Kale Borroka said:
the Spanish government, who refuses to comply and continues to torture and murder Basque activists (not Etarras!).
This is a plain, and simple LIE. And a miserable one. I dare you to bring these issues from an external, unbiased site (a New York Times article and the likes would be a valid source, for example).
And this is coming, so everybody should know from a guy called "Kale Borroka" who, for the information of the other posters is the way the 'young base terrorism groups' of ETA is called in Basque, the ones that help the terrorist organization to mark victims for death, identify their habits for better and safer killing, and also, the ones that stone the cars, do anonymous death menaces through painting them on the non-sympathizers front doors, etc.
About the Spanish government killing basque activists, the only example that can be provided was a group of Spanish politicians in the 80's that tried to organize an opposing terrorist group called 'GAL' to turn grounds on 'ETA', specially since it seemed that they could find a safe haven in France. Spanish law uncovered this organization and brought the responsible to prison, in the exact same way that the ETA terrorists who are caught and condemned after a trial are taken to prison. ETA has stopped seemingly killing for the last two years, but it is really unclear that they have stopped doing so because they feel the basque oppinion will rather be repulsed by further killing than out of any good free will, since they indeed have not stopped painting 'targets' in the opposing politicians houses, keep trying to extort money from Basque enterprise owners (they call it 'the revolutionary tax'), and keep terrorizing the streets of Euskadi when they feel like it.
Shqype:
I agree that basques are indeed a different people. But saying the basques that live in Spain are not Spanish is preposterous. But it has no sense to say that they are a different people from Spanish.. because Spanish is not an ethnic denomination in Spain (although it is indeed a ethnic denomination in the US, for example, but they do refer to different groups), as Basque might be. Basque are indeed different from Castillian, Basque are different from Catalan, Basque are different from Galician... but it has no real sense comparing, Basque and Spanish because they refer to different fields. There is a minority of the Spanish Basques that want independence and their own state. Well, good for them... as long as they don't kill or hurt anybody, in any way.
What I understood is that you took great pain to not do something that offended people, or so you said. Well, what I am telling you is that you seem to take a great deal to not offend the basques who do not feel Spanish. But you don't seem to care about the basques who might feel Spanish, and who have taken such a death toll for their beliefs (and a far, far greater death toll than, since the end of the dictatorship, who *everybody* in Spain suffered, basque or not, comparred to the Basques independentism).
My dad's friend by the way, died quite some time ago. He was a low ranked politician in a small basque town that was member of a non independentist political party. For what he told me, he was just having a cup of coffee in a bar with his friends. Then a masked man just walked behind him, aimed a gun at the back of his head and shot him dead, spraying with blood his friends. I hope you will understand now why I do feel concerned when I see somebody making such statements in an otherwise innocent environment.
By all means, by the way, don't abandon this mod. Just don't make political statements as you have done, which I would beg you to retire. As I said it is a good idea building up a basque civilization for Civ IV. By the way, Alfonso V is a sad choice for a catalan civ, since he was castillian... if you would think about it, a much better choice would be Alfons II, Jaume I or Pere III. Pity it was a XV century scenario, anyway.
Myself, I would not mind that we catalans would have their own autonomous state inside a European Union (that's how much Spanish I feel myself, eh?), but, the thing is that there is not an active terrorist organization that is currently in Catalonia but there is one an Euskadi that taints any such claims in that same direction. Who has not stopped producing bad damage on innocent lifes.