Splintered Sunrise

The article below is from Neues Deutschland. Clunky translation is my own.

For months the popular base of the Basque party Batasuna, banned by the Spanish state, has been debating a new direction for the Basque left. Following debates in many villages, small towns and urban neighbourhoods, 600 delegate at four regional assemblies approved the document “Zutik Euskal Herria” (Basque Country Stand Up).

Batasuna is mapping out a new path. The conclusion of the party base’s process of self-critical discussion has made that clear. The goal is, “to create a democratic framework in which all political projects, including that of the independence movement, can be realised.” But the pursuit of an independent, unified and socialist Euskadi is to be pursued “exclusively by political and democratic means”.

This is not simply a tactical ceasefire by ETA, but a new strategic turn. The underground organisation’s armed struggle is being rejected by way of a critical analysis of developments in recent years, even if there is no explicit condemnation of ETA. For the majority of the Basque left it is clear that armed actions hinder rather than help their activism.

There is also a recognition of the growing strength of the independence movement in Catalunya, where there is no active armed group. Therefore the strategy of the Basque left will now be based exclusively on “accumulating stronger forces and mobilising the population in order to bring the confrontation onto the political level”. This is where the Spanish and French states are seen to be weak. Therefore civil society is explicitly recognised as the motor of change.

The entire independence movement must create the conditions for these initiatives to develop. There is an appeal to ETA, which supports the process in its fundamentals and has not carried out an attack for months. “Only the struggle of the broad masses, in the institutions and on the ideological level” can “lead to a change in the balance of forces.” It is also the case that the process will need international support. To bring forward work on an institutional level, a legal party is required. This would then take part in all-party talks, in which an agreement would be reach to resolve the conflict. The method being adopted is therefore the same one which underlay the peace process that collapsed in 2007.

There have been a wide variety of responses to this move. The forces that want to work alongside Batasuna in a sovereignty movement have welcomed it. The main Basque trade union ELA has long demanded such a move, so as to build united action with the Batasuna-allied union LAB. “We are happy,” said union leader Txiki Muñoz. It was a “step in the right direction”, said Pello Urizar, leader of the Basque Solidarity (EA) party. Urizar demanded the abolition of the Political Parties Act under which Batasuna was banned. Cautiously positive reactions came from the dominant Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) and the United Left (IU).

The rightwing People’s Party (PP), which has never distanced itself from the Franco dictatorship, sees this as just a manoeuvre ahead of the 2011 local elections. The PP demanded a tightening of the Political Parties Act so as to further exclude “ETA-Batasuna” from the political institutions. This is also related to the fact that since 2009 the PP has been able to govern the Basque Autonomous Community (CAV) in coalition with the Socialists (PSOE), because the ban meant that many Batasuna supporters’ votes were disallowed.

There has been a similarly negative reaction from the PSOE. But they also claimed in 2003, when Batasuna put forward its last peace plan, that there was nothing new in it and demanded “deeds not words”. But that plan did become the basis for peace negotiations.

My own thoughts: Batasuna and ETA haven’t really known what to do for a long time. But it might have sunk in that the last attempt at a political path led not only to a huge surge in Batasuna’s electoral support, but to increased collaboration between the nationalist parties vis-à-vis the state, as well as raising the possibility of blocking with Catalan and Galician nationalists. This scared the shit out of the Madrid government, which then embarked on a strategy of tension aimed at collapsing the ceasefire, and has since banned a long succession of pro-independence parties. But, while the state can force the independence movement into a dead end, it can’t destroy the movement; hence, we’re back to 2003.

I’m sort of playing catch-up to events here, and have a few things on the back burner that I’ve been meaning to get around to, so please bear with me for a little while. One thing I had been meaning to take a look at was last week’s devolved election in the Basque Autonomous Region. This has some importance because, as has been flagged up in the reports, there’s a possibility that the devolved government might not be led by the Basque Nationalist Party (EAJ) for the first time since the autonomy regime was set up in 1980.

A couple of things have brought this possibility about. One is a vagary of the Autonomous Region’s electoral system that over-represents the sparsely populated (and mostly Spanish-speaking) province of Araba at the expense of the more populous (and more culturally Basque) Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa. This means that, although the EAJ and its allies scored 53% to 46% for the Spanish parties (PSOE, PP and the small UPyD), the Spanish parties ended up with 38 seats to the Basques’ 37. The other factor was the banning of two radical nationalist parties and consequent annulment of 100,000 votes that would have returned six deputies for the radicals. I’ll have a little more to say about that below.

