CroSSroads
JOSE RAMON CASTANOS
"TROGLO'* THE Spanish state elections of March 2000 transmit an image of Basque society which is opposite to that offered by the
Basque and Navarrian elections of 1998 and 1999.
- F one could then observe a progression of the Basque parties in relation to the
"Spanish centralists", ", this was reversed in favor of the latter at the elections of March 2000. To get an idea of the tendencies at work, consider the figures shown in the attached table of electoral results.
Several things are apparent. In the first place, it is clear that the Basque electorate votes in a very different manner depending on whether the framework is local, national (Basque country or Navarre) or that of the Spanish state, and that the majorities can change from one ballot to the other. Secondly, apart from some light vicissitudes, a political fracture between opposed blocs - supporters of Basque sovereignty and Spanish constitutionalists - persists and divides Basque society into two. On the other hand, the data for the Basque and Navarrian autonomous regions shows an inversion of majorities, emphasizing the difficulty of articulating a unified political regime in the two territories.
Concerning the elections of March 2000, the results of the Spanish elections in the Basque country could be summed up thus:
- A progression for the PP-UPN!;
Electoral results in the Basque country and Navarre (000s of votes)
- A continued decline of the PSOE;
- A displacement of the leadership in the "Spanish centralist" bloc from the social-democratic left to the postFrancoist right;
- The disappearance of Izquierda Unida as an electoral point of reference in the
Spanish elections
1993 1996 2000
Euskadi *
Basque regional
Navarre regional
1994 1998
1995 1999
Basque country;
- A crushing defeat for the abstentionist policy of the nationalist left, because it
352 PNV gave the electoral majority to the Spanish centralist right, and was only observed by
7% of its own electorate.
- The electoral progress of the PNV, which succeeded in reaffirming its political leadership of the Lizarra Pact because of the number of votes coming from the
PNV 292 319 EA 130 116 101 HB 174 154 Abs. Total 596 589 ? PSOE 291 295 347 PP-UPN 191 311 472
482
304 350 PNV 15 17 EA 104 108 14 16 HB-EH 165 222 EH 25 47 Total 573 680 Total 54 80 PSOE 175 220 PSOE 248 275 PP - 174 266 UPN 240 346 Total nationalist left.
A profound change? 103 165 85 93 70 Us +121 75 Has there been such a profound (Izquierda Unida has participated in both opposed blocs over the years, even if change as the electoral arithmetic would appear to show? The strong impression recently it is undeniably aligned with the pro-sovereignty bloc). given by these results has led to some very superficial commentaries. But to understand the complexity of the Basque labyrinth it is necessary to get away from "ideological readings" of reality. All the media have, for example, assimilated the progress of the PP with the idea of a Basque people supposedly converted to Spanish national ideology.
This ideological reading of reality is obviously a politically motivated mystification, as we will see later. But something identical is going on in the opposite sense inside the "nationalist front". The propagandists, in their desire to take their dreams for reality, banalize the triumph of the Spanish centralist right as if it implied no modification of the political situation. They point out with some justification that the mass of the Basque electorate tends to behave in a different fashion according to the type of electoral consultation.
In the table of results attached, it can be seen that in Basque elections there is an increased tendency towards the "useful vote" for the nationalist parties, for these elections decide the national (i.e. Basque) political regime, whereas in the Spanish elections, where the question of state power is settled, the tendency to the useful vote helps the Spanish parties (PSOE, PP, IU).
Any serious analysis must take these elements into account, inasmuch as this electoral behavior has persisted for more than 20 years. But they do not explain the
Total 606 819 IU social breadth taken on by the tendency to the useful vote for the Spanish centralist parties, nor the gravity of this problem in Navarre, nor the displacement of the PSOE vote towards the PP, nor the concentration of the useful vote around the PNV. Like it or not, the reality is there, giving us an image opposite to that given 18 months previously with the hope inspired by the Lizarra Pact.
