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so elections are coming up in catalunya in spain, and the only political party there not advocating nationhood and separation from spain are the socialists, in spanish politics, generally the socialists (PSOE) are on the left and equivalent to the democrats in america and the PP - popular party are on the right, equivalent to the Republican party.... a big part of spanish news is dedicated to ongoing court cases against public figures in politics and administration that have run into a grey area of the law and the spaniards certainly love a legal showdown and the courts, etc...... i wanted to mention some of the catalans i have known as it's reasonably typical of any spaniard, which Benji is..... first of all, my father's father's father, my great grandfather, up in the mountains of asturias, had an illegitimate 'hija del monte' as they're called, she's probably passed away now but in 1997 i was able to get to know her a little bit and she was already quite old at this time but a very likeable lady, she was actually, my grandfather's half sister....... although they never lived together like a family....... now her son in law, married to her daughter who is a lovely lady, was also a very likeable man, a catalan....... despite all the jarring and lousy thing the people in madrid had to say about catalunyans at the time, why would i buy it until i saw for myself......... i've also spent about 5 weeks in barcelona and some time in valencia where the character is not so different and i'd even say that valencia is a bell-weather part of spain in a similar way that missouri is considered a bell-weather part of the united states.............. both of my children, are of course, spanish nationals with spanish passports which i've posted up here below....... another catalan friend of mine was from working at ibm in bulgaria and she was fluent in the catalan language although her parents actually migrated to catalunya from andalucia, so very likely she didn't have any 'catalan genes'......
this really speaks to the complexity of spanish society and any given society in general, as it's common in spain to have internal migration and inter-marriage between different genetic backgrounds within spain, so for example my grandfather's half sister aforementioned, have grandchildren who are half asturian, half catalan, all this has been going on for a long time, and the spaniards are a reasonable melting pot with genes from northern europe, northern africa, celts and god knows what else there............ of course they do not have the genetic diversity found in the united states due to the massive influxes of migrants there in the 20th century, etc.......
with regard to the legality of catalunyan indepenence, within the framework of the EU, it's perfectly legal, but as the EU is often behind policy or derelict in policy in general, the onus would be on the catalans to force the issue...... there's nothing the government in madrid can do, short of sending over the army to stop that..... the main courts in spain cannot super-cede the European justice system anymore than the english courts could stop the spanish fishermen, who later won their case in the EU courts, from fishing in their sovereign waters...... this is the EU....... it's not really in spain or england's best interest to be in it....... they'd be better off having a stand offish kind of relationship with it like norway or avoiding it altogether like switzerland......we'll see how england vote's in her referendum on that which Cameron has promised.......
now if the catalans do leave spain, it won't be long after that before the basques do, very possibly, all of which would lead to significant decrease in wealth for the rest of spain, however, the EU has made all forms of borrowing practically illegal in spain, so that's the real problem there, there certainly wouldn't be any problem for spaniards to go back and forth to catalunya daily in their car to work there or whatever if it were a separate sovereign nation.......... there's also the real possibility that they wouldn't want to leave spain at all and only want some attention and respect!
now here's a picture of me and some old buddies from the schoolyard as they say - guy on the left, it's his birthday, it's kind of just to prove that i don't plug in to a machine at night and sleep standing up and occasionally engage in that strange and seemingly useless human behavior known as 'socializing' and engaging in 'small talk'...... might be more interesting to be a robot though!
forcing people to do things doesn't always work out real well...... e.g., forcing catalans to never speak catalunyan...........
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