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useless-catalanfacts · 5 years ago

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Im not trying to be offensive but do you really think independence is what’s best? I understand the police brutality is unacceptable but can Catalonia really survive on its own? A complete separate country? If this happens that means that FC Barcelona can no longer play in La Liga and it would have to build a league of its own. I know some people don’t care about that part but I think it’s worth mentioning

No offense taken on your question or on your having a different opinion, of course, but I hope you realise that the last part is very offensive (the considering the fact that foreign people can watch a football match twice a year more important than a whole country not having rights). I don’t take offense because I know you didn’t mean it and it’s probably something that bothers you as a football fan, but please do not say this. It feels horrible to see people care more about watching a match that if your friends and family are in jail for nothing (I personally know people in, so yeah).

Also, Andorra FC, a team that is obviously from Andorra, and not from Spain, participates in La Liga. So it isn’t closed to Spain necessarily.

Catalonia can survive without Spain. Any economical study shows that Catalonia would be much richer without all the colonial taxes we have to pay to Spain. But we are not doing this to be richer. In fact, it was said as part of negociations that Catalonia offered to pay compensations to Spain for a long time.

And this is not to say Catalans are rich. Not at all. Catalonia as a land is richer than most Spain because there are businesses and some rich people with make the stats get higher, but the people as a whole are not richer than Spaniards at all. And because of the taxes we have to pay for being Catalan that never come back, we are even poorer. For example, we don’t have a good public transport system, new highways we need, etc because Spain doesn’t want to invert money here. Meanwhile in Madrid and Andalucía some highways and trains are expensive to maintain while nobody passes there ever because they already have so many highways that some are just not needed at all.

Or how we have to pay about 2000€ per year (sometimes even more) to be in a public university while in other places like Andalucía it’s free with our taxes. We don’t complain that it’s free (it should be free for everyone), but we say that the decision on wether you get something for free or not should not depend on “are you from Catalonia or from x place” but on your socioeconomic background. A rich person in Andalucía gets free university with our taxes. A poor person in Catalonia cannot go to university because we don’t have enough scholarships. We have no problem with sending money to someone who needs it in Andalucía, or Syria or Palestine or Mexico or wherever. What we say is that “because you’re from Catalonia” should not be the reason for people to not get things, and that when it comes to inside a State there should be a distribution of aid to people who need it based on how much they need it.

So yes, economically we would be very well without Spain. In fact, so well that Spanish media uses this to pretend we only want independence for the money we would get.

And no country is “completely separate on its own”, especially not in Europe. And obviously we want to be part of the European Union, though we know Spain would veto us, there’s legal ways that can be tried to go around that. And with the economic power that is Barcelona, it’s for the interest of all Western Europe that we would be part of the EU.

The police brutality is not the problem alone. The problems are so many that it feels asphixiating to be under Spanish rule. At this point, we have to do this for our mental health’s sake.

As I’ve mentioned before in this blog, my mother is a teacher. She teaches Catalan language in the adults’ school. Fascists call her on her job’s phone to insult her and threaten her for teaching Catalan. They don’t even know her political views (which she never mentions in class and at her job there are obviously no symbols or anything, she just teaches the language). The adults’ school of Catalan language in the city next to mine had to be evacuated because some fascists threw gas bombs in it (here is a link to the local newspaper reporting on it).

And it’s worse for others. I have some family friends who have a printing place and anothers who work in a bookshop in our town, and they’re known independentists. Besides the constant threats over phone, their workplaces keep getting vandalized with spray-paintings of swastikas and white supremacy crosses and fascist slogans.

When my aunt hang the independence flag from her balcony, some days later someone prayed swastikas around our quarter. They sprayed one on the door of my grandmother’s house (she lives in the ground floor and my aunt lives on the 1st floor). My grandmother’s father was killed in the gas chamber of the Mauthausen extermination camp. Believe me when I say this “paintings” have a direct effect on people, even if “just” emotional.

But Spanish law doesn’t do anything to protect people who are victims of this. It didn’t even jail neonazis who murdered people for being Valencian Catalan independentists like Guillem Agulló. The police force, the juridical system and the State as a whole constantly give their support to neonazis.

We want independence from Spain because we have a different project. Spain is anchored on its fascist past (remember that Spain was a fascist dictatorship from 1939 to 1978, until the present “democratic” Constitution was written by the fascists). In Catalonia we have so many ideas, but we cannot do them because Spains blocks us always.

We want to do things differently. The Catalan government wanted to let refugees come, and Spain didn’t let us. There was also a plan to combat climate change and by 2022 rely only on renewable energy, Spaind didn’t let us either. They also didn’t let us pass the law to end the gender pay gap. Nor the laws for “historical memory” (what we call rememberance of the crimes of fascism). Nor the law to stop evictions. Nor protection for Aranese (a minority language). Nor help to migrants. Nor the numerous attempts at a law so that companies can’t cut water and light to poor families who can’t pay. Nor many more. (A while ago I talked about some of those, check it out in this post).

When people put their bodies in front of police knowing what they’re capable of, we do it because living under Spanish rule is so unbearable that we are willing to risk it. Just the thought of continuing to live like this is depressing.

So not only can Catalonia live without Spanish rule (it’s not like they are helping us in any way, we don’t rely on them for anything), but we can do so much better than now because we are a more progressive country with initiative to do something about problems.

Now, to the part about football…

Iberian people are crazy for football. Including us Catalans, and including Spaniards. You can take away their rights and most won’t do anything about it, but touch their football and they will riot. That’s why I don’t have any doubt that they will find a solution.

Besides the fact that Barça and Madrid would play matches every year nonetheless in the European league, as I said before Andorran teams can take part in La Liga. This is not even an issue because football is such an important thing in the Iberian Peninsula, and especially in the economic sense, that it would be solved without any problem, because everyone wants Real Madrid and Barça to have more matches. My guess is that they would make La Liga an Iberian league, maybe Portuguese teams could come too.

If you care about football, respect what Barça has historically meant to us. During the dictatorship, when being Catalan was illegal, Barça was the only way Catalan people had to express themselves. That’s why dictator Franco forced it to lose on purpose matches against Real Madrid. That’s why Barça is “més que un club”. Please respect that.

#sorry i went a bit on a tangent #but i think people who don't live this situation don't realise how strong it is and how different it could be #independence is not a caprice it's a real life decision for real life reasons #ask #liftlower

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