Azure Rants About: The Catalan Independence Referendum

Hello there everyone, and welcome back to azureScapegoat. If you follow me on Twitter,

which, I mean, if you don't what are you even doing with your life, honestly?

You'd know that I've been tweeting about the Catalan independence referendum.

Now if you are unaware about what the Catalan independence referendum is, it's basically that there is a region in the --

in the northeast of Spain called Catalonia and,

for a very long time, they have been wanting to become independent from the rest of Spain,

kind of similar to how Scotland wants to be independent from the United Kingdom and,

recently,

Catalonia the--

Catalonia is -- kind of semi-autonomous and so they have their own parliament,

kind of like how in the United States,

states have their own

state houses, state congresses, you know.

They have a state senate and a state has representatives. It's kind of like that, only Spain is not a federation like the U.S.,

is, or like Russia is; it is a unitary republic,

which means that essentially all power comes from the central government. It is not a union of several governments,

it is one central government that kind of--

gives privileges to certain states when it feels like it.

Now for most countries this works fine. For bigger countries like Russia,

and the United States,

it's almost a necessity to have a federation because it can be quite difficult to manage an entire country like that with a single

central government, so

that is why when the Soviet Union was created, it was a federation of states and actually each --

each --

state, each Union state,

you know, the Russian state, the Ukrainian state. the Belorussian state, etc,

had their own subdivisions that were also kind of semi-autonomous like in the -- the

Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic had --

numerous autonomous oblasts -- kind of like

municipalities, or you know, kind of like sub states,

that were kind of doing their own thing, but under the sovereignty of the -- the Russian Soviet Federative Republic,

which was then at a higher level a part of the Soviet Union, which was this federation binding it all together.

Now, Spain is not a

federation and you may think "Well, Spain isn't that big, you know, it's not a huge country like Russia." Well, Spain

is quite ethnically diverse, it has quite a few different --

ethnic and cultural groups within it, the Galicians, the Basque people, the Catalans,

Basically what I'm trying to say is that Spain is a very diverse country.

It has lots of different people groups within it that I believe, to some degree, deserve some autonomy. And Spain as well also --

believes that because they have given autonomy -- quite a lot of autonomy -- has been given to the Basque country,