Basques

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BASQUES.

HISTORY
BASQUE NATIONALISM
THE FRANCO DICTATORSHIP
THE POST-FRANCO PERIOD
BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Basques are a people who live in northern Spain and southern France. Most speak French or Spanish, but many also speak Basque, a language totally unrelated to the Romance language family (to which both French and Spanish belong). No consensus exists on Basque's connections to any other languages. As of 2006, the population of Euzkadi, as the Spanish Basque region is called, was 2.1 million.

HISTORY

For centuries, the Basque Provinces in Spain had their own regional privileges (fueros), which reduced the taxes and number of military recruits the region owed the monarchy. Such privileges were common in Europe through the eighteenth century, but following the example of the French Revolution, governments in a number of European countries, including Spain, sought to create a more centralized administration and bring all citizens into an equal relationship with the nation-state. They also sought to impose greater control over the Catholic Church. These developments, along with a disputed succession to the Spanish throne following the death of Ferdinand VII in 1833, gave rise to a civil war known as the Carlist War (1833–1840), whose center of gravity was in the Basque Provinces. A second Carlist War, driven by similar issues, took place in 1875 and 1876. At the end of this conflict, the region lost most of its distinctive privileges.

Favored by rich deposits of iron ore, the Basque Provinces emerged as one of Spain's early industrial powerhouses. Mining, iron production, and shipbuilding drew many thousands of immigrants from other parts of Spain to the burgeoning cities of the region in the decades following the Second Carlist War. For many Basques, these changes were a threat to their culture and way of life, which they saw in idealized terms as bucolic, peaceful, and deeply Catholic. From such concerns emerged a movement devoted to asserting Basque cultural identity and winning political authority for the region.

BASQUE NATIONALISM

The founder of Basque nationalism was Sabino Arana Goiri (1865–1903). Arana's nationalism was profoundly Catholic, almost theocratic, as well as deeply racist, a defense of what he saw as a pure Basque race against defilement by an influx of make-tos, a pejorative Basque word for other Spaniards. Arana's early death left the Basque nationalist movement with a confused legacy, one that a century later has yet to be entirely clarified. Is Basque nationalism a movement for regional self-government within Spain or for separatism and national independence? Who is a Basque and what is the place of immigrants in Basque society?

The most important institutional embodiment of Basque nationalism was the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV). The party was founded at the beginning of the twentieth century, but it was only during the Second Republic (1931–1939) that it achieved significant success. In elections held in 1933 and 1936, the PNV won more votes in the region than any other party, although it never achieved a majority. In 1932, the Republic granted regional autonomy to Cataluña and Basque nationalists demanded similar treatment. This was not an option under the center-right governments in power between November 1933 and February 1936, but following the electoral victory of the Popular Front, autonomy for the Basque region returned to the political agenda. It was still under discussion in parliament when the Spanish civil war broke out, but the decision of the PNV to support the Republic and not Francisco Franco's Nationalist rebels led to approval of an autonomy statute in October 1936.

The conditions of civil war meant that the Basque regional government, a coalition of Socialists and Republicans dominated by the PNV, enjoyed much broader freedom of action than the statute stipulated. Unlike the rest of the Republican zone, the Basque region did not experience social revolution; indeed, the Basque nationalists, who were social conservatives and strong Catholics, retained political and economic control. The Nationalist offensive in northern Spain led the Basque government to surrender in June 1937. As it became clear that the conquest of their region was inevitable, the Basque authorities chose to surrender, thus sparing Bilbao and its heavily industrialized hinterland from attack and destruction.

Not all Basques supported the Republic. Considerable support existed within the region for Franco's Nationalists, and this manifested itself in the large number of Basques who supported the Carlists, a reactionary, ultra-Catholic movement that harked back to a mythical Catholic monarchy before the installation of liberalism and that was the most fervent civilian support for the military uprising against the Republic. Many Basques joined the Carlist military force, the requetes.

THE FRANCO DICTATORSHIP

The Franco dictatorship that was born out of the civil war was rigidly centralist and completely hostile to any expression of regional identity. Basques, as well as Galicians and Catalans, saw their autonomy abolished; they also suffered prohibitions on the public use of their languages, which were officially declared to be dialects. For many Basques, Franco's regime was a Spanish occupation of their region, but in fact, other than in the question of language, the Basques suffered no more heavily than other Spaniards from the severity of the regime. And in some respects, the region can be said to have been favored.

The Basque region did well economically during the Franco years. When the dictatorship ended, the Basque Provinces had a per capita income 11 percent above the national average and two of the provinces, Alava and Guipúzcoa, ranked among the top ten of the country's fifty provinces (at number two and nine, respectively).

Anti-regime politics remained alive during the Franco years, as they did in much of the rest of Spain. Led by the PNV's José Antonio Aguirre (1904–1960) and Jesús María Leizaola (1896–1989), the Basque government from the civil war period continued to exist as a government-in-exile. The PNV also retained an organization inside Spain, which put it in an excellent position when democracy was restored after Franco's death. At least as significant, however, was the emergence in 1959 of Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA), a radical nationalist movement that split off from the PNV's youth wing and is dedicated to using armed struggle to achieve complete independence.

THE POST-FRANCO PERIOD

Following Franco's death in November 1975, Spain began a surprisingly rapid and relatively peaceful transition to democracy. One of the Franco regime's paradoxical legacies was widespread support for regional autonomy among Spanish democrats. The constitution of 1978 established what came to be known as the "state of the autonomies" and recognized seventeen regions that had the right to self-government. The constitution also recognized the existence of three "historical nationalities": Basque, Catalan, and Galician, which had had autonomy statutes before the Franco regime. These regions had a quicker mechanism for establishing their regional government and, initially, a wider range of powers. The constitution also recognized the Basque, Catalan, and Galician languages as co-official with Spanish in their respective regions.

The new constitution received broad support in the referendum held on 6 December 1978: 88 percent of Spaniards who voted, voted in its favor. The Basque Provinces were the significant exception. With the PNV and other nationalists urging abstention, less than half of Basque voters, only 44.5 percent, turned out. This was a marked contrast to Cataluña, where two-thirds of eligible voters turned out and 90 percent favored the constitution.

Since 1978, the PNV has been the dominant political force in the region and has headed the regional government since one was first elected in 1980. At the same time, the nationalist political spectrum has become more complex. On one extreme stands the PNV, essentially a center-right, Christian Democratic–type party; on the other extreme stands ETA, advocating armed struggle for national independence. During the 1980s these groups were joined by Herri Batasuna, radical nationalists connected to ETA. In between were other nationalist parties: Euskadiko Ezkera, with a left-wing agenda, and Eusko Alkartasuna, a centrist party created in 1986 following a schism in the PNV. The Basque wing of the Socialist Party is nationalist but opposed to independence, whereas the Popular Party is antinationalist. By 2000 electoral support was split almost evenly between nationalist and non-nationalist options.

Support for Basque nationalism has varied significantly within the region. Nationalists have dominated the two provinces of Guipúzcoa and Vizcaya but have been less successful in Alava and especially in Navarra, which has its own autonomy statute. Important differences also exist between rural and urban areas; the latter, and especially those which have large numbers of immigrants from other parts of Spain, have tended to give more support to non-nationalist parties.

See alsoETA; Spain.