Yesterday's elections in Euskadi

Elections to the Basque Autonomous Community were held yesterday. In many ways, not much changed. The EAJ-PNV were the largest party before, and will remain in power as the largest party now. However I think it's worth looking at the result in a little more detail to see what light it sheds on the constitutional relationship between Euskadi and Spain.

October 2012

EAJ-PNV ... 27 seats ... 34.2%
EH Bildu ... 21 seats ... 24.7%
PSE-EE ... 16 seats ... 18.9%
PP ... 10 seats ... 11.6%
UPyD ... 1 seats ... 1.9%

September 2016

EAJ-PNV ... 29 seats (+2) ... 37.7% (+ 3.5%)
EH Bildu ... 17 seats (-4) ... 21.2% (-3.5%)
Elkarrekin Podemos ... 11 seats (+11) ... 14.8% (+14.8%)
PSE-EE ... 9 seats (-7) ... 11.9% (-7.0%)
PP ... 9 seats (-1) ... 11.6% (-1.4%)
Cs ... 0 seats (n/c) ... 2% (+ 2%)

Basque Parliamentary Election Results

It's worth noting that each of the three provinces of the BAC have 25 seats each, even though Araba with a population of 322,500 is much smaller than Bizkaia with 1.16m and Gipuzkoa with 715,000. This means that there isn't an exact correlation between seats and the percentage of the vote won. There is also a 3% threshold in each province.

I think it's probably best to look at this from the perspective of the left and right sides of the political spectrum.

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There are two main parties on the right: the Basque nationalist EAJ-PNV, and the Spanish nationalist PP. Additionally, I would consider the centrist Cs to lean more right than the left, and they are also fierce Spanish nationalists, but they failed to win any seats in this election.

Overall the right-leaning vote has gone up a little, but not much. The EAJ-PNV's increase is offset by the PP's decrease, continuing the trend of the Basques preferring their own nationalist parties over the Spanish nationalist parties.

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On the left, things have been changed quite dramatically by the entry of Podemos, fighting as Elkarrekin Podemos. They have risen from nowhere to gain 11 seats with 14.8% of the vote. This has come at the expense of the other two left-leaning parties, the Basque nationalist EH Bildu and the Spanish nationalist PSE-EE, but not equally. The PSE-EE's losses have been much greater than those of EH Bildu.

To understand what this might mean in terms of Euskadi's relationship with Spain, we need to look at Elkarrekin Podemos' policy platform, which is here. With apologies for the rough translation this includes:

• We support the Basque Country as a nation, which does not imply any contradiction with our commitment to Spain as a multinational, multilingual state.

• We advocate the holding of a referendum in which citizens can ... choose between alternatives, including separation from the rest of the state.

In a nutshell, this echoes the position of Podemos with regard to Catalunya: namely that they are in favour of referendums which include the option of independence, even though they would prefer to see Spain change to become a federation of nations.

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So across the political spectrum, there are now three parties which support the people of Euskadi having the right to decide their future in a referendum which includes independence as an option. Together, these parties won nearly three-quarters of the vote. That is too great a percentage for even Madrid to ignore.

It's harder to say what proportion would vote for independence in such a referendum. First, because it would depend on whether a federal option is on the table and what form it takes. And second, because even though nearly all the EH Bildu vote would be for independence, it is less clear how supporters of the EAJ-PNV would vote. Some definitely want independence, the others would want more autonomy, but might not want to go all the way.

Personally, I find it quite hard to see how the Basques could have more autonomy within Spain. Unlike Catalunya, the three provinces of the BAC and Nafarroa already have almost complete fiscal autonomy. I also find it hard to see Spain agreeing to any form of federalism. They would see it as a slippery slope to independence.

Yet Spain is in a state of political paralysis at present, with parties still unable to form a government in Madrid after a second general election; and one way in which that impasse could be resolved is if one of the two big parties in Spain, the PP and PSOE (through the PSOE is more likely to do so), agreed to a vote on constitutional change in Euskadi and Catalunya in return for support from Podemos and the various Basque and Catalan nationalists. The problem is that they cannot put only the option of federalism to a vote (as the PSOE would probably like) but that independence must be an option too. Yet once that precedent has been allowed, Spain then stands to lose not only Euskadi and Catalunya, but the Balearics as well, perhaps followed in due course by Galicia and Valencia.

No one should be sent to prison for their ideas

It's good that Arnaldo Otegi has finally been released from prison. This report in the Irish Times quotes him as saying:

"They say that in Spain there are no political prisoners, but you just have to look at the number of cameras here to see that yes, they do exist.

"I went in as a Basque speaker and I come out as a Basque speaker. I went in as a socialist and I come out a socialist. I went in wanting independence and I come out wanting independence."

Irish Times, 1 March 2016

He also received this support in the form of a tweet from Pablo Iglesias, the leader of Podemos:

La libertad de Otegi es una buena noticia para los demócratas. Nadie debería ir a la cárcel por sus ideas

— Pablo Iglesias (@Pablo_Iglesias_) March 1, 2016

      The release of Otegi is good news for democrats.
      No one should be sent to prison for their ideas.

What might happen next? There is no doubt that Otegi is the towering figure of the pro-independence left in the Euskal Herria, and he is bound to take a prominent role with EH Bildu in the Basque Parliament elections scheduled for November this year. The only problem he faces is that when he was sentenced for his role in reviving Herri Batasuna after the Spanish State banned it, he was himself banned from public office until 2021.

For the moment, however, the focus lies elsewhere. The Catalans are steadily setting up the institutions necessary for Catalunya to function as as independent state, and Spain itself is in political limbo after the elections of December last year. The Spanish situation will, probably, be clear in a few months ... either because a new government will have been agreed, or because new elections will have been held. Once we know how that situation pans out, the battle lines for November will be that much clearer. But there is little doubt that independence for the Basque Autonomous Community will be on the agenda. As Otegi said recently in a written statement from prison:

"Sooner rather than later we will use the right to self-determination and thus transform ourselves into a new state of Europe."