These elections have expressed a very profound political change in the perception society has of the political parties and the propositions they formulate. This change is particularly important so far as the Socialist Party and the nationalist left are concerned, the two having been, in their manner, directly responsible for the crisis of leadership inside the Lizarra Pact. The PSOE because it has refused to participate in the opportunity for a dialogue-based solution to the national problem and the question of violence. The nationalist left because the unilateral breaking of the military ceasefire has made ETA responsible for the general reversal of the political tendencies opened up since Lizarra.
Even if it sometime gives such an impression, the Basque crisis has not reached the point where we face an irreversible change. The situation can be stabilized, providing the two key pieces on the chessboard, the Socialist Party and the nationalist left, modify their respective political strategies. For that to happen, they must begin by recognizing their errors, for
349 486 Total 488 621 it is these (and these alone) which have led to defeat.
### Retrenchment of blocs
Basque society is divided into 2 irreconcilable political blocs: the project of sovereignty represented by the Lizarra Pact and the Spanish constitutionalist project of the Forum of Enea. It is necessary immediately to say that these blocs do not correspond to a supposed division between indigenous Basques and Spanish immigrants. Nor is there a fracture of cohabitation between two national communities, between those who define themselves as nationalists and "solely Basque", and those who identify themselves as "BasqueSpanish" and constitutionalists. The delimitation of these political factions 20 years ago was the inevitable consequence of a political act: the Basque rejection of the Spanish constitution. It was a problem that had nothing to do with the conflicts of identity, to the extent that when classifying the parties of the Spanish left in the Basque country it is not always correct to include them in the Spanish centralist bloc. All the more so in the case of the first legislative elections, during which the PSOE had gambled on the theses of self-determination, or in the case of the Basque section of Izquierda Unida, which participated actively in the Lizarra Pact up until ETA's decision to end their ceasefire. - Understanding Basque politics means International Viewpoint #321 May 2000 11
USKAL PRESOAK
* Euskadi grasping the dialectic of this politics of blocs, of which the most significant traits are the following:
- Permeability, which is increased because the partisans of the one bloc are never completely the same and each of the political parties participate in alliances with the parties of the other bloc. This is the case for the intertwined alliances which have existed in the course of the last 20 years - pacts of government, social alliances opposed to political alliances, inter-nationalist alliances superimposed on anti-terrorist pacts, and so on.
- The equilibrium of forces divides Basque society into 2 equal parts. What is characteristic is the imposed cohabitation of the pro-sovereignty tendencies
Lizarra and the opposed tendencies, in left insolently turns its back on it. Far from (Fernando Buesa) in the midst of the elecsuch a manner that the apparently overwhelming success of one of the two parties in an election should not be overestimated, for often the opposite occurs some months after in the following consultation.
- The retrenchment of these political blocs generates a situation of infinite equality, whose lasting consequence is a crisis of national leadership. Given that this situation reoccurs in the same terms at each electoral cycle which opens, one can understand the difficulty experienced by each bloc in gaining qualified electoral majorities.
- The novelty of the present situation is that the political gap separating the two blocs has been radicalized by each of the extremes: the Spanish government wants to resolve the Basque problem through repression, and ETA aspires to recreate the conditions for a negotiated solution, showing through armed actions that it cannot be ignored. The efforts of the Lizarra Pact to go beyond the dialectic of the blocs have for the moment foundered.
The frontier moves
Despite everything, the frontier between the political blocs is moving. It is changing in two opposed directions, in an ebb and flow movement. The equilibrium shifted first in favor of the pro-sovereignty bloc (the Lizarra Pact), but the Spanish government's resistance to change and the evolution of the Socialist Party (abandoning its alliance with the PNV in favor of a pact with the PP) shifted the balance in the opposite direction.
