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Comment by mabbo | Hacker News Reader

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".

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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.

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