New York Times, 29 February 2016

Steady growth in Euskara-medium education

Prompted by this article on Nationalia, I've just been skimming through the Fourth Report of the Committee of Experts on regional and minority languages in respect of Spain, and was encouraged to see the continued growth of education through the medium of Euskara, the Basque language, in sections 372-378.

2010-11

Pre-school ... 71.1%
Primary ... 63.7%
Secondary ... 55.9%

2011-12

Pre-school ... 72.3%
Primary ... 65.4%
Secondary ... 57.7%

2012-13

Pre-school ... 73.5%
Primary ... 67.4%
Secondary ... 59.4%

The next sections of the report also provide a useful insight into the place of adult education in developing new speakers of the language:

381 ... The Advisory Council on Basque has found that of the approximately 300,000 new Basque speakers attracted over the last three decades, 100,000 came from the teaching of adults and adult literacy and 200,000 from the general education system.

I must admit to some surprise at how high the figure for adult education is. Certainly we don't put anywhere near the same emphasis on teaching Welsh to adults. But then again, neither do we make competence in Welsh a reqirement for all but a small percentage of jobs in the public sector, nor do we fund adult leaning of Welsh to the tune of over €30m (£23m) a year.

A human chain across Euskadi

What better way can there be to spend a sunny Sunday than to form a human chain across your country for the right to determine your own future?

That's what happened today in Euskadi, and this video of it is from a report in English at argia.com:

     

The movement is called “Gure esku dago” (It's in our hands) and the organizers were hoping to get 50,000 participants. But three times that number turned out.

     

     

     

What's special about this is that it's not something that has been organized by political parties, but by civic society. In party political terms, Basque nationalists are doing very well, with both the centre-right EAJ-PNV and more left wing EH Bildu outpolling the equivalent Spanish nationalist parties. But there seems to be a political paralysis in terms of pressing for independence as both parties wait to see what is going to happen in Catalunya in November.

I'm convinced that popular movements of this sort are rather more important in setting the agenda for independence than the efforts of political parties. Mass events like this are what finally convinced the main nationalist party in Catalunya, the CiU, to get off the fence and adopt a policy of independence. The people led the way, and the political establishment was then left with no choice other than to respond.

So if we in Wales are unhappy with the way our political parties are making the case for the people of Wales to decide what's best for Wales, we need to learn from this. If we rely on political parties to set the agenda for us, we're likely to be disappointed. If we set the agenda, the political parties will respond.

European elections in other stateless nations

I thought it would be good to look at how other stateless nations on the path to independence voted in the European Parliament elections yesterday.

 
Catalunya

The big news in Catalunya is that the ERC, the Catalan Republican Left, has topped the poll in Catalunya for the first time in the post-Franco era, pushing CiU into second place.

     

On the right of the political spectrum, the Catalan nationalist (although only recently pro-independence) CiU has always been comfortably ahead of the Spanish nationalist PP. But on the left of the political spectrum ERC has generally played second fiddle to the Spanish nationalist PSC. Although they narrowly beat the PSC in the last Catalan parliament election, they came second to CiU.

So things still look good for the independence referendum on 9 November.

This is a picture of what I would like to see happen in Wales. Plaid Cymru, the Welsh nationalist left, is in a similar position to that which ERC used to hold: always playing second fiddle to Labour, the British nationalist left. Things have now swung the other way in Catalunya, and the same could happen in Wales with Plaid.

 
Euskadi

In the three provinces of the Basque Autonomous Community, the picture is similar, but with left and right reversed. The EAJ-PNV, the Basque nationalist right traditionally outperforms the Spanish nationalist right of the PP, and has done so again by 27% to 10%. It is only in the past few years that the pro-independence left has got its act together (under various names) but the current EH Bildu has comfortably outperformed the PSOE by 23% to 13%.

     

So things also look good for Basque independence, however I don't expect much to happen in the immediate future. It's probably best for the Basques not to make waves and wait to see what happens in Catalunya. But, besides that, it might well be counter-productive for the three provinces to make any move without first re-uniting with Nafarroa.

In Nafarroa, the fourth Basque province south of the Pyrenees, EH Bildu have done remarkably well with 20% of the vote. The Basque nationalist right in Nafarroa has never been particularly well-established, tending to be allied with the PP when not part of it, and preferring to paint itself as Nafarroan rather than Basque (the situation is similar in Galicia, Valencia and the Balearics). The EAJ-PNV did stand but only got 2% of the vote.

 
The Spanish State

In terms of these European elections, the Spanish State elects on the basis of a single list, therefore the situation is complicated by alliances that tend to change at each European election. But this is what happened this time round:

     

•  The ERC stood with other pro-self-determination parties of the left in Catalunya as L'Esquerra pel Dret a Decidir, and won 2 seats.

•  The Catalan and Basque nationalist parties of the right, CiU and EAJ-PNV stood as Coalición por Europa, and won 3 seats.

•  EH Bildu turned to BNG, the Galician nationalist left, to stand as Los Pueblos Deciden, and won 1 seat.

6 nationalist seats out of 54 in total is actually a very good performance; perhaps 7 if Primavera Europea, which includes Compromís, the small and relatively new Valencian nationalist party, is counted. This is much better than Plaid Cymru and the SNP's combined total of 3 out of 70 ... or 4 out of 73 if we include Sinn Féin's win in the Six Counties.

 
Flanders

There were federal, regional and European elections in Belgium yesterday. The Flemish nationalist party, N-VA, did exceptionally well in all three. They got 32.6% of the Federal Parliament vote (up 4.4%), 31.9% of the Flemish Parliament vote (up 18.8%) and 26.7% (up 16.8%) of the European Parliament vote.

     

     

     

After the last federal elections in 2010 there was an impasse lasting 541 days before a federal government could be formed ... something which only went to show that Belgium doesn't really need a federal government to function, because so much of the real power is already exercised at regional level.