The Lizarra Pact has experienced difficulties in developing itself. The Spanish 12 International Viewpoint #321 May 2000 defending the democratic rights of nationalities, it has become one of the pillars of the centralist state. Its campaign against Basque nationalism has helped to mobilize Spanish public opinion against the rights of nationalities in general, leading in the process to the paralysis of the Barcelona Declaration (an alliance of Basque, Catalan and Galician nationalists). Fear of becoming the target of Spanish centralist fury has meant that this front of nationalities now devotes itself to empty declarations on the national question, without any commitment to solidarity-based action for the collective right to self-determination. The resulting isolation is still more evident as the doors of the European chancelleries remain closed, and this change of mood has provoked a political nervousness and the modification of ETA's political strategy. Its decision to end its ceasefire shifted the political center of gravity to the right. The gap between the political blocs has changed, but not in the direction hoped for following the Lizarra Pact.
The Penelope syndrome
Those of us who wished to see the breakdown of the ETA ceasefire as a warning to the government, the Socialist Party and the PNV were wrong. ETA put its threat into practice by assassinating a soldier in Madrid. We then hoped it amounted to a tactical rupture; a sort of concretization of the threat so that it would be taken seriously. At the end of the day, ETA had shown its operational capacity and its willingness to act if it was not taken seriously. We were wrong again. ETA killed the spokesperson of the Basque Socialists toral campaign and thus provoked a general crisis with unforeseeable consequences.
ETA has weakened the credibility of the Lizarra Pact and parliamentary alliance. Who will believe in the viability of this project when none of the political, trade union and social forces which support it are capable of ensuring that the weapons remain silent? How can the credibility of a government (of the Basque country) which rested on a pact which ETA has not respected be maintained? ETA has also undermined the credibility of the nationalist left's ability to lead a movement of refoundation of the Basque left. This process has been brutally interrupted, for there can be no regroupment of forces, no alliance between the political and trade union left, no renewal of discourse, no construction of new ideological values with a reactivated armed struggle.
The political autonomy of the organizations of the nationalist left (Euskal Herritarrok, the LAB trade union, and so on) in relation to ETA has been radically "frozen" as a consequence of the "solidarity" demanded by the armed struggle. The dead weight of state repression (500 prisoners and 2,600 exiles) generates a unity between the civil organizations and the military organization despite the enormous political divergences that exist between them.
ETA's strategies play on emotional blackmail. Like Penelope in the Odyssey, they devote themselves to unraveling in the night the tapestry of political alliances woven in the morning by the civil organizations of the nationalist left. So long as this relationship of tutelage, of quasi-vassalage, exists, there will be no future for
the left or for the Basque nation.
### Degeneration of Socialism
The degeneration of Basque Socialism is another determinant factor of the logjam in the political resolution of the conflict. It is a problem perceived by the majority of society but recognized by only some of the ruling Socialists. The PSOE accuses ETA of being an autistic organization, but this qualification of political autism could also be applied to the Socialists. Today, nobody inside the leadership of the Socialist Party recognizes that the shift of political leadership towards the Spanish centralist right can be attributed to the passivity of the PSOE.
It is undeniable that the resumption of the armed struggle by ETA has mobilized in reaction the votes of depoliticised sectors of society (generally abstentionists) against the idea of barbarism invoked by political assassination. This does not amount to a Spanish centralist and antiBasque vote as the PP seek to claim, but a vote against violent methods of political action. However, this does not explain why this vote of reaction against ETA was cast for the right and not for the social democтасу. The origins of the socialist defeat should be sought in the change of political alliances promoted by the team of Fernando Buesa (assassinated by ETA during the electoral campaign) and Nicolas Redondo, who, unlike his father, the charismatic UGT leader who radically opposed the liberal-socialism of Félipe González, has broken the historic continuity of Basque Socialism and its political alliance with democratic nationalism.
The PSOE-PNV alliance goes back to the San Sebastián Pact of 1931 for the proclamation of the second Spanish Republic, and continued in the context of the first statute of Basque autonomy (1936), the civil war against fascism, the democratic resistance against the Francoist dictatorship, the preparation of the Statute of Guernica (1977) and over the 20 following years the autonomous Basque government.