One thing that struck me was that the coverage in the British media was much of a muchness. The consistent line was that the Spanish socialists (PSOE) had scored a huge victory due to running a serious campaign centred on the economic crisis, as opposed to the EAJ who were faffing about with nationalist symbolism and grandiose plans for independence. This interpretation fell down even on the detail in the articles, notably the fact that, as President Ibarretxe never ceased to remind the electorate, the Basque autonomous government has a better credit rating than the Spanish government, and unemployment running at half the Spanish rate. Say what you like about the conservative businessmen who lead the Basque Nationalist Party, but they know a thing or two about running an economy. I suspect this media received wisdom is mostly down to Madrid-based correspondents, who don’t have much of a track record of understanding the Basques, just recycling talking points from PSOE spin doctors. There may also be an element of analogy with the deep hatred much of the British press pack feels for Scottish nationalism – Alex Salmond (a banking economist by profession) has been talking much more sense about the crisis than Gordon Brown (a history lecturer by profession), but you’d never know it to read the London papers.

Anyway, this electoral configuration opens up a number of scenarios. Ibarretxe, as leader of the biggest party, has a few things he can do:

• He can reach an accommodation with the Socialists, either in coalition or toleration of a nationalist minority government.
• He can go into opposition and let the Socialists try their hand at running an unstable government in the middle of an economic crisis. The chances are, they wouldn’t last very long before the Nationalists were back in the saddle.
• He can use all the blandishments available to pressurise at least one Socialist representative to defect. This is of course compatible with either one of the first two options.

As for the Socialists, what can they do?

• The option offering most stability would be a grand coalition with the Nationalists. But then they would be in the junior position, and Patxi López really really wants a shot at the presidency.
• They could form a government of the Spanish parties. It’s mathematically possible, but fraught with dangers. The formation of a government consisting entirely of Spanish parties, including the post-Francoist PP, with only a minority of the popular vote and with a strong españolista bias, could quite easily lead to mayhem on the streets. It could also put pressure on the PSOE’s more Bascophile wing and, as noted, it would only take one defection to bring them down. What’s more, there could be serious knock-on effects for the national PSOE, whose majority in the Madrid parliament depends on Basque votes, or for their alliances with nationalists in Catalunya and Galicia.
• The option the PSOE leadership seem to be pursuing at the minute is for a minority government that would be tolerated by the PP without actually bringing the PP into government. This, to be frank, is neither fish nor fowl, and looks even less like lasting a four-year term.

So there will be some interesting horse-trading ahead. But as already noted, there was also the banning of the radical nationalists from the poll, which brings to five the number of nationalist parties banned in recent years. The legal argument is based on these various formations’ links to ETA, but it’s carried out under a political parties law so broadly written that even a non-violent pro-independence party like Aralar could quite conceivably be banned on the sole grounds that its political programme has similarities to that of ETA.

There’s a strong feeling among Basque nationalists that this has been a crude gerrymander aimed at benefiting the Socialists. There may be something to that, but I think there’s much more to it, in terms of how the Basques fit – or rather don’t – into the Spanish body politic. You could, if you were historically minded enough, go way back to the Carlist Wars, and note that the Carlist rebels drew their strongest popular base from Euskadi, Catalunya and Aragón – that is, regions that had both a tradition of feudal autonomy and cultural abstand vis-à-vis the dominant Castilian nationality. Or you could note the emergence of modern Basque and Catalan nationalisms as mass movements after the Disaster of 1898, with the consequence that the other nationalists – the Spanish nationalists – have never really forgiven the Basques or Catalans for “insulting the nation.” Hence the extreme repression in Euskadi under the Franco regime.

Some of this, it is true, has been ameliorated by decentralising reforms dating from the post-Franco transition, but the beefs haven’t been eliminated. It is frequently pointed out that the 1978 constitution, passed without a Basque majority, is the only constitution in the history of the Spanish state that declared Castilian the sole official language. Nor that the army was given the constitutional duty to intervene in the case of a threat to the unity of the kingdom. The reactions from Madrid in recent years to proposed reforms of the Basque and Catalan autonomy statutes – falling well short of independence – show that the national issue is a long way from being resolved.

So, how does this tie in to Madrid’s current politic? The persistent outlawing of nationalist parties, associations and publications betray a desire to make the Basque national issue into a security issue pure and simple. This isn’t just for propaganda purposes, but also because the Spanish state reckons that an armed ETA campaign can be contained fairly easily, even if the organisation can’t be definitively defeated. What’s more, casting the national question as a terrorism problem heads off criticism from abroad. That’s how the 1980s PSOE government of Felipe González orchestrated kidnapping, torture and murder on an epic scale without a peep of protest from the UN or the Council of Europe.

By contrast, look at what happened when ETA declared a ceasefire in 1998. Of course, Madrid wouldn’t open up talks with Herri Batasuna, but the then government did agree to talk to the constitutional Basque parties. To their horror, the constitutional nationalists started placing nationalist demands on the Spanish. What was even worse was the Catalan and Galician nationalists, sniffing a constitutional revision, trying to get in on the action. This is Madrid’s real nightmare – not the disruption and occasional death caused by a small armed group, but a political movement amongst the minority nationalities that might unravel the entire state.

Which is why this small corner of the state still has the potential to strike real fear into the central government.