In the end, the N-VA, even though it was the largest party in 2010, was squeezed out of power by a coalition of nearly all the other parties. The N-VA took the view that it was better not to compromise on the more substantial constitutional reform they wanted, and let the other parties implement a modest sixth round of reform. Bart de Wever's stance appears to have been vindicated, and their success now will inevitably lead to a stronger seventh round of constitutional reforms which will further increase Flemish autonomy and weaken Belgium as a political entity. The idea is that, "Slowly but surely, Belgium will very gently disappear."

Constitutional reform (the N-VA's bottom line in forming a federal government) should be quicker this time round, not so much because other parties will be any more willing to work with the N-VA, but because they probably only need to hammer out a package with a couple of other parties, rather than with half a dozen of them.

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We should bear in mind that although the N-VA is a nationalist party which wants to see the break up of Belgium, it is unashamedly a party of the right. So I support the first aim, even though I don't support the policies they would implement if they were in government in an independent Flanders. But that's democracy.

Perhaps the best way to illustrate the gulf is to watch the video below.

     

Pass the sick bucket, please. Bart de Wever is pretty chummy with David Cameron too.

     

I wonder if the Tories realize the inconsistency of supporting the party which wants independence for Flanders and the break up of Belgium, while at the very same time being against independence for Wales and Scotland and the break up of the UK?

Actually, I'm sure they do; but reckon on nobody in the mainstream media being willing to hold them to account for it.

The Collapse of the Centralist Left

Before it becomes old news, I'd like to draw attention to the latest political opinion poll in Catalunya, as published in El Periódico last week.

The most notable thing about it is the remarkable surge of support for ERC, the Catalan Republican Left, the only party in Catalunya to have consistently supported independence. They are Plaid Cymru's sister party in the EFA Group in the European Parliament.

     

•  ERC - Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya ... left, Catalan
•  CiU - Convergència i Unió ... centre-right, Catalan
•  PSC - Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya ... centre-left, Spanish
•  ICV - Iniciativa per Catalunya Verds ... eco-socialist, Catalan
•  PP - Partido Popular ... right, Spanish
•  Cs - Ciutadans ... left, Spanish
•  CUP - Candidatura d'Unitat Popular ... left, Catalan

The result of the election in November 2012 is shown in the inner ring, and my thoughts on that result are here. In the negotiations after the election, CiU had wanted to form a coalition with ERC, but in the end formed a minority government without support from any other party. They were able to do this because there is no way that a right wing, anti-independence party like the PP would ever see eye-to-eye with left wing, pro-independence parties like ERC and CUP, and would never vote the same way on any issue. Therefore the PP's 19 votes are effectively cancelled by 19 of the votes from ERC and CUP deputies, and with 38 votes effectively "paired" CiU can just about govern on their own.

ERC did, however, commit themselves to not vote against CiU on no-confidence issues that could bring down the government and force an early election, provided that sufficient progress was made on moving towards independence. This seems to be happening, and there will almost certainly be a referendum on independence in 2014.

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In one sense, the swing away from CiU shown in this poll is only to be expected. Having to preside over a programme of austerity (forced in the sense that the Spanish government has required the Autonomous Communities cut their deficit much more stringently than central government has had to do, but not forced in the sense that CiU are a right-of-centre party that would make those sorts of cuts anyway) is hardly likely to make any government popular. So the swing from right to left is no great surprise.

What is interesting is that the swing has not benefited the pro-Spanish PSC, which had always been the largest party of the left until last year's election. The swing has instead gone primarily to ERC who have all but doubled their support and are now the largest party, but with ICV and the Cs also making gains. In other words, it has gone to parties which have unequivocal views on the matter of self-determination. The lion's share has gone to the pro-independence and pro-right-to-decide parties, ERC and ICV, but some has gone to the unequivocally pro-Spanish, anti-independence Cs. The PSC has been squeezed out because it has tried to sit on the fence. It has tried to be pro-Spanish to the Spanish and pro-Catalan to the Catalans, but it can't have it both ways.

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I think there are lessons to be learned from this, and from what happened in the election in Euskadi. In both countries support for the major Spanish left-of-centre party (PSC in Catalunya and PSE-EE in Euskadi, but both are no more than local branches of the centralist PSOE) has collapsed, with the majority of their support switching to nationalist left-of-centre parties instead.

What is happening in Spain is also happening in the UK. The Labour Party, even though it tries to market itself as having Welsh and Scottish versions, is essentially monolithic. It will always gear itself to policies tailored to win support in the UK as a whole ... and this, of course, means England, because about 85% of the UK's population lives in England. By definition, this means that the Labour Party cannot stand up for the interests of Wales and Scotland on matters where our national interests differ from those of England. It can't have it both ways, and once this simple fact becomes clear to the electorate, voting patterns that have been ingrained for decades will suddenly shift from the centralist left to the nationalist left.

It has happened in Scotland with the SNP. It has happened in Euskadi with EH Bildu. It has now happened in Catalunya with ERC ... and exactly the same will happen in Wales with Plaid Cymru.

A separate Basque Regional Authority in France

As I'm sure most people who read Syniadau will know, the Euskal Herria comprises seven provinces split between Spain and France. The four provinces under Spanish sovereignty enjoy a significant degree of autonomy. Three of them—Bizkaia, Gipuzkoa and Araba—form the Basque Autonomous Community, and the fourth—Nafarroa—is an Autonomous Community in its own right. But France is a much more centralized state, and the three Basque provinces under French sovereignty—Lapurdi, Zuberoa and Nafarroa Beherea—were subsumed into the larger Basses-Pyrénées Départment (now Pyrénées-Atlantiques) immediately after the French revolution and have had no specific political identity for the past two hundred years.

       

Needless to say, the Basques have been pressing for change for some time, but things now seem to have come to a head. The reason for this is that François Hollande had made the promise of a further (a third) Act of Decentralization one of the main planks of his election campaign.