The consistency of this alliance allowed the integration into citizenship of the 50% of the Basque population which is of non-Basque origin, and three successive generations of Basque citizens have been educated in this culture of dialogue and cultural exchange. The big error of the
Buesa-Redondo team has been to reverse this historic tradition in favor of an alliance with the PP. What was initially presented as a tactical breaking of the governmental pact with the PNV to carve out an electoral space became in the course of time a general reversal of political alliance.
The selective critique of the PNV has developed into the defense of the centralized constitution. The road of dialogue to resolve the problem of violence has been bypassed in favor of radical opposition to the peace plan put forward by president Ardanza, and opposition to the Lizarra Pact, even though this latter led to the ETA ceasefire and the offer of dialogue.
Basque Socialism has thus lost its historic role. Where there was previously a conscious search for an integrated sense of citizenship there is now the idea of a political split of a Basque-Spanish community located in the working class of non-Basque origin. Where previously there existed a discourse of dialogue and détente there is now a discourse of war and unconditional support for the right's anti-terrorist policy. This renunciation of a democratic and social profile of the left in relation to the right has produced the inevitable; to finish off violence and radical nationalism, it is better to choose the original than the copy, the well known firmness of the right rather than the bragging of a left which apes it.
The other problem is that the defeat of the PSOE contributed to the defeat of Izquierda Unida, which lost its single deputy. The accumulation of these debacles implies a change of great breadth.
### Need for regeneration the Basque of the two polin. the PSOE on In order to open new perspectives for the Basque crisis, what is necessary is a the one hand, the nationalist left on the other. The Socialist Party is beginning to show signs of change, but the manner in which this organization will finally evolve will not only be conditioned by the Basque situation but above all by the way its crisis of leadership at the level of the Spanish state is resolved. None of the three following possible hypotheses should be ruled out:
a) A radical upheaval of leaderships and political projects at the federal scale. This hypothesis, not very probable, should not then form the basis of speculation.
b) A tightening of grip on the leader-
Euskadi * ship of the party by the "barons" of the "félipiste" apparatus. In this case, taking account of the narrow Spanish centralism of the Castilians, the Extramadurians and the Andalusians, Basque socialism will remain anchored in the Spanish centralist fold that we are familiar with.
c) The equilibrium of forces between the different "baronies" (the above-mentioned group on the one hand, the Catalans of Maragall and the Basque group accused of "nationalist deviations" on the other) allowing an autonomy of action for each of the parties. According to this supposition, if the Basque socialists can act without centralist subjugation, they will undoubtedly return to their historic tradition of preferential alliance with democratic nationalism. But the problem would then again be agreement on the content of Basque autonomy (what political sovereignty?), the explicit recognition of territorial unity (between the Basque country and Navarre) and the reopening of dialogue with Euskal Herritarrok and ETA. We are sure that this is the political gamble and the offer made by the PNV.
We can also be certain that the social legitimation the elections have given to the policy of repressive solutions implemented up to now by the Spanish centralist right can endanger Spanish democracy (given the totalitarian temptations the PP's absolute majority will present) and that this could lead Basque socialists to give a radical turn to their national policy. Let us note in passing that the Catalan and Galician nationalists are also faced with the possibility of drawing up, together with the Basque nationalists and the socialists, a new democratic alliance capable of definitively resolving the problem of the articulation of nationalisms in a new European context. The task is a hard one but it is worth the effort. It amounts to building a broader understanding on the basis of Lizarra, which can include the Basque socialists and attract trades unionists in the UGT and CCOO. The condition will be the same as that which made possible the Lizarra Pact - ETA's resumption of its ceasefire, this time on a definitive basis, given the loss of credibility occasioned by its breakdown. This is the only way of giving civil society and democratic debate the place they deserve, in place of tutelary alliances and political blackmail. * * The author represents the Charter of Social Rights (GOGOA) inside the Lizarra pact. 1. The UPN is the sister organization of the PP in Euskadi.
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