether, as in Scotland, welfare dependency has rotted the soul of a dormant nation. After that, there will be finer calculations. When Edward Carson and other Unionists set themselves against home rule for Ireland, there were some who wondered why they did not want all nine counties of the historic province of Ulster rather than merely six. But Sir Edward knew that in the remaining three he could not hold the loyalist line against Catholic, nationalist birth rates. That was a shrewd and prudent demographic calculation. The more the globalists talk up John Kerry's "borderless world", the more the "citizens of the European Union" will look around them, make Carsonian calculations, and draw their borders tighter. That quintessentially American expression - "Go big or go home" - has some salience here: The European Union went big. In different ways, the English, the Catalans and the East Germans are saying they'd like to go home.
Since I've plugged one bestseller of mine, let me put in a word for another - America Alone (personally autographed copies of which are also exclusively available at the SteynOnline bookstore, by happy coincidence). Here's the cheery passage I had in mind:
You might think the Continent's in for what looks awfully like the Four Horsemen of the Eupocalypse – although in tribute to Euro-perversity they're showing up in reverse order: Death — the demise of European races too self-absorbed to breed; Famine — the end of the lavishly funded statist good times; War — the decline into bloody civil unrest that these economic and demographic factors will bring; and Conquest — the recolonization of Europe by Islam.
Does Spain's repression of the referendum and the Catalan resistance presage the dawn of that third phase? The head of Catalonia's government is promising to declare independence on Monday. Having weathered the disastrous optics of last weekend, Madrid has no choice but to resist. So this is a constitutional crisis for Spain. But its implications ripple way beyond. The last quarter-century has seen the rebirth of small nations across the map - Slovenia, Slovakia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Bosnia... Why should that phenomenon confine itself merely to Eastern Europe?
~Tonight, Wednesday, Mark will be keeping his midweek date with Tucker Carlson, live across America on Fox News at 8pm Eastern/5pm Pacific. We hope you'll tune in.
For another perspective on the consequences of shifting demographics in Europe, Mark's trip to Northern England to meet "grooming" victims is recounted in the current issue of The Clubbable Steyn, which comes free with membership in The Mark Steyn Club: You can sign up for a full year, or, lest you suspect a dubious scam by a fly-by-night scamster, merely a quarter.
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Brexit is going down the tube even as the eu falls apart. We know Merkel is worried, her eu project is falling apart - Poland, Slovakia et al are not prepared to accept the masses merkel brought in for example and the United Kingdom has had the sense to leave. The Brussels fanatics (Barnier etc) have trained their guns on the UK, ignoring fatally the distress of eu states in the east and south (Spain, Greece, Portugal). The eu is modelled on the resurgent USSR under Putin,even as its nations are suffering the mass immigration of a million males aged 14-40. But so few females and children, oddly. Good luck to the females of Europe aged 14-40.
The definition of a fascist state - sadly usually introduced through the democratic process - is the formation of a militia, centralism of directives and legislation to silence free speech. The eu is the latest model. The Corsican napoleon, Hitler, Junker and Tajani, obsessively lust for the next European toxic mix of bureaucracy and diktat - nation states are being subsumed but the United Kingdom has always fought such, with the help of our Imperial and Commonwealth friends. Sadly I can only use my vote once every five years, but in deciding for whom I will vote, I think back back to the Duke of Marlborough, Arthur Wellesley and Nelson - that rumble you hear just now is not the latest transfer of office and personnel from Brussels to Strasbourg, it's Nelson, Wellington and Wolfe turning in their graves.
1. Islam asks for one simple thing. Islam asks for everything – finance, religion, police, morals, schools, law, food, science, clothes, art, your body and your daily routine to be Islamic.
2. Islam only has two problems – Muhammed and Mohammed. Once the first problem has been solved then the second one can be solved easily.
3. Islam offers three things. In the Koran it offers Peace, War and then a Continuation of War. In your life Islam wants you to subjugate yourself, subjugate your family and then subjugate everyone else.
Is it possible that the return of strongly felt regional identities may be at least partly attributable to the 40 year EU project to undermine national identity, and seek to replace it with an artificial pan-european identity?
If national identity is actively discouraged by officialdom, and pan-european identity doesn't excite you much, then how about an enthusiastic embrace of regional identity?
Spain is now asserting that Constitutional proprieties must be assiduously observed by Catalonia. Is this the same Spain which has consistently ceded Spanish sovereignty to the EU? Why would Catalans choose to respect the authority of the Spanish State, when that same State has been so keen to surrender its power and authority to the EU?