There's a good explanatory article here. The aim is effectively to create a new regional authority with responsibility for housing, public transport, agriculture, tourism, economy, culture, the Basque language Euskara, and cross-border cooperation. A large rally is being held today in Bayonne in support of this, including:

Political parties of all colours (including representatives of the Socialist Party and UMP), unions, and hundreds of social and business leaders, among others. In addition, 103 of the 158 mayors have supported the Northern Basque Country's territorial claim.

The Territorial Coordinator stressed that the agreement reached in Iparralde Euskal Herria is historical: "There has never been such widespread agreement about the territorial collectivity. This initiative has been pondered and worked for a long time and reflects the political sensitivities and the diversity of the different sectors of society."

EITB, 31 May 2013

But even with such widespread support, there is going to be some resistance from within the French Government. The Interior Minister, Manuel Valls, said this on Thursday:

"I can tell you with the utmost clarity that neither a Basque department or a local authority are on the agenda of the government," said Mr. Valls in response to a question on this point at a press conference in Salles (Gironde), where he participated in a meeting on forest fires in the Landes.

"There may be proposals, events, forums, but these proposals have meaning only if they are within the laws of the Republic and under the constitution," he added.

Le Parisien, 30 May 2013

Well, that's the whole point of mass movements and political lobbying, isn't it? It will happen if there is enough political support to get it through the National Assembly, and the fact that people from both the Parti Socialiste and UMP support it is surely a hopeful sign. There is absolutely no constitutional reason why there shouldn't be a referendum on the issue. In April this year there was a referendum on the proposed merger of Haut-Rhin and Bas-Rhin to create a similar Alsace Regional Authority ... though it was defeated, as reported here.

This map is from the Greens' (EELV) website, showing how they would like to see regional reorganization in France. As well as the split of Pyrénées-Atlantiques into Pays Basques and Béarn, Loire-Atlantique would be reunited with the other four Breton départments (another long-standing demand which has been given renewed momentum by Acte III de la décentralisation, as reported here) and Normandy would also be reunited.

     

Devolution in what has until now been one of the most highly centralized states in Europe might well turn out to be François Hollande's greatest legacy.

Some sort of Gold Standard? Far from it!

I had to read Rhodri Talfan Davies' speech at the Celtic Media Festival last week several times to try and figure out what he had to say about Radio Cymru, and in the end have had to conclude that he wasn't saying much at all.

But one thing he said strikes me as being at the root of the problem. He said that:

"Welsh language broadcasting is sometimes seen as some sort of gold standard in minority language broadcasting".

Welsh-language broadcasting most definitely isn't any sort of gold standard. If we are looking for a standard to measure ourselves against, then I would suggest that the model of radio broadcasting in Euskadi is very much more appropriate than the model in Wales.

The language situation in Euskadi is very similar to that in Wales. Both countries are about the same size and have about the same proportion of people able to speak Welsh or Euskara. But in terms of radio broadcasting, Wales has only one national radio station broadcasting in Welsh, while Euskadi has three which broadcast in Euskara.
 

     

 
Euskadi Irratia is the original station, which used to carry all content, and now carries talk, news and general broadcasting. But two separate music stations have been added over the years, Gaztea in 1990 and EITB Musika in 2001.

To me it seems self-evident that Radio Cymru's biggest problem is that it cannot possibly cater for all Welsh-speaking audiences at the same time, and therefore I see Rhodri Talfan Davies' launch of a "nationwide conversation" about what it should broadcast as depressingly predicable and rather misdirected. Whatever might be gained in terms of new listeners by including new content will be lost in terms of alienating existing listeners. The emphasis must be on expanding Welsh-language provision rather than re-arranging deckchairs on a boat that cannot stay afloat in its current form.

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The question is whether the BBC is the best organization to deliver it. Spain, like the UK, has a state broadcasting organization called RTVE. Like the BBC, it is good at broadcasting a variety of content across the state but isn't good at regional variations. There was some regional radio provision in the form of RNE Ràdio 4. But because of poor ratings the network was shut down in 1991, and it only now exists in Catalunya where it struggles on with an audience of about 8,500.

The model that has proved far more successful is for broadcasting in the nations and regions to be the responsibility of the governments of the autonomous communities rather than of the central state broadcaster. In Catalunya the public broadcasting corporation is CCMA, in Galicia it is CRTVG, in Andalucía it is RTVA, and in Euskadi it is EITB. Once again, the Basque model might be the best one for Wales to learn from, for as well as radio stations broadcasting in Euskara it also has radio stations which broadcast in Castilian.

A centrally-funded organization is bound to think of itself primarily as a centralized provider, but there is a fundamental conflict of interest if it tries to be both a centralized provider and a vehicle for regional variations at the same time. Spain doesn't have that conflict of interest, the UK does.

The election in Euskadi

A good number of people have reminded me that I haven't written anything about the election in Euskadi last weekend. But GlynBeddau has, and the article on Nationalia is very helpful too.

In this interview, Jill Evans talks about the result with José-Luis Linazasoro from Euskadi and Jordi Bacardit from Catalunya.

     

Early elections in Euskadi

The current leader of the Basque Government has just announced that elections will be held on 21 October this year, five months earlier than would normally be expected.

     
     Paxti López of the PSOE, current Lehendakari of the Basque Autonomous Community

The government that had been formed following the 2009 election was an "unholy alliance" between the two main Spanish parties, the socialist PSOE (or PSE-EE in its local form) and right wing PP, formed with the sole purpose of preventing a nationalist government for the first time in nearly thirty years. Normally the centre-right nationalist EAJ-PNV was able to form a government with occasional support from the smaller left-wing nationalist parties, but last minute bans on two of these parties meant that they won maybe half a dozen fewer seats than they would normally. This blatant gerrymandering proved to be just enough to allow the formation of a PSOE-PP governing coalition ... with a majority of just one in the 75 seat parliament.

