Extremadura is one of Spain's poorest regions, and because of this it receives large amounts of subsidies and economic aid, which have been used traditionally to perpetuate a dependent economy. Just to give an example, 24% of the population in Extremadura are civil servants, while in Catalonia that figure is of 9%. Extremadura's government right now is under control of the Spanish conservative party PP thanks to an agreement with communist-leaning IU.
Many decades ago, extreme poverty compelled many people in Extremadura to emigrate to Catalonia, with the consequence that nowadays a portion of the Catalan society is of Extremaduran descent. Many of them speak Catalan as their first language, and almost all feel Catalan. This is similar to the process by which people from Europe emigrated to the USA, and their descendants became fully American after two or three generations. Catalonia has always been an open and welcoming land to all newcomers.
Extremadura's former president, Guillermo Fernández Vara, decided to have a go regarding Catalonia's independence initiative when he hurled the ultimate threat in the mind of Spanish ultranationalists: deportation. Fernández is a PSOE member... a left wing Spanish party. What he proposes it to deport 150,000 Catalans of Extremaduran descent back Extremadura!. That includes the first generation who moved from Extremadura (now grandparents) and the two generations after them. Mr. Vara offers his own calculations based on ethnic and racial criteria, although it would be impossible to discern who is purely Extremaduran, given the fact that most are of mixed descent.
The ethnic purging proposed by Mr. Fernández Vara reminds us of the deportations undertaken by Stalin in the old USSR. To sum it up, during the second half of the 1940's, several ethnic communities in the USSR were removed from their ancestral lands. Such was the fate of the 428,000 people in Eastern Poland, 160,000 in the Baltic region—as the Estonian government recently pointed out—or the 90,000 Kalmyks. In Estonia alone the population was reduced by 25%. The two most extreme cases are those of the Chechens and the Tatars. Up to 390,000 Chechens were deported to Siberia, of which 78,000 died during the journey. However, ethnic-cleanser Fernández Vara must surely be drawing his inspiration from the Tatar case. According to Stalin, Tatars in Crimea came from Easter Asia, and that's were they were supposed to return. That's why he deported 180,000 of them back to their so-called “ancestral land.” In the end, 50% of all Tatars disappeared form Crimea.
And, which is worse, this madman is showing that he sees all those people as if they were objects, able to be bought and sold. Just read what he said: “They should give us what they had stolen back…”
Yes, what you red is exactly what he said. “What”, not “who”. And let me ask, are persons able to be stolen unless they are slaves?
I strongly believe that everyone has his own right to decide his faith, and no former President of Extremadura could decide the deportation of a population that already feel catalan. I'm a foreigner, I've been living in Catalunya for only 7 year but I already feel myself catalan. Even though I cannot vote, if I could - I would vote for the Independence of Catalonia.