EU enthusiasts in the UK are keen to assert that the EU has been a force for peace and stability, and that Brexit is a threat to that peace. I disagree. Undermining the nation state and national identity seem to me to be a far more potent threat to stability, and this unfolding tragedy may bear that out.
Mark replies:
Agreed. The EU, in its campaign to diminish the nation state, has actively talked up sub-national regions - via things like its "Committee of the Regions", where Catalonia gets to go to fancy summits with Northern Ireland and Schleswig-Holstein. That kind of thing can go to a pseudo-foreign minister's head.
Mark, I was surprised at your comment that if Northern Ireland voted for an all-Ireland republic, it would be more to do with who would write the biggest welfare cheques. I know a significant minority of Unionists voted in favour of Bremain, which one could interpret as a vote for welfare, although I haven't seen anything to justify such a conclusion and there are lots of other potential factors that I think more relevant.
Voting patterns seem pretty much as they always have been to me: if you were born Nationalist or Unionist, you remain that way your whole life. The benefits classes on both sides still seem to vote on tribal rather than economic grounds. There is a part of the Catholic community that is quietly in favour of the Union, but that is a fairly small minority and my guess is that they are middle class voters motivated by a sense of conservatism rather than a benefits class making a monetary calculation.
I should have thought differential breeding rates would be more likely to shake up the status quo than welfare-ism and the failure of the mainstream British parties to have any impact on Northern Irish elections indicates that tribalism is as dominant a factor as ever.
Mark replies:
I think that's correct, up to a point - especially re the number of soft-loyalist Catholics versus the non-existent soft-nationalist Protestants.
Nevertheless, as you know, there has never been a "hard border" between south and north and the British Isles remains, as it has always been, a Common Travel Area. That's nothing to do with the EU. However, Brussels has been talking up the idea that, once the south is in and the north is out, that line on a map will be the frontier between "Europe" and the "external zone" and they intend to police it more seriously than they do, say, their Mediterranean shores.
That may just be the usual bollocks from Juncker's arrogant apparatchiks. But, if not, I wonder about its impact, and its inroads into those tribal votes...
Mark Steyn is always informative & thought-provoking -- which is why we are all here at Club Steyn. On this topic, there may be a point which deserves more thought: the (small d) democratic balance in most of the independence votes is astonishingly even.
Set aside the huge majority for independence in Catalonia (who counted the votes? who did not fight through Rajoy's storm-troopers to get to the polls?). Set aside the understandable majority in oppressed Kurdistan. In Quebec, Scotland, Brexit ... the votes have been within striking distance of 50/50. How can democracy decide anything when the population is almost evenly split?
One of the fascinating comparisons between the Scottish referendum vote and the Brexit vote was the age splits. In both cases, the London government ran what some have called "Operation Fear" to frighten the population into voting the way desired by the Political Class. In the Scottish case, they succeeded in frightening old ladies with threats that pensions would stop coming; however, the majority of younger people voted for independence. In Brexit, the situation was reversed, with younger people voting to stay in the EU while older people voted for a return to the days of Empire.
Given those age distributions and the fact of human mortality, what would be the outcome if the votes were held again in 5 years? Or in 10 years? Are we in danger of establishing "African democracy" in the West -- One Man, One Vote; One Time? And can any society established on that tenuous basis ever be stable?
What would happen in 5 or 10 years? On form, it would not make much difference. Why should it? 36% in the 18-26 year age group bothered to vote in the 2016 Referendum when it mattered. Now they are whinging about how their "future has been stolen from them" More fool them. In any case if age is the determinant of outcome, then surely it will be more likely that Leave will predominate as time goes by, not least because that is the demographic most likely to vote. I don't think we are in danger of establishing "African democracy" (sic) in the West. That is more like the EU model and it certainly would have been had Remain won. By taking back control of our democracy we are re-establishing our right to vote out our entire Government every five years. Remember what happened when the EU Constitution was put to a referendum in France and Holland? It was rejected. So what did the EU apparatchiks do? They re-named it the "Lisbon Treaty" without any amendment and all got together and signed it behind closed doors. Can't be having too much of this democracy nonsense!
Much of the premise, and outcome, of the EU was to corrupt nationalism and the nation-state, to put illegitimate power into the hands of the feckless bureaucrats in Brussels. The "petit oui" that the French gave to joining the EU could become a "fort non".
I've known several Spaniards -- one a monarchist from León, one a Basque separatist, one a Basque sheepherder who came to the US before the General took over. And the sense of a nation -- as we know it -- has been lacking in their "nationalism." Each region holds true to the region, above a supreme sense of the Nation in concept.
The EU has been so division-spawning that now it appears that regionalism is on the rise, and so the Nation-State will have to wait for the regions to unite to promote a country. Either way, the EU and the onslaught of mass non-European immigrants hasten this process.