Needless to say, it wasn't a particularly happy marriage. It was the equivalent of expecting Labour and the Tories to work together here. Apart from wanting to keep the nationalists out of power, there was practically nothing else they could agree on. The PP withdrew their support from the PSOE after winning power in the Spanish general election in November last year. As we would expect from a right wing party, they embarked on a savage austerity programme involving cuts that no left wing party could be expected to agree with, even though they would probably have done exactly the same thing if they had been in power. The EU wouldn't have given them much choice. Put bluntly, Spain's economy is in such a mess that there is very little room for manoeuvre for either left or right, but a party in opposition always has the luxury of saying they would do something different.

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Perversely, this wasn't helped by the Basque economy being in markedly better shape than anywhere in Spain. While Spanish unemployment is at 24.4%, in Euskadi the figure is 13.5%. Not good, of course, but a lot less bad. Over the years, and with the benefit of almost full fiscal autonomy, the country has become more economically prosperous than any part of Spain. It has a higher credit rating and lower borrowing costs than Spain. Not that it needs to borrow much anyway, for its deficit-to-GDP ratio is only 0.25% compared with Spain's ratio of 90%. The figures are here and here. It all means that Euskadi does not have to take the same extreme steps to put its economy in order as Spain does.

The problem was that Paxti López was rather more focused on his image in Spain than what was happening in Euskadi. He was being widely tipped as a future PSOE leader in Madrid, and his political line was to point to the Basque economy and use it as a supposed example of how much better things would be if Spain adopted the PSOE's cuts than the PP's cuts. Disingenuous because Euskadi's economic success had been built on the foundation of nationalist policies over several decades rather than PSOE policies in the last couple of years. For their part, the PP couldn't continue to work with him while he was playing that game. They withdrew support and he was a dead man walking from then on. He kept denying that he would call early elections, but this announcement has not really come as any big surprise.

       

So what can we expect of these elections? The first thing to say is that the political landscape has completely changed. The pro-independence left was determined to make sure that what happened in 2009 would never be repeated. It acted on two fronts: the parties worked together to form a united platform for elections, and they took pains to disassociate themselves from any connexion with ETA.

In parallel ETA first declared a new ceasefire and later made that ceasefire permanent. Who persuaded whom to do what depends very much on your perspective. For Spain, ETA were in always in the driving seat, and seeking Basque independence by political means was never more than a front for terrorism. Such thinking resulted in the first platform, Sortu, being almost immediately banned on the grounds that anyone who wanted independence must by definition be associated with ETA.

A second platform called Bildu was then formed and banned as well. But when the EAJ-PNV withdrew its support from the minority Spanish government in protest, the Constitutional Tribunal promptly overruled the Supreme Court decision. This showed the world that the Supreme Court's decisions had been taken for political rather than judicial or constitutional reasons, and the Spanish game was effectively over. Bildu stood in the municipal elections of May 2011 and the result was remarkable: it won more seats than any other party.

Analysing that result here and here, the major swing was away from the Spanish left (the PSOE) towards the Basque left (Bildu). Broadly speaking there were now four major parties/groups: a Spanish left and right (the PSOE and PP) and a Basque nationalist left and right (Bildu and the EAJ-PNV), but the Spanish parties were now being marginalized. On the right of the political spectrum the PP had always got far less support than the EAJ-PNV, but now the same was true on the left of the political spectrum as well.

As I saw it, Basque voters with views on the left of the political spectrum had previously been inclined to vote for the Spanish PSOE first because the nationalist left was associated with violence and second because of the confusing number of often squabbling small parties (not of course helped by them frequently getting banned and then reforming as something else). But now that the pro-independence left had finally got its act together, voters started switching en masse from the Spanish left to the Basque left.

In the Spanish general election in November 2011 Bildu expanded to become Amaiur, and once again won more Basque seats than any other party. Details here.

       

The one thing that we can say with almost complete certainty is that Paxti López and the PSOE will be the big losers in the upcoming elections in October. The main contest will be between the Basque nationalist left in the shape of EH Bildu (they haven't quite lost the habit of continually changing their name) and the Basque nationalist centre-right in the shape of the long established EAJ-PNV. The PSOE and PP will be a long way behind.

The opinion polls conducted so far this year (at the bottom of this page) show the EAJ-PNV in a range between 29% and 35%, EH Bildu between 25% and 28%, the PSOE between 15% and 20% and the PP between 12% and 17%. However this won't translate directly into numbers of seats, for although the voting system is proportional in each of the three provinces that form the Basque Autonomous Community, each of them has a flat 25 seats even though they are quite different in terms of population size.

Personally, I would expect the PSOE to be squeezed even more than the polls suggest. Voters do tend to put the knife into a dying party, so I would expect a much closer race between EH Bildu and the EAJ-PNV.

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Whichever party gets most seats, neither EH Bildu nor the EAJ-PNV will be able to govern alone. So the question is whether the next government will be formed on left-right lines or on nationalist lines. There are only three possibilities: the EAJ-PNV could form right-of-centre government with support from the PP; EH Bildu could form a left-of-centre government with support from the PSOE; or there could be a nationalist coalition.

I'll write about the likelihood, and consequences, of each of these outcomes in another post.

Spain: Autonomy under fire

With a hat tip to Reagrupament International, I've just read a remarkably well-informed article in the Financial Times on the economic situation in Spain, how it is being used by the Spanish government as a pretext for revisiting the automony of its autonomous communities, and the ramifications for Catalan and Basque independence.

Spain: Autonomy under fire

Tensions between indebted regions and central government are growing amid the euro crisis

    

    Inflammatory talk: firemen in Barcelona protest against austerity measures.
    The ruling Partido Popular has dropped hints about curbing the power regions
    such as Catalonia acquired following Franco’s dictatorship

Financial Times, 15 August 2012

To read it, people will need to register; but we can read eight articles a month for free.

The Spanish General Election

The results of the Spanish general election are now clear, if not quite final, with the right wing Partido Popular winning 186 of the 350 seats in the lower house. This is bad news for those whose politics are generally to the left, and also bad news for those who don't support a centralized Spanish state. The 2011 result is on the left, the 2008 result on the right.

