Quote Originally Posted by Loki View Post
It matters a lot if you care about human suffering (because secessionism is responsible for roughly half of all civil wars). If you don't, fair enough.
Spain and Catalonia don't mean anything for and would have zero impact on secession anywhere else in the world except, possibly other countries in the EU where we can be sure that civil war is not going to be be part of things, in this specific situation or in general. Straw man and a slippery slope fallacy to boot,

[quote[If countries (or a national and regional government) sit down and work out a way to transfer territory, all the power to them. We're talking about unilateral declarations here.[/quote]

No, we're talking about a referendum here.

Spanish courts repeatedly said this referendum is unconstitutional and illegal. By supporting Catalonia's "right" to persist with the referendum, you're opposing the rule of law. Is that your position? That regional governments should be able to ignore national court decisions when it suits their interests to do so?
If the "rule of law" is forbidding self-determination than the "rule of law" is wrong and furthermore is violating human rights. The consent of the governed is absolutely fundamental to governance in all situations and is explicitly and formally placed on a higher level than the law in democracies where they recognize precisely that will of the governed as the source of all law-making authority in the first place. If they withdraw their consent than your "rule of law" has already been suspended and become nothing but acts of tyranny and oppression by people holding others formerly governed under their authority by force and threat of force.