You probably don't want to get involved at this level but you indicated on Tucker Carlson that there was a lot about the Paddock story that did not add up. Here is one gun expert's questions.
http://www.thecommonsenseshow.com/2017/10/04/five-more-things-that-dont-add-up-about-the-las-vegas-massacre-where-is-all-the-expended-brass/
Your comparison to Quebec and Canada needs revision if you are going to compare it to Catalonia and Spain. Western Canada props up Quebec, Atlantic Canada and now even Ontario financially. It should be the Western provinces to secede, not Quebec.
Mark replies:
Read the column again. That was the point I was making about how welfare corrupts nationalism. That's why Quebec isn't independent - because they're dependents, like Scotland.
Oh, I've been schooled by the master himself. Or can I use the word "master" these days?!
Thanks Mark, a re-read after my coffee and walk with the dog made the difference.
I don't follow the soccer so I don't know how Real Madrid is faring. But no-one could miss the spectacular own goal that the Gobierno Real in Madrid scored in handling the Catalan referendum.
Rarely do I disagree with Mark Steyn but. in this instance I must. Catalonia made a conscious decision to import Muslims to its territory rather than South American Spaniards because they wanted to keep the Catalonian separatist movement going. Being in fear of South Americans identifying with Spain as a whole due to language and other cultural similarities, they made a decision to import N. Africans and their Salafast ideology. If I understand correctly. the area is now at least 10% Muslim.
Good luck with that.
I read an article in 'The Australian' just after the recent Barcelona Muslim-atrocity by, I think, David Kilcullen, where it was mentioned that the reason there's a relatively high proportion of Muslims in Catalonia, is that the Catalans were previously quite relaxed about them coming in because it reduced Madrid's influence in the area. Don't know whether this is true or not, just chucking it in for what it's worth.
A couple of years ago we happened to be in Malaga during Holy Week and found it refreshing to see the "cultural" confidence of the locals during the marches etc. - we felt that, perhaps, the Muslim creep in Spain might not go the way of, say, Germany, Sweden etc.
Then this week I read two articles at the Gatestone Institute site (one by Guillio Miotti and one by Soeren Kern) which disabused me of this opinion as well as a third article by Thomas Eppinger translated at Vlad Tepes. What I read in these articles was completely new information for me and has made me view the Catalonia separation situation differently. The Muslim connection has not been forefront in any reporting of the situation that I have seen up to now.
I hesitate to link to the sites in the comments section but they are easy to find.
This is the article by Giulio Meotti:
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/11046/spain-islamic-conquest
Its not clear which is the relevant article by Soeren Kern. Nor can I find the Eppinger article at Vlad Tepes. Even if I could find them now, it would be difficult in one week, and impossible in 1 month.
This site has a thankfully adult approach to all relevant links, and does not suffer paranoia about losing readers that click to another site.
Mr.Steyn
How about the Kurds of Iraq and they have voted
They are one of the few friends of the west beside Israel in the Middle East
Appreciate your comments on this
Re:what Graeme Thompson commented on the validity of the vote. A few years back, Spain amongst many other countries, actually signed to support the peace treaty treaty (CPA) that South Sudan had wrangled by force of war from the North (Khartoum) that gave the Southerners the right to establish an autonomous region plus benchmarks to meet that led to a national Referendum to vote for independence. But along the way, Spain's support rather evaporated and became quite negative as the benchmarks one-by-one were met and the South was moving steadily to the Referendum vote. Evidently not one country-signers believed it would actually happen, so the signatories liked the optics of signing, but hadn't actually believed it would get anywhere. But it did. South Sudan achieved about 98% pro-independence in the Referendum vote in January 2011 and is today an independent country. But leading up to the vote, Spain was increasingly negative, also South Africa - the countries that also had simmering potential independence movements, so they were obviously more worried about South Sudan independence emboldening their own home regions. Critically, South Sudan had nothing, no roads, hospitals, schools, money .... except it did have one thing that all those other independence movements didn't have - a signed, negotiated internationally-ratified treaty with defined benchmarks and conditions that if met would permit a vote and guaranteed international validation of the outcome of a referendum independence vote. It didn't matter what the other countries like Spain thought-second-thought, they were bound by their treaty signaturies to honor the outcome. With that, then compare with this Catalan situation today: Forcing something like this forward without doing the hard work of building consensus, establishing prior agreements on what should be accepted as binding, and setting down an agreed-upon by both parties framework leaves too much grey zone and creates domestic and international confusion.
Wow, I actually disagree with Mark Steyn on something.
