The future of Catalonia

Sir, – Anna Brady asks why so few Spanish people, outside Catalonia, have any sympathy for the independence movement, even after seeing police violence on their TV screens last Sunday (October 4th).

As someone who lives in the same city as she does (Valencia) I believe the answer is simple. The world’s TV cameras were not in the Catalan parliament on September 6th when the separatists bludgeoned their way through parliamentary procedure, at midnight, to force through a referendum proposal that they knew, only too well, was breaking their own laws, and not just Spanish constitutional provisions.

That’s why they allowed no debate on it at all and the opposition deputies had no choice but to walk out.

The separatists said they did this in the name of “democracy”. They may fool themselves but that’s as far as it goes.

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Anna Brady says many Catalans are “supposedly” breaking the laws of a country they no longer feel part of. Legality is not determined by feelings. Many might not feel like paying their taxes but they still have to do so. Legality, or otherwise, is determined by courts, not politicians and certainly not massed crowds on the street. Judicial independence is a corner-stone of true democracy. When it is taken away, totalitarianism rules.

In the same way that you can’t be a little bit pregnant, you can’t be a little bit constitutional.

You either are or you aren’t.

In Ireland we all saw what unconstitutional, ultra-nationalist politics did to Northern Ireland for 30 years.

The vast majority of Spanish people know this only too well, from their own bitter history. They will not support it in Catalonia nor anywhere else. – Yours, etc,

KIERAN McGRATH,

Valencia,

Spain.

Sir, – None of your letter-writers has yet pointed out the multiple ironies of a hereditary monarch lecturing the public on democracy, after the centralised power in Madrid deployed its uniformed thuggery against peaceful citizens for the heinous crime of “organising and casting a vote”. – Yours, etc,

D FLINTER,

Headford,

Co Galway.

Sir, – The Catalan referendum has given us some of examples that, like Donald Trump, make satire redundant. The head of party set up by former ministers in Franco’s government talking about hard-won rights and democracy is one example. The other, of course, is a hereditary monarch also talking about democracy, while he conveniently forgets he is not only a monarch but he got the job because the fascist dictator Franco appointed his father as king. You couldn’t make this stuff up. – Yours, etc,

GEARÓID Ó LOINGSIGH,

Bogotá,

Colombia.