On 1 December 1997 the Supreme Court in Madrid sentenced 23
leaders of the Basque separatist party, Herri Batasuna (Popular
Unity), to seven years’ imprisonment. They had been convicted of
using part of their election campaign television time to show a video
made by ETA. In the broadcast Herri Batasuna said it was giving
airtime to those who offered a real alternative for peace and
democracy and a way out of the present political conflict and
violence.
The video had shown three hooded, armed men calling for
recognition of the Basque homeland, meaning the right to
self-determination and territorial unity (including Navarre and the
French Basque country). They demanded that "the Basque people" be
allowed to "freely determine its future" and offered a cease-fire in
exchange for an unconditional amnesty for all ETA members held in
Spanish prisons and the departure of "Spanish armed forces" from the
Basque country.
The next day the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), a Christian
Democratic organisation which has a majority in the parliament of the
Basque Autonomous Community and holds power in the Basque government,
issued a statement condemning the prison sentences while making its
opposition to Herri Batasuna quite clear. "The PNV has no reason to
support Herri Batasuna, and even less to support its leaders. We get
nothing but insults and threats from them and their political
associates. What is more, the citizens of the Basque country are fed
up with the arrogance and aggressive posturing of Herri Batasuna that
accompanies the murder, kidnapping and extortion perpetrated by ETA
and the urban guerrillas. Neither the PNV nor the great majority of
the Basque people will support the call for a general strike on 15
December or any other action involving the use of force. It is high
time for Herri Batasuna to break the link between political activity
and the use of pressure, force and intimidation."
On 6 and 7 December several PNV offices were firebombed by ETA
militants. On the evening of 12 December, a People’s Party town
councillor in Renteria was shot dead by ETA. And on 9 January another
town councillor was assassinated, this time in Zarautz.
Tens of thousands of people protested against these crimes. And
all the nationalist and non-nationalist political parties in the
Basque country, except Herri Batasuna, were represented on the
demonstrations against terrorism. Meanwhile, Itziar Aizpurua, a
member of Herri Batasuna, boldly declared that "a people that
struggles is sure of victory (1)."
So who exactly is struggling? And against whom? While Spain is
confronted with other nationalist movements, especially in Catalonia
and Galicia, the Basque nationalist movement is the most complex, for
three reasons. First, Basque nationalist ideology is separatist and
calls the existence of Spain into question. Second, the basic tenets
of that ideology, which concern the limits of Basque national
territory and the definition of the national community, are highly
controversial and strongly disputed by part of the Basque population
itself. Last, nationalist activists are deeply divided on the issue
of armed struggle, and several members of the PNV have been
assassinated by ETA terrorists.
Basque nationalists base their convictions on a particular reading
of the history of their region. In their view, the Basque country is
absolutely distinct from Spain in terms of both language and history.
They claim that the Basques were self-governing up to and even beyond
1200, when their territory was annexed by Castille, and have
continuously fought to preserve their own forms of government. Seen
in this way, the Basque nationalist movement is a struggle for the
retrieval of lost sovereignty. Basque nationalists refer to their
nation as Euskadi, or Euskal Herria, an entity made up of seven
"historic territories". Spain contains the three provinces of the
Basque country proper (Biscay, Guipuzcoa and Alava) as well as the
province of Navarre, which has the status of an autonomous community
and its own government. The provinces of Labourd, Basse-Navarre and
Soule are in the French Department of the Pyrénées
Atlantiques.
The reality of Euskadi is more complicated. A good part of the
population living in the "historic territories" does not want to be
included in the Basque nation. That is the case of most of the
Basques living in France and, above all, the people of Navarre. But
Basque nationalists are convinced, on linguistic and anthropological
grounds, that Navarre is the heartland of their nation. The Bascons
of Navarre are claimed as the ancestors of the Basque people, as the
mountainous north of Navarre is still partly Basque-speaking. And the
eleventh-century kingdom of Navarre is the only entity to have
exercised political authority over all the territories to which the
Basques now lay claim.
The great majority of Navarrese, however, consider their region to
be quite distinct from the Basque country. The Union of the People of
Navarre (UPN), founded in 1977 to oppose Basque nationalism, has
become the largest political party in the region, winning 36.8 % of
the vote in the 1996 elections.
The stubborn determination to unite the "historic territories" in
one nation may seem rather strange in view of the strength of
resistance to it. (Even within the Basque country, the province of
Alava does not support the nationalist cause). However, the sense of
belonging to a single nation was strengthened by the existence of a
form of social organisation and similar institutions in the various
"historic territories". These institutions, and the laws which they
were responsible for applying, are a basic constituent of Basque
nationalist ideology.
