{"id":12204,"date":"2015-09-13T09:00:48","date_gmt":"2015-09-13T14:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=12204"},"modified":"2015-09-13T09:01:30","modified_gmt":"2015-09-13T14:01:30","slug":"12204","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=12204","title":{"rendered":"Is Catalonia About to Go All In?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Is Catalonia About to Go All In?<\/a><\/h3>\n

An extremely high-stakes game of political poker, not just for Catalonia and Spain but for Europe.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/i><\/b>For a nation that doesn\u2019t officially exist, Catalonia sure knows how to throw a national-day party. September 11, approximately 1.4 million people filled the streets of the region\u2019s capital, Barcelona (urban population: 1.6 million), to commemorate\u00a0La Diada<\/em>, the fateful day 301 years ago when Catalonia was defeated during the War of the Spanish Succession.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s event was widely praised, even among some unionists, for its near flawless organization, and once again the atmosphere was one of peaceful joviality, resolute defiance and collective hope.<\/p>\n

Here are some photos\u00a0I took\u00a0in the evening after the march, at an event held in our neighborhood. In the first one, you can see a Castellers (human tower):<\/p>\n

\"QD2015-09-12<\/a><\/p>\n

In the second one you can see the \u201cArc de Triomf\u201d in the background, with a massive independence flag swaying in the breeze:<\/p>\n

\"DQ-2015-09-12-Catalonia-independence\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But now the festivities are over, and the really hard work of nation building begins. Hope, catchy slogans, and huge demonstrations alone are not enough to create a new nation.<\/p>\n

Institutions of State<\/strong><\/h3>\n

A nation needs a viable economy, which Catalonia already has; it needs international acceptance and recognition, which could be a much higher mountain to climb, especially given the threat posed by separatist movements in other European countries (France, Italy, the UK, Belgium); and it needs the basic organs and institutions of state. According to Catalonia\u2019s premier, Artur Mas, these are now under development.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne crucial task for the next government will be to create the state structures that will succeed those of the Spanish state: the tax authority, for example, which we have already worked on for the past year and a half, or social security or the central bank,\u201d he told the Financial Times.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is Catalonia About to Go All In? An extremely high-stakes game of political poker, not just for Catalonia and Spain but for Europe. For a nation that doesn\u2019t officially exist, Catalonia sure knows how to throw a national-day party. September 11, approximately 1.4 million people filled the streets of the region\u2019s capital, Barcelona (urban population: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[8851,117,5660,233,279,281,282,284,743,4255],"class_list":["post-12204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-catalan-independence","tag-catalonia","tag-don-quijones","tag-ecb","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-european-central-bank","tag-european-union","tag-spain","tag-wolfstreet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12204"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12206,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12204\/revisions\/12206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}