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Catalonians and Kurds Put Even More Pressure on Beleaguered EU
h/t InstapunditBuried in all of the other international news is the following tidbit: the Spanish "autonomous region" of Catalonia held a referendum on independence from Spain, in which some 90% of participants voted for independence. Catalonia is located in the northeastern corner of Spain, in the foothills of the Pyrenees. Its capital is Barcelona, a major industrial and tourist center, and the region has a long history of off-again, on-again independence dating back at least to the Eighth Century. The Catalan people speak a unique Romance language which has more in common with the Occitan language of southern France than it does with Spanish and, obviously, they have not lost their sense of distinctiveness from the Spanish. The Spanish government in Madrid reacted to this latest attempt to apply the Wilsonian principle of self-determination for small peoples in much the same way that the Baghdad government reacted to the recent referendum on Kurdish independence. It first declared the referendum unconstitutional, then demanded it be withdrawn when it became obvious that the referendum had gone against continued union with the Spanish state. In other words, the "autonomous region" is demonstrating a little too much autonomy. ...Given the European Union’s penchant for meddling in conflicts elsewhere in the world, such as the Middle East, perhaps I can make a friendly suggestion. Israel ought to offer her services to Spain and the EU as an "honest broker," and negotiate an end to the Catalonian crisis on the basis of "land for peace." The Catalan people, with their distinctive language and culture, surely have a much better claim than the "Palestinians," artificially created by Yasser Arafat in 1964, who are in no way different from the Arabs of Israel’s neighbors. They speak essentially the same dialects of Arabic as are spoken in those countries, and possess no distinctive culture of their own. Let the EU see what it feels like for a change. Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2017-10-10 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=499243 |