When I watch a soccer game with the Spain's national team I can equally celebrate a goal scored by them or against them if I like the goal. With Catalonia's national team (who only are allowed to play once a year) or my local team FC Barcelona (I even have a season ticket) the feelings are totally different.

Also I do not feel at all the Spanish flag is my flag. To be frank, I even have a sense of foreigness when I look at the Spanish flag, possibly because it still somehow suggests repression to me.

I strongly believe that people in Catalonia should have the right of self-determination. The culture, the language, even the traits are distinct enough to deserve it, and not be bullied because of it.

That Catalan people have the right of self-determination does not mean that all Catalan people who think they should have that right would vote to leave Spain.

I am totally neutral about if the outcome of a referendum is to leave Spain or to stay in Spain (both things have upsides and downsides at short and long term), but I'm not neutral about Catalonia's people having the right of self-determination, we should have it.

Regarding the "Catalan people", I am "Catalan people", too, and the only oppression I see in the Catalan region is the one pushed by the Catalan regional government towards forcing uniform ethnic brainwash from public administration and schools, in Catalan-only, instead of bilingual Spanish-Catalan. A reminder: not only Catalan-speakers -mother tongue- (35% of inhabitants of the Catalan region) have rights, Spanish-speakers (55% of inhabitants of the Catalan region) have rights, too. So next time you fight for your rights, be sure you're really fighting for your rights (I would endorse you), and not for quitting/removing/stealing other people's rights (I would not endorse you). Respect works both ways.

Kind regards.

Just wanted to clarify that I do not particularly support all Catalan Government policies, in fact, just a few of them.

There are many important other rights that need to be addressed such as the right to die with dignity (this is long overdue) or the right receiving education in your language, at least for major languages such as Catalan, Spanish, Arabic or English.

Please note that this is not an issue only local to Barcelona, this is an issue that also face people who speak Catalan, English or Arabic at home and live, for example, in Madrid and only receive education in Spanish (is that also "uniform ethnic brainwash"!?).

My guess is that authorizities in Barcelona or Madrid do not grant this right as to avoid segregation, but we will not know unless they try it and see actual segregation. The other alternative of teaching everybody evenly in all significant languages in our society (Catalan, Spanish, Arabic and English) might overwhelm kids.

I'm not sure if you have any actual experience with the Catalan education system or just read about it on the yellow press and that build your opinion to define it "uniform etnic brainwash". Would you share if you have any actual experience with it and what impact it had on you or your children?

In my actual experience, my three children have been fully exposed to the "uniform ethnic brainwash" Catalan education and IMHO, their Spanish is better than their Catalan is, even when we speak Catalan at home. They have some knowledge of English, but they have no knowledge of Arabic.

All these things were illegal by laws backed and supported by the highest, most sensible and most respected authorities back in the time, even during centuries.

But it was the determination of people to be able to make all these illegal things fully legal nowadays. This is progress.

If people wants, anything is possible. Laws are to serve people, and if they do not work, they should be changed.

People can even change a constitution.

To help you fully understand the context, the Spanish constitution was written only 3 years after a military dictatorship that lasted 40 years (2 generations) with many people afraid of the military coming back and the police charging in people's demonstrations.

I do not know if you ever have had to run in a demonstration with a policeman running behind you with a gun with a clear intent to shoot you. I did and believe me, it is really scary. You even develop a sense of foreigness for certain symbols.

The Spanish constitution can and should be changed to meet the needs of people in the 21st century. The one we have now is the bastard child of the turmoil after the military dictatorship.

Well, there was a bit more to it than that. If it had just been a matter of the Constitution being flaunted, and citizens being denied their rights... we might have just had a prolonged crisis, with a long period of generalized instability and violence towards minorities (kind of like we seem to be entering, in the present day).

But unfortunately the CSA had to go out of their way to initiate an all-out armed provocation with the Union, which basically forced the latter's hand, by that point. You know, this little ruckus:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fort_Sumter

In any case all this post-facto niceness about "protecting the Constitution" and all is -- just that. Invented after the fact, to help the nation recover from what was (at the time) one of the most devastating armed conflicts the planet had hitherto known.

I thought about twice per your request, and I'm afraid that with my support for Catalonia's self-determination rights I'm defending individual rights. Otherwise, I would become the first ethnic totalitarian on Earth who loved immigration and helped immigrants to settle.

How do you like immigration yourself? I'm asking because the Head of the Partido Popular (Spanish central government) in Catalonia hates it [1], he is a declared xenophobe and such proneness to xenophobia often permeates to other supporters of Partido Popular and similar right-wing parties.

[1] http://ccaa.elpais.com/ccaa/2015/07/28/catalunya/1438078282_...

For your information, I do like immigration, and I'm in favor of trilingual school in the Catalan region of Spain (Spanish, Catalan, English), and the more immigration coming to Spain, the better for the country, that would mean that the economy is recovering and people is willing to bet for it. BTW, you can not judge an organization based on the opinions of one person (even if what you say about that person could be true, or not). Xenophobe examples by the Catalan nationalism are endless.

I know the Catalan nationalism arguments, and I can dismount them one by one. So you're wasting your time with your propaganda on me.