Basque nationalism

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(Redirected from Basque separatist movement)

Image:GernikakoArbola.jpg Image:1850espanya.jpg Basque nationalism is a movement with roots in the Carlism and the loss by the laws of 1839 and 1876 of the Ancien Regime relationship between the Basque provinces and the crown of Spain when the Spanish government revoked the fueros after the Third Carlist War. The fueros acted as part of the Basque legal system and designated the relation of the Basque Provinces with the crown. The fueros were charters confirmed by the successive kings of Castile. The Fueros gave Basque citizens a unique position in Spain with special tax and political status; additionally, Basques were not subject to direct levee to the Castilian army, although many volunteered, especially in the navy.

The chief ideologist of early Basque nationalism is Sabino Arana, founder of the Basque Nationalist Party. Following the romantic and racist views of the end of the 19th century, Arana created an ideology centered on the purity of the Basque race and its moral supremacy over the Spaniards (a derivation of the Iberian system of limpieza de sangre), anti-Liberal Catholic integrism, and opposition to the migration of other Spaniards to a Basque Country starting the industrial revolution.

In the early 20th century, Basque nationalism developed from a nucleus of petty bourgeois enthusiasts in Bilbao to incorporate the peasant basis of Carlism in Biscay and Guipuscoa. The movement survived the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera under the guise of cultural and sportive associations.

Several splits and reunions were caused by clashes of personalities over different desires for the status of the Basque Country (autonomy versus independence). There were also leftist versions, though the Basque working class (many of them immigrants) was divided among the Spanish Communist and Socialist movements. The ELA-STV Catholic trade union diffused nationalism within the workers.

In 1936, the main part of the then Christian democrat PNV sided with the Second Spanish Republic in the Spanish Civil War; the promise of autonomy was valued over the differences on religious issues with the revolutionary Popular Front.

However, in 1937, roughly halfway through the war, the troops of the Autonomous Basque Government surrendered in Santoña to the Italian allies of General Franco on condition that the Basque heavy industry and economy was left untouched, beginning one of the hardest periods of Basque history in Spain. For many leftists in Spain this event is known as the Treason of Santoña, as many of the Basque soldiers were pardoned to join the Francoist army in the rest of the Northern front. Basque nationalists submitted, fled, or went underground. Large groups fled to the Americas, France or the Benelux, of which only a minority returned after the restoration of democracy in Spain in the late seventies. The -still- influential aristocratic families, such as the Zorreguieta in Argentina and the Baljeu d'Orreaga in Holland, all remained in exile.

The Basque sovereignty movement began to evolve in the 1950s, during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, there having been debates about the subject as early as the 18th century, with important actions to counteract the attempts of the alternating Spanish governments to suppress the Basque Foral system.

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The Basque sovereignty movement wants a fully independent state consisting of the Basque autonomous community (Álava, Vizcaya and Guipúzcoa), the Navarran autonomous community and the Pyrénées-Atlantiques (Labourd, Basse-Navarre and Soule), the latter being parts of France. These seven territories are known by them as Euskal Herria or Basque Land.

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Basque nationalist organizations

Unidad Alavesa and Unión del Pueblo Navarro are parties exclusive to the Basque Country and Navarra but not following Basque nationalism.

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See also

eo:Eŭska naciismo

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