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Comment by dreamfactored | Hacker News Reader

As I understand there wasn't even a 'no' campaign and the whole thing was created and run by the 'yes' campaign. Surprising they didn't get nearer 100% in those circumstances. (Police brutality by the Madrid government is a separate resigning issue.)

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The "no" campaign was mostly the Spanish government arresting people and seizing ballot boxes. They weren't interested in convincing people to say "no", they were working to make sure they couldn't say "yes".

If only one side participates, the match is called off - you don't get to kick the ball into an empty goal and call yourself the league champion, however much you want to play. (FWIW I think the Spanish government have behaved like complete shits and should resign, and the independence movement heads are mostly a mix of opportunists and useful idiots, already trading off the blood of well-intentioned and reasonable Catalans, of whom I know many.)

The catalan government is full of opportunists - like every government - rightly implementing the wishes of the overwhelming majority of catalans: a democratic referendum.

Until this week at least opinion was split in Catalonia with no supermajority on either side. Catalonia is very proud of its high standards of education - hopefully they don't want to look as completely stupid as the British now do after Brexit.

When I say "overwhelmingly" I refer to the desire to vote, not to the opinion that people hold. There is probably no supermajority, but we are not allowed to know about it since voting seems to be illegal.

All we have is 40% turnout with 90% yes. We will have to do with that.

85% of Catalans wanted the vote to happen.

There was no yes campaign because the non-independentists were against the right to vote.

Nevertheless, turnout has been quite high.

A little out of date now on point 9 but otherwise not unreasonable as far as I can see - https://medium.com/@tripu/referendum-e53331ddf841

Not answering point by point, but this is just a referendum in 40 years, overwhelmingly wanted by catalans, and just about moving borders, not sterilising anybody.

And yes, police has been sent.

I don't think the "referendum" was "overwhelmingly wanted by catalans"; what is your source?

"Just about moving borders" makes it sound as if that were a trivial change. It would be huge for Spain.

His first four claims (plus #11) are just wrong. He's not even addressing the points, let alone rebutting them.

How so? I tried to debunk all those facile arguments in favour of the "referendum".

#11: do you think then that the "referendum" was properly organised, with enough accountability and transparency, and no meddling? Do you trust the results announced by the Catalan government?

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