The fueros are the customs of the ancien
régime applied by the local assemblies which the kings of
Castille had to swear to observe in order to secure the allegiance of
the Basque provinces. In Biscay, the ceremony of the royal oath took
place in the city of Guernica beneath an oak tree that became the
symbol of Basque independence. A person advocating reinstatement of
the fueros is called a "fuerist", and the corresponding
ideological movement is known as "fuerism". The fueros
embodied the customs of each of the provinces, including Navarre.
They granted the Basques of Guipuzcoa and Biscay special rights, in
particular certain privileges in principle confined to the nobility.
The reference to the nobility as "universal" strengthens the belief
that the Basque people had developed a unique tradition of democracy
in which all men were equal under the law. The two Carlist wars in
1833-39 and 1874-76 resulted in the abolition of the fueros,
and a political movement gradually emerged to demand their
reinstatement. Initially, this demand was not incompatible with
inclusion of the Basque country in Spain, but after a few years it
took on a separatist connotation.
Sabino Arana (1865-1903) was the founder of Basque nationalist
doctrine and of the PNV, a party which has propounded Basque
nationalism since its creation in 1898. His main idea was to
distinguish radically between the "Basque and Latin races" and to
argue for the political independence of the former. In 1897 Arana
called for the establishment of a union of Basques "for the salvation
of the common fatherland and the race itself (2)". He coined a new
term, "Euskadi", to denote a Basque nation comprising territories in
which history had taken rather different courses. Breaking with the
vocabulary of the ancien régime, Arana spoke of a "war
of conquest" against Euskadi, of "Basque laws" rather than
fueros, and of "independence". Spain was depicted for the
first time as a "foreign power" from which it was necessary to be
separated. Separation was understood by his followers as a basic
condition of progress for the Basque people, which was finally daring
to assert its difference.
This ideology took shape against the background of the rapid
industrialisation of Biscay, the main centre of the Spanish steel
industry, which gave rise to a wave of immigration from other regions
of the Iberian peninsula. Arana referred to this as "an invasion by
Spanish socialists and atheists". At the outset, Basque nationalism
was thus a racist, extreme-Catholic, separatist doctrine that
postulated the existence of an ethnic community distinct from the
Spanish and French and portrayed the Basque problem as a conflict
between nations.
The synthesis between fuerism and separatism is the core of Basque
nationalist doctrine. Xabier Arzalluz, PNV representative at the
Madrid Cortes in 1978 and currently the party’s chairman, informed
the deputies of the Constituent Assembly that the Basque country had
reclaimed "its historic rights, the memory of which has never been
lost. This has nothing to do with the ups and downs of the economy.
It reflects an awareness of identity and history that is deeply felt
by a large part of the population (3)". Many Spaniards have
difficulty in understanding this obstinate determination to recover a
status held under the ancien régime. For them,
fueros are simply old local customs with no special
significance. But for Basque nationalists the terminology is
important. Use of the term fueros means that the powers
conferred by the granting of autonomy in 1979 are rights that
pre-date the 1978 Constitution.
For the PNV, Article I of the Additional Provisions of the
Constitution, which "protects and respects the historic rights of the
territories with fueros", constitutes recognition of the
"extra-constitutional" status of the fueros system (4).
Claiming continuity between ancient times and the modern era enables
Basque nationalists to portray the history of their country as
proceeding independently of events specific to Spain itself. In this
way they are able to distance themselves from any concern with the
future of the Spanish nation. While the leaders of the PNV do not
call on their followers to secede, Basque nationalists recognise no
duty to Spain. At the beginning of the 1936-39 civil war, the
President of the Spanish Republic, Manuel Azaña, wrote the
following words in his diary: "Once Bilbao has fallen, the Basque
nationalists are likely to lay down their arms or even go over to the
enemy. They are fighting neither for the Republic nor for Spain,
which they detest, but for their own autonomy and semi-independence
(5)". Following the swift fall of Bilbao in June 1937, the PNV did
indeed negotiate surrender terms with Franco, who had been able to
count on strong support from the Navarrese and Basque Carlists since
1936.
The right to self-determination was claimed with varying degrees
of aggressiveness by all the Basque nationalist parties when the 1978
Constitution was being drafted. The PNV agreed to vote against its
incorporation in the Constitution in exchange for Article I of the
Additional Provisions, referred to above. It is therefore
understandable that it should be regarded as a major threat by
advocates of a united Spain. But those fears have not led to a
head-on clash between the Basque people and their "Spanish
oppressors". The conflict over the demand for self-determination is
between Basques.