      

I'm sure there'll be plenty in the UK media on the implications of this for Spain, but not much on the particular implications for Catalunya and Euskadi. So let me try and put that right.
 

The Catalan Perspective

The big hope of the centre-right nationalist CiU in Catalunya was that Mariano Rajoy would not get an overall majority and would need to do a deal with them to form a government. That deal would have come at the price of greater fiscal autonomy for Catalunya, but because the PP have an overall majority, that isn't going to happen.

But this is not necessarily a bad thing for those who want to see Catalunya become independent, for it simply removes one of the options. For Catalunya, the situation is exactly the same as for Scotland: a big majority of the people want greater autonomy, and a good number of them would probably be satisfied with a substantially greater degree of autonomy as part of either Spain or the UK rather than independence. However, if that middle option is taken off the table, support for independence becomes greater. With a PP government in Madrid, the option of moving towards a federal Spain has been removed, for the PP are the archetypal Spanish nationalist party and if anything will move to re-centralize rather than federalize Spain. The current economic crisis will give them all the pretext they need.

These are the results for Catalunya:

CiU ... 29.35% (was 20.93%) 16 seats (was 10)
PSC-PSOE ... 26.64% (was 45.93%) 14 seats (was 25)
PP ... 20.72% (was 16.40%) 11 seats (was 8)
ICV-EUiA ... 8.09% (was 4.92%) 3 seats (was 1)
ERC (+ RCAT) ... 7.06% (was 7.83%) 3 seats (was 3)

Ara, 20 November 2011

The pattern here is a huge collapse in the Spanish Socialist vote, more marked in Catalunya that in the Spanish as a whole (where it fell from 43.87% to 28.73%). But although some of that vote went to the PP, a much larger part of the swing from left to right went to CiU. They have every reason to be very pleased with this result, for a gain of six seats was much larger than the gain of two that was being predicted when I wrote this post last weekend.

But this won't really get them anything they want from Madrid, and certainly not the same degree of fiscal autonomy as the four Basque provinces enjoy. So what is Artur Mas's plan B? He personally is in favour of independence, as is much of the CiU leadership, though perhaps more so on the C (Convergence) side than the U (Union) side. The majority of party supporters now want independence too. So, at least as I see it, the next few months could see the party's official policy shift from pro-autonomy within Spain to pro-independence. If he chose to, Artur Mas would be in a very strong position to push this through because of the gains made by CiU in this election, and the new wave of austerity measures and a clampdown on regional autonomy from the Madrid government will only serve to increase the alienation between Spain and Catalunya yet further. This opportunity is too good to miss, but will he and his party be up to it?
 

The Basque Perspective

A week ago, the polls were predicting an almost equal four way split between the two Spanish parties (the PP and PSE-PSOE), and the two Basque nationalist parties (the centre-right EAJ-PNV and the new pro-independence left coalition Amaiur). In terms of percentages, the polls were just about right. But in terms of seats won, Amaiur have come from nowhere to become the biggest party with 7 of the 23 seats. This is the graphic from Gara:

    

This shows the results for all four Basque provinces in Spain, rather than just the three in the Autonomous Community. The situation is complicated a little by the fact that in 2008 NaBai was a broad Basque nationalist coalition of both left and right; but in 2011 the EAJ-PNV fought as Geroa Bai in Nafarroa while the left stood as Amaiur in all four provinces.

EAJ-PNV (+ Geroa Bai) ... 24.23% (was 25.08%) 6 seats (was 7)
PP ... 22.27% (was 23.32%) 5 seats (was 5)
Amaiur ... 22.08% (EA and Aralar were 5.47%) 7 seats (was 0)
PSE-PSOE ... 21.65% (was 37.36%) 5 seats (was 11)

Gara, 20 November 2011

Again, there is a huge fall in the Spanish Socialist vote, but virtually all of it has gone to the pro-independence left. In contrast to what's happened in Spain, there has been no appreciable swing from left to right in Euskadi. The PP's vote has, amazingly, managed to go down; though the EAJ-PNV vote has probably increased slightly (because some of NaBai's vote in 2008 would have come from left leaning Basque nationalists). The numbers of seats won doesn't quite match the percentages because smaller provinces have proportionately more seats than larger provinces.

This is a stunning result for the pro-independence left in Euskadi, but what will it lead to?

7 seats won't make a blind bit of difference to a right wing Spanish government in Madrid ... nor will the combined Basque nationalist total of 13 out of 23 seats (or 11 out of 18 seats excluding Nafarroa). Instead, this is about the normalization of politics in the post-ETA era. The Spanish State has finally run out of excuses to ban the pro-independence left from standing in elections, so we are beginning to see just how strong that support is, and therefore how strong the combined support for independence is from both the left and right of the political spectrum.

Looking forward to the Spanish election

Next weekend Spain will vote on a new government. There's very little doubt that the right wing Partido Popular (PP) led by Mariano Rajoy will be the largest party, and the only real question is whether they will gain an outright majority or need support from other parties to form a government.

For me, this is of particular interest because the parties they're most likely to seek such support from will be Convergència i Unió (CiU) in Catalunya and Euzko Alderdi Jeltzalea - Partido Nacionalista Vasco (EAJ-PNV) in Euskadi. As both are on the centre-right of the political spectrum they will be natural allies, but both will want to press for greater autonomy for their respective countries, and each will support the other in that aim. For Catalunya, such an aliance will come at the price of a new fiscal arrangement similar to that already enjoyed by the four Basque provinces, which set and collect all their own taxes and only send Madrid a negotiated sum for services provided centrally and to support the poorer regions of Spain. It's probably the best model for how devo-max might work in Scotland.

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Someone who left a comment on an earlier post about Catalunya pointed me to a poll which shows that CiU are likely to make a modest gain of two seats on their previous showing. This probably reflects a general swing from left to right within Catalan nationalism, with a similar swing between left and right within the Spanish nationalism of the PP and PSOE.

