Peces Barba on bombing Barcelona

Gregorio Peces Barba is one of the fathers of the Spanish Constitution and on October 27th he made some remarks about the relationship between Spain and Catalonia talking about the possible independence of Catalonia and how he believes this time it won’t be necessary to bomb Barcelona to stop it.

Col·lectiu Emma already wrote a post about this issue that summarizes the situation very well. So I just put the bits together (from here and here) (only the audio part is available for the bits on bombing Barcelona) and made the subtitles.

However, a few points on what Peces Barba said are inaccurate:

  • Peces Barba must have skipped a chapter on his history book since Spain didn’t make the decision to let Portugal go. The Spanish lost the battles of lvas, Ameixal, Villa Viçosa i Castel Rodrigo against the Portuguese.
  • Maybe Spain would have been better with Portugal but there’s no arguing that Catalonia would have done much better alone
  • Catalans do not celebrate a defeat on September the 11th, it is a reminder that we lost our state in 1714 and have to keep working to get it back

Even though it is of very poor taste (and possible criminal responsibility) to joke about the bombings of Barcelona and killings of civilians over the centuries (the last ones took place from 1936 until 1939, in which 2700 people were killed and 7000 were injured (link in Catalan)) we should thank Peces Barba that a father of the Spanish Constitution has clarified for the public opinion the true nature of the relationship between Catalonia and Spain.

Peces Barba started this topic with regards to the results of latest poll by the Catalan Centre Estudis d’Opinió (link in Catalan), the Catalan public polls institute, which in its latest issue in October showed an increase in the support to Catalonia’s independence since June. 45.4% of Catalans would vote for independence with only 24.7% would vote no and 23.8% would abstain. This would mean 64.7% of the votes for independence with a turnout of 70%.