The independence parties said they were going to treat the regional elections in 2015 as a plebiscite and if they won the popular vote they'd declare independence. Well they didn't. They got 47.7%. But given the quirks of the electoral system, they got a majority of 8 seats.
How on earth can any serious democrat regard the ballot they tried holding as valid? It had none of the safeguards that could validate it's outcome. If the 90% of the 42% outcome can be taken seriously, that's 38% of the Catalan public voting for independence.
I've lived in Barcelona for 14 years, so I'm well aware of the strong sense of identity and national feeling of many Catalans, including Catalans that don't want independence. Clearly after the relapse to Spain's fascist past Sunday, a good number of Catalans loyal to Spain are questioning that loyalty. Appalling that the Interior Minister isn't falling on his sword for the ridiculous orders given to the Guardia Civil and National Police.
Spain is not Britain. In Britain history is clear cut. The Scottish Parliament voted in 1707 to form a union with England, the Scots have got the right to vote to leave it.
Spanish history is nowhere near as clear cut. Both sides can make valid historic arguments to justify view. At the end it all boils down to emotional feeling, inflamed by a very coordinated and cynical propaganda campaign by the hitherto non nationalist CiU, about the same time, so I'm led to believe, their ex-party leader Jordi Pujol began to be investigated for corruption.
I've always been in favour of Spanish union while respecting the feelings of the independentistas, but since 26th August, while still having huge respect for Catalan identity, I have utter contempt for secesionism.
On that day, a march to demonstrate democratic solidarity with the victims of terrorism in The Ramblas and Cambrils and against jihadism, was hijacked by the secesionists for propaganda. They ambushed King Felipe and President Rajoy with a sea of independence flags and placards blaming them for the terrorist attacks. A group holding a banner on the part of the march I was on saying 'Against terrorism, thank you your Majesty' got booed and barracked throughout the route of the march and had to be escorted away by the police before they reached the end for their own protection.
And then on Catalunya's national day 11-S the leader of the Socialist Party was booed and Arnaldo Otegi, terrorist leader of the defeated ETA, was a guest of honour.
Hard to sink much lower.
Spain is not like Britain, but it is like the USA. The Constitution doesn't allow secesion. One doesn't have to look at US history to know what happens when it happens. Spain has got plenty of examples itself, and is likely to have another very bloody one if Puigdemont declares UDI on Monday.
I'd be fleeing back to Blighty if I didn't have responsibilities.
Mark replies:
With respect, Graeme, I'm not arguing "for" Catalan independence, but simply noting the trend of the times.
As I said at the beginning of my column, I have a preference for the Dominion of Canada, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and indeed the pre-Statute of Westminster British Empire. But once people begin to question settled political units, they can become unsettled very quickly: Southern Irish voters swung from Redmond's Irish Parliamentary Party to de Valera's Sinn Féin in one electoral cycle, and thereby doomed the Union. As you say, last Sunday was a "relapse to Spain's fascist past" - which is not so long past, a mere 40 years. The question, therefore, is whether or not Rajoy's behavior has strengthened the separatist cause and weakened that of Spanish unity. The answer seems pretty obvious.
Outsiders rarely understand the rhythm of the tribe, whereas members instinctively do. Catalonia will not act economically but as a polity: the die has been cast. We are now talking about when, and what happens later.
By presenting this as an EU issue, Rajoy has let the fuse and thrown the bomb into Germany's lap.
We watch with interest.
Thanks for that. The answer is blindingly obvious to everyone except a Spanish Government Minister determined to act like the complete clod so many Catalans regard the Spanish as.
What turned Ireland around was the blood sacrifice of the Easter Uprising.
No secesionista here is saying "independence or death". It's all dreadfully post-modern. It's more like a power game to gratify the ego.
One thing though that the 'conservative' Spanish government agree with and the party of the 'conservative' Puigdemont, is that if you say 'a guy's got a cock and a gal's got a (no I won't) vagina, your exactly the hatey, hatey transphobe that the looney left say you are.
So much in common, why do they wish to be apart? :D
I differ a bit about the Welfare State In Ireland: the Welfare State had begun by 1922 ('poor laws" for the "deserving poor"), but welfare did not exist in the modern sense of the soul-less contrivance to entrap people in fealty to the State Bureaucrat.
Ulster Plantation was another real estate deal gone bad for the English, but Northern Ireland, and the Scots, will always need to fight with the English. If either Celtic Nation-State Clan truly bolted, they'd have no Mother Nation with whom to fight.
I am going from memory here from a book called "Herrings Go About the Sea in Shawls". It was used for homeschooling. In the section on Noble Gasses, one student quoted said something like:
"There are no ions in Ireland because it's a Free State."
