Adéu a Catalunya

Or maybe not.

Catalonia is the wealthiest region of Spain, and they are tired of paying the bills. Call it the Germany of Spain. The voters have rather narrowly returned the main separatist party to power, with a smaller plurality than they held before, but a certain amount of separatist momentum.

The incumbent regional president Artur Mas secured a second term and with it a mandate to seek secession from Spain in defiance of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.

But his centre right Convergence and Union (CIU) party fell short of the absolute majority they hoped for, winning only 50 of the 62 seats they secured in the 135 seat assembly at the last election two years ago.

The separatist left wing ERC party, which also strongly supports self-rule, doubled its share of the vote, securing 21 seats, however.

Acknowledging that his support fell in favour of leftist parties, Mr Mas said alliances would have to be sought.

If they are smart, they will take this opportunity to get a better deal from Madrid. Most likely, though, they will really try to separate, and incur all the bad consequences thereof. That is, they will either cause another civil war, or become another European micro state and cannon fodder for the next European war.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Anti-Libertarian: re-post

The most pointed critique of social security and liberalism in general is the libertarian critique. The problem with libertarians, for a liberal, is that we have too much in common. We both believe in individual rights, tolerance of individual differences, and dislike government prescription of religion. The basic difference, it seems to me, is the different answers we give to Cain's (with thanks to the Captain - my original version had the corpse asking the question!) famous question: "Am I my brother's keeper?" That's not really my basic bitch against the libertarians though. My real complaint is the same as my complaint against most religion - its premise is a fraud. For those who can't stand to wait for the punchline, I believe that trying to implement libertarian principles leads to tyranny or social disintegration. Demonstrating that takes some historical (and pre-historical) context. For all but the last 15,000 or so of the 100,000 years the human spec
Read more

Uneasy Lies The Head

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown ........... Shakespeare Henry IV, Part II. So it is with us and our slightly distant primate cousins , so it seems. A 9-year study of wild baboons in Kenya by Princeton University and the Institute of Primate Research may turn conventional assumptions of alphas males upside down. The study found that alpha males have high testosterone levels, which allows them to dominate other baboons, get access to more food, and attract better mates. This is expected. Surprisingly, though, the alpha males also have high levels of stress hormone glucocorticoid, which scientists measured from their feces samples. In fact, the stress of alpha baboons was on par with low-ranking baboons. The convention wisdom is that access to food and females provides life security and thus less stress for dominant males. Conversely, weak males who are constantly threatened by starvation and physical violence from stronger males are thought to be more stressed. The st
Read more

We Call it Soccer

The US played its best, and maybe only good game of World Cup, but lost thanks to brilliant goalkeeping by the Swedish keeper and the bizarre method soccer uses to settle ties when three US stars could not put the ball on frame from the 12 yard spot.  At the end it came down to a blocked shot that spun in by maybe a couple of centimeters. Well, that's football - too much like life.   Which brings me to a modest proposal.  Replace the thirty minute overtimes with as many 7-player 15 minute periods as needed to settle it.  Scoring should be much easier with fewer players.
Read more