The fact that Euskadi is not a simple territorial entity is not in
itself an obstacle to the existence of a Basque nation. More
important is the fact that the concept of a Basque national community
is of relatively recent origin and has never corresponded to reality.
Right up to the twentieth century each of the "historic territories"
was concerned to defend its own autonomy against its neighbours. And
the Basque national flag, the ikurriña, which some
people imagine goes back to the Middle Ages, was invented by Sabino
Arana at the beginning of this century, on the model of the Union
Jack. During the two Carlist wars, the middle classes of Bilbao and
San Sebastian supported the liberal monarchy, which was basically
striving to achieve greater unification and modernisation of Spain at
the expense of the structures and privileges of the ancien
régime.
Both cities were besieged by the extreme-Catholic Basque Carlists
and eventually freed by the Liberals, whose victory in both wars
resulted in the abolition of the fueros. From the outset, the
barons of the Basque economy, especially the most powerful of them,
resisted the new ideas. And throughout his long dictatorship
(1936-75), Franco found valuable allies in the Basque industrial and
banking oligarchy.
The refusal of part of the local society to subscribe to the idea
of a Basque nation is as deeply rooted in history as nationalist
ideology, and the most radical critique of that ideology has come
from former adherents and their offspring. At the turn of the century
Miguel de Unamuno, who was born in Bilbao in 1864, forged his
identity as a writer and philosopher from his rejection of the Basque
nationalism of his early youth. Many of today’s anti-nationalist
Basque intellectuals come from nationalist families. Some of them
actively collaborated with ETA under the Franco regime, before
debunking the beliefs of their youth in works of great detail and
scholarship.
Basques can be divided into three national communities: those who
call themselves Spaniards, those who think of themselves as French,
and those who consider themselves only Basques. Two of the last four
People’s Party councillors targeted in the latest wave of
assassinations had Basque names.
Nationalists are also faced with the difficult problem of
integrating immigrants from other parts of Spain and those of their
children who have not espoused the Basque cause. The assimilation of
such people is currently a subject of heated debate inside and
outside the nationalist movement.
From 1979 to 1991 the combined vote for the Basque nationalist
parties always exceeded 50 % of the poll in the Basque Autonomous
Community. In recent years, however, the nationalists have not had an
automatic majority. In 1993 a total of 685,674 votes in the
Autonomous Community went to non-nationalist parties: the Spanish
Socialist Labour Party, Euskadi Ezkerra, the People’s Party, the
United Left and Alava Unity. The combined vote for the Basque
Nationalist Party, Herri Batasuna, Eusko Alkartasuna and Euskal
Eskerra was 578,908, and there were over 500,000 abstentions. If
Navarre is included, the result is even more striking: the
non-nationalist parties won over 900,000 votes in 1993, compared with
only 625,000 for the nationalists. And in 1996 the proportions were
similar.
ETA is continuing to undermine the nationalist bloc by
strengthening the ranks of its opponents. Since the beginning of its
assassination campaign against the People’s Party, membership of that
party has grown. In 1990 the People’s Party won six seats in the
Autonomous Parliament. In 1994 it won 11 seats out of 75, as many as
Herri Batasuna. Since Herri Batasuna refuses to sit in the
Parliament, the Basque nationalists are faced with the possibility
that a coalition could elect a non-nationalist speaker at the next
regional elections in October 1998.
The main Basque problem is now ETA itself, and the organised
violence of its zealots, who have combined to form a National
Liberation Movement (MLNV). Murder, death threats, car burning,
gutted shops and physical assault have become the daily routine of
politics. Since 1988 all local parties except Herri Batasuna have
adhered to a pact giving the erzaintza (the police force of
the Autonomous Community) a free hand against ETA activists. Public
protest at the kidnapping of Miguel Angel Blanco reached
unprecedented proportions. In Bilbao, a city of 900,000 people, the
press estimated at 500,000 the numbers who demonstrated to demand
that his life be spared (6). By contrast, the relatively calm
reaction to the recent imprisonment of Herri Batasuna leaders by the
Supreme Court in Madrid, which would have been unthinkable a few
years ago, shows the extent of public disillusionment with that
party.
Nevertheless, despite a steady drop in its influence, Herri
Batasuna still obtains around 12 % of the vote and represents the 500
jailed members of the armed organisation. Only the militants of the
MLNV itself, acting within the separatist movement, can marginalise
the proponents of continued political assassination. For this to be
possible, other nationalists must provide them with convincing
arguments. Significantly, the ELA, a nationalist trade union opposed
to armed violence, is now seeking a rapprochement with the LAB, a
nationalist trade union sympathetic to ETA, in order to find a way
out of the present tragic deadlock.