Symbolic, that one!
I've been following the Catalan saga, starting with the digital blackout by the Govt (is Putin involved in this one too?) and the story really is phenomenal. I'd believed only the Basques were separatists but the Basques have become a bit mollified by welfarism. The self-absorbed "holiday" is a major portion of the work day/week.
The Spanish government wants to forget that the Spaniards drove the Moors out of Spain. The vigor of the Catalans could make a stab at saving Spain from the Moors, again, but it's a dispiriting sight to see King Felipe so out of touch with reality. If the Catalans are pro-EU, then it's because they see a better deal there (even if it's not there).
A lot of history could be happening in a short time . . .
Oh, I forgot to mention that the illustrator for "Herrings Go About the Sea in Shawls" is -- the evil Dr. Seuss.
"As SteynOnline readers don't need to be told.... As SteynOnline readers also don't need to be told.... But, again as SteynOnline readers don't need to be told...." Who are these Stein-Reeders? I finally tracked them down -- http://www.nwaonline.com/galleries/19192/album/
We have spent some time in Catalonia, albeit a half dozen years ago. A Canadian friend who has married into the area provides some insight. His wife, a school teacher and presumably representative of her friends and relations, gave up hope of a comfortable future and retirement because of the massive pension debt of all levels of government there. She and many others are 'living for today'.....and have a fatalistic outlook.....they are all pro independence I suppose as a hope but doubt the math works out for them. Beside the cancerous Islamic presence, there is also a brutal Russian one and it was common to hear people complain about the brutal thugs from the former USSR.
AP reports:
"The European Union has also said that an independent Catalonia cannot stay in the bloc, but must apply to join, a lengthy uncertain process."
EU in a tricky spot. Demanding Britian stay in, while threatening Catalan with no easy entrance. After secession which half of Spain will they actually want to claim? The expensive or productive?
Mark replies:
After the Brexit vote, Scotland thought Brussels would be supportive of its desire to remain in the EU after the rest of the UK left. But not so - precisely because EU members like Spain have no desire to make secession any easier for their own restive provinces.
I always look forward to "the Clubbable Steyn" even though the name makes Mark sound like a baby harp seal.
In an age of globalized politics, we are discovering that all politics are, indeed, local.
Not only are we seeing the rebirth of old and smaller nations, built on old tribal identities, we are seeing the resurgence of City States, like Rome amd Venice of old.
The City States are the face of the borderless global order - New York, London, San Francisco, Paris, Rome, Berlin. However, they require "tribute" from the peasantry, in order to fund their massive welfare obligations. We can already see that trillions of dollars will be needed to pay for the pensions and healthcare of their citizens - this money can never exist.
The wave of immigrants will be a burden on the cities - those without the City Walls will be self sufficient. The future will, indeed, be "interesting times".
Indeed. Are we seeing the beginning of the re-rise of the City-State? And, if so, will we see the re-rise of Feudalism?
Time to read-up on the Tenth Century, methinks.
I think the Three Field System might come back in vogue again!
In California, it's used where necessary.
Great column.
The problem is that Catalans are *more* pro-European than the rest of Spain, at least in my experience and reading. Nor do they seem to resent mass immigration -- indeed the political parties seem, like the SNP, to want it to continue and even grow. They are convinced, like the SNP, that they can build a 'civic' Catalan nationalism.
Of course this is doubtful...recent non-'Latino' immigrants naturally want to learn Spanish -- a world language -- a head of the old and beautiful but limited Catalan. Catalonia has also seen, like the rest of Spain, a flood of Latin American immigrants who can get along perfectly well with Spanish only (almost as well as they can get along in California as monolingual Spanish speakers).
So, how this shakes out will be interesting. Could be independence for Catalonia will speed the death of the actual Catalan nation, just as Scottish independence could speed that nation's demise.
Good remarks. I would like to stress one that is overlooked here: The Catalan region actively promoted immigration from Muslim countries and did what it could to discourage immigration from South America in order to have fewer Spanish speakers among its population. They may have succeeded in the short term to be less Spanish, but they've also accelerated the 'islamification' of Catalonia! The recent terror attack in Barcelona shows that their dream of cultural independence will be short lived.
How does independence occur when the country you are splitting off from is massively in debt already? That is, how much of Spain's enormous public debt must this new Catalonian nation assume as its share? They can't just leave Spain with the entire tab. Presumably they'd still be better off in the long run to take their per-capita portion of Spain's debt. But this question is still one that would have to be answered for any part of a country looking to declare its independence. Also, I think in the third paragraph you meant to say "subsidize" rather than "substitute".