Well, you have to realise a couple of things. First of all your relatives (and half of my relatives btw) were allowed to be catholics in a protestant Netherlands, while protestants weren't allowed to be protestants in a catholic Spain/Netherlands. Just compare the number of Catholics in the Netherlands (even ignoring Limburg, which was only partly Dutch) with the number of protestants in Belgium. There are almost no protestants in Belgium, eventhough the Dutch reformation started in Flanders, while there are many catholics in the Netherlands, even many in Holland (and they aren't all imigrants, Volendam is traditionaly a catholic town).
Also not being represented in the estate General wasn't really nice, but this was the age of absolute monarchs. It was unique in the world that there even was representation. Not that it was very democratic; the Estate-General consisted mainly out of very rich merchants out of Holland. The other provinces barely had any influence at all.
You don't have to lecture me about the policies and consequences of the Generality Lands, my Catholic ancestors may have been better off than protestants in catholic countries, but that certainly isn't going to make the 80 years war as
glorious as for some of my fellow(but protestant) Dutchmen.
BTW I'm not blaming them, but I don't share these feelings about this period.
Frankly the period from the Dutch republic until the Batavian Republic** wasn't a golden age* for the Dutch Catholics (*= although in reality it was only a relatively small group within the larger group of protestants which profited).
OTOH(the entire duchy of) Brabant had a golden age until the the Dutch revolt (from which in reality only a small group profited, similar to the later golden age in the Dutch Republic (mostly in the county of Holland)), which by contrast turns the period of the Generality Lands (for the Northern half of Brabant) and the fall of Antwerp etc. (Southern half of Brabant) into a dark age.
Furthermore I mentioned the situation with the Estates General (which is different from the religious part, but their are connections), to clarify that politcal dicrimination existed and that it was (partly, local protestants got local offices in a region with a vast catholic majority) not totally religious.
Not to mention the fact that as consequence of the 80 years war Brabant was split, which by the vast majority of Brabantians is as judged very negatively...
(**= with the Batavian Republic the issues with the representation and religious rights were settled, although it was only the start of the emancipation of catholics and others, who didn't share the old state religion)