But what interested me more is what is happening in Euskadi, particularly now that Spain has allowed broad alliances representing the pro-independence left to participate. After Sortu was banned, they reformed as Bildu and made a major breakthrough in the municipal elections earlier this year. For this election, they have styled themselves as Amaiur. These are the results of the latest poll, with the percentages for the previous election in 2008 in brackets.

Araba

PP ... 30.3% (was 26.5%)
PSE-EE ... 24.7% (was 40.7%)
EAJ-PNV ... 19.0% (was 18.8%)
Amaiur ...18.0% (was 9%)

Bizkaia

EAJ-PNV ... 29.4% (was 31.1%)
PSE-EE ... 22.0% (was 37.0%)
PP ... 21.0% (was 19.1%)
Amaiur ... 19.1% (was 8.9%)

Gipuzkoa

Amaiur ... 36.3% (was 17.9%)
PSE-EE ... 21.8% (was 39.0%)
EAJ-PNV ... 19.0% (was 23.8%)
PP ... 15.0% (was 14.6%)

Overall

EAJ-PNV ... 24.6% (was 26.1%)
Amaiur ... 24.5% (was 10.8%)
PSE-EE ... 22.3% (was 38.2%)
PP ... 20.4% (was 18.7%)

Estudio Preelectoral, Noviembre 2011

Although there is a small swing from left to right—though not as big as would be expected given the general swing in Spain—what is remarkable is the swing away from the Spanish socialist PSE-EE to the Basque pro-independence left. Although the circumstances are different, it's akin to the slump of the Labour party in Scotland and the swing to the SNP. Perhaps this shows that it wasn't a one-off, and that the same could easily happen in Wales.

There is now a combined Basque nationalist vote of 49.1% (it was 36.8% in the equivalent election in 2008) over a combined Spanish vote of 42.7% (was 56.8%). What was a margin of 20% one way has now become a margin of 6.4% the other way. It's going to make the 2013 election to the Basque Parliament very interesting indeed.

A formal end to violence in Euskadi

It's rather hard to imagine why a group that includes Kofi Annan, Bertie Ahern, Gerry Adams, Jonathan Powell (standing in for Tony Blair) former French Minister of Interior and Defence Pierre Joxe and former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland would be meeting in Donostia / San Sebastian today unless some special announcement was to be made.

That announcement is that ETA is about to take the final steps towards disbanding, and declare that the struggle for Basque independence will now be conducted by exclusively peaceful, political means. There are details in these two articles:

     Annan and Adams top list of experts at Donostia Peace Conference
     Eta expected to announce definitive end to four decades of violence

This marks the culmination of all round effort by several organizations, but perhaps especially the International Contact Group led by Brian Currin. For those that want some background information, I wrote at some length about the situation when Sortu was set up in this post and in the discussion that followed.

       

Nobody in their right mind would do anything other than welcome this decision, though it hasn't occurred in a vacuum. I'm sure some will stress that ETA has been effectively defeated by the Spanish and French security forces, and that has indeed been a major factor. But an equally important factor has been that the pro-independence left has finally been allowed to stand in elections.

The Spanish State had previously used the flimsiest of pretexts to ban such parties from standing, and they did indeed ban Sortu too, attracting international criticism because of it. However the pro-independence left reacted not with violence, but instead put together a different group by the name of Bildu which did not get banned, and were rewarded with a spectacular breakthrough in the municipal elections in May. This, perhaps for the first time, was a concrete demonstration that the Spanish authorities could not continue to use the tactic of preventing people from voting for such parties, and this has been a big step in persuading those who had used violence that a democratic solution is now possible.

Although there is a Spanish general election next month, the big test will come in 2013, when the next elections to the Parliament of the three provinces that form the Basque Autonomous Community are due to be held. The big prize is that enough deputies from nationalist parties on both the left and the right of the political spectrum will be elected to either declare independence or force a referendum on the subject. With ETA finally out of the way, the Spanish State will find it that much harder, and perhaps impossible, to prevent it happening.

How do we know what people think?

One thing I've particularly missed over the past few months has been the monthly opinion poll by YouGov commissioned by ITV Wales.

Of course I can understand why ITV decided not to keep it up. The referendum on primary lawmaking powers and the Assembly elections were big events in the Welsh political calendar and they were enough to justify a month-by-month analysis of political opinion in the lead up period. But as a political junkie, I have to say that I'm suffering withdrawal symptoms and am in desperate need of a regular fix. I'd like to think I'm not alone.

-

It's probably fair to say that there is a general consensus that Wales is not as well served as it could be in terms of either informing or measuring public opinion on social and political issues. From this report a few weeks ago, it seems likely that the Assembly's Communities, Equality and Local Government Committee will launch an inquiry into the state of the Welsh media in September. This is long overdue and badly needed.

In this respect, it's worth noting that it is newspapers that are largely responsible for commissioning opinion polls in the UK as a whole; but that in Wales—probably because we do not have a strong print media of our own—the broadcast media have had to step in to fill the gap. It was good while it lasted, and if it had proved to be sustainable on a long-term basis there wouldn't now be a problem. But it wasn't sustainable. Therefore we need to look seriously at other ways of filling that gap.

-

Over the past few years I've been following the situation in Catalonia and Euskadi, and these two countries provide us with examples of how this problem could be solved.

For example the Generalitat, the Government of Catalunya, has set up the Centre d'Estudis d'Opinió, which conducts a comprehensive survey of public opinion four times each year as the Baròmetre d’Opinió Política. The sample size is 2,500 and the survey covers a wide range of socio-political questions including what issues people consider most important, what media they use to obtain information, and their opinions of political parties. Euskadi produces a similar EuskoBarómetro, but twice a year and with a sample size of 1,200. I particularly like the Catalan version, and would recommend that people look through the latest survey to see the range of questions asked. It is much more than, "If there were an election tomorrow, who would you vote for?" Cut and paste the text from the pdf into Google Translate if any of the questions are unclear. That's what I do.

