Spain bans Basque referendum on independence

[spartan]

The Spanish Supreme Court has declared a proposed referendum on independence in the Basque Country invalid. The judges said only the Spanish government could arrange such a referendum.

The Basque Country's regional government had planned to hold a referendum on the question of independence for the region next month. Basque representatives said it could help to silence ETA, the Basque separatist terrorist movement.

Speaking before the court's decision, the head of the Basque government announced that he would take the Spanish government to the European Court if it banned the referendum. Juan José Ibarretxe said the citizens of the Basque Country would be witnessing the curtailment of their freedom of expression and democratic rights.
http://www.rnw.nl/internationaljustice/news/international/5961297/Spain-bans-Basque-referendum

Looks like ETA was right when they said that the only way to get Basque independence is to fight for it.

[DancingLarry]

It looks to me like the question is did the regional government botch the game, or is the federal government "banning" of the referendum part of the kabuki?

It's obvious that the whole referendum was intended to be a kabuki by the regional government run to put a hit on ETA. By calling the referendum, the regional authorities get to play "responsive democratically inclined government" and earn some soft-nationalist cred. Meanwhile they no doubt have it set up at a time when it would fail miserably. Since putting the referendum on the ballot would force ETA to champion it, in effect the referendum would become a referendum on the ETA, one designed to make them look as politically weak as possible.

Here's the question, did the regional government have the national government in on the game from the outset, or did they blow it, and toss an unexpected bombshell? If the feds were in on it from the outset, then what we're seeing right now was also planned from the outset, a chance for the regional government to burnish those "democratic" and "nationalist" creds, defending the freedom of speech of the Basque people against Madrid repression. If that's the case, then the kabuki is still running, and at some point "moderate conciliatory voices" in Madrid will "find a way to let the referendum go forward." If however, the regional government was so inept that they didn't have Madrid in on this from the outset, but just tossed this into the federal government's lap, they're likely to end up getting hoist by their own petard and strengthen the hand of ETA. It will be interesting to see how this unfolds.

[bcbm]

Looks like ETA was right when they said that the only way to get Basque independence is to fight for it.

And yet Catalonia, an equally important province economically, was able to gain a great degree of autonomy from the Spanish government and only have an armed struggle organization briefly...

[spartan]

And yet Catalonia, an equally important province economically, was able to gain a great degree of autonomy from the Spanish government and only have an armed struggle organization briefly...
Yeah but everyone knows that a capitalist state only gives certain regions "autonomy" to attempt to defuse the independence arguement which could damage the capitalist state if it was chopped up into independent nations.

Anyway the "autonomy" in question isn't really that great, a centralised state still makes all the big decisions (like denying a referendum on independence which the "autonomous" government wanted, which says alot about the supposed "autonomy" of the Basque country).

[bcbm]

Yeah but everyone knows that a capitalist state only gives certain regions "autonomy" to attempt to defuse the independence arguement which could damage the capitalist state if it was chopped up into independent nations.

Of course, but its still beneficial to the region. Beyond that, at this point there'd be no way for any of the regions seeking autonomy to break away short of another civil war. It also wouldn't harm "the" capitalist state (why the?), it would merely weaken the position of one capitalist state while strengthening the position of another. Hardly something to fight for.