-

There is no reason why the Welsh Government should not use public money to set up something similar in Wales. It would serve a number of purposes: it would give everybody interested in politics and public policy a much better idea of how people in Wales see certain issues; it would help both political parties and other organizations to formulate better policies that are more relevant to what people in Wales want; and it would help stimulate a more informed public debate in the media.

Political debate in Wales is too shallow, often consisting of assertions made without any real grounds for support followed by knee-jerk reactions from all the usual suspects. Our media in Wales might well be weak, but perhaps the uncomfortable truth is that we've only got the media that our current level of public debate and involvement deserves. How can we expect our level of public debate to become more mature or our national media to grow stronger without giving them something much more solid to feed on?

More on the municipal elections in Euskadi

Following on from my previous post, I thought it would be a good idea to add some reports from other sources. The best graphics of the result I can find are from Gara. This is the overall result with the 2007 figures below. Click the image for a larger version.

   

The overall figures don't match the other reports. As far as I can work out, this is because they have included the results for Navarre, which any Basque nationalist worth their salt regards as a part of the Euskal Herria, even though it is not part of the Basque Autonomous Community. The equivalent of the EAJ-PNV there is Nafarroa Bai (NaBai on the graphics). This is the breakdown for the four provinces.

   

And here are a couple of press reports in English, from the perspective of Madrid:

Far exceeding expectations, Bildu came second in Sunday's polls with just over one quarter of the total, behind the Basque Nationalist Party's 30 percent but well ahead of the Socialists' 16 percent, results showed.

In the region's second largest city San Sebastian, it even took the most votes, winning eight seats to seven for the Socialists -- who have held power there since 1991 -- and six each for the moderate Basque Nationalist Party and Spain's main conservative opposition Popular Party.

Bildu "has redesigned the electoral map of the Basque Country after the best results ever obtained for the radical left", Spain's leading daily El Pais said.

"The explosion of Bildu", headlined the centre-right daily El Mundo. "In addition to the many reasons that the Spanish have to be outraged, there is now another that is extremely worrying", it said in an editorial, warning that Spain could "face a huge political problem" in the region.

An editorial Spain's conservative daily ABC said the "radicalisation of Basque politics is the worst news from these elections and could have damaging consequences."

Expatica, 23 May 2011

Until now, Basque separatists had seemed to become increasingly marginalized in the troubled northern Spanish region's political life. But the surprise victory of the radical separatist alliance Bildu in Sunday's local elections revealed separatism as a growing force.

The radicals took no less than 953 councillors, the largest number in the region. Bildu netted 25 per cent of the Basque vote, coming second only to the more moderate Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), which took 30 per cent. Separatists had never had as much support, the radical Basque daily Gara rejoiced, hailing a 'new political era'.

But spirits were gloomy in Madrid, where the conservative daily El Mundo saw Bildu's rise as eventually spelling a 'huge political problem' for Spain ...

Prior to the ban, Batasuna had taken about 12 per cent of the Basque vote. Bildu's score of 25 per cent was seen as a sign that a new non-violent separatist movement was gaining momentum in the region ...

The PNV and Bildu now constituted 'a clear separatist majority' in Basque municipal councils, El Mundo said, describing the situation as being 'extremely worrying' for Spain.

Deutsche Presse-Agentur, 23 May 2011

I trust the language used goes some way towards explaining how big a political shift has taken place, and how concerned those who want to hold Spain together are about it.
 

 
Update - 25 May 2011

The full, official results for the municipal elections in the three provinces of the Basque Autonomous Community are here. I've shown two key graphics from it, click the images to open larger versions. The first is the number of seats won, showing how Bildu and the EAJ-PNV now dominate the municipalities. Besteak/Otros are independents.

     

The second shows the percentage of the vote compared with the previous elections in 2007.

     

The left gets its act together in Euskadi

In this post back in February I wrote about Sortu, an attempt to build a new political group in Euskadi that was unequivocally nationalist, but on the left of the political spectrum.

As expected, the Spanish State immediately ruled that this group was illegal, even though the party's constitution specifically rejected violence and committed itself to securing Basque independence by peaceful, democratic means only. Yet there was a Plan B, and immediately following that decision another broad left pro-independence group was formed – this time centred on Eusko Alkartasuna, Alternatiba, Araba Bai (a split of Aralar) and some independents – called Bildu.
 

       

 
Eusko Alkartasuna and Aralar are long standing parties which the Spanish State have not banned, and indeed EA are Plaid Cymru's partners in the EFA group in the European Parliament.

Of course the Spanish State immediately banned Bildu as well, but this proved to be the straw that finally broke the camel's back. As we can read here, the centre-right Basque nationalist party, the EAJ-PNV, withdrew its support from the minority Spanish government at the beginning of March in protest at the decision. Then, as if to prove to the world that all these decisions to ban left wing nationalist political groups have been taken for political rather than judicial or constitutional reasons, the Constitutional Tribunal promptly overruled the Supreme Court decision at the beginning of this month, as we can read here.

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What was at stake was the ability of the pro-independence left to field candidates in the municipal elections which took place yesterday. The result was astounding. Bildu swept in to become the largest party in terms of seats, and second largest in terms of votes.

The newly-formed Basque nationalist coalition gained second place in the election race being the second party with most votes and the first party with most seats

   

A newly-formed Basque nationalist coalition called Bildu became the political party with most seats and second in number of votes in local and regional elections in the Basque Country.

Bildu also won seats in the town halls of three of the region's provincial capitals. The new Basque coalition won 907 seats and 25 percent of the vote. Basque nationalist party PNV gained second place in the election race with 822 seats, but a greater percentage of the vote, 29.9 percent.

EITB, 23 May 2011

The centre-right nationalists, the EAJ-PNV, were second in terms of seats won but still ahead in terms of the percentage of the vote; but this result means that there are now two large pro-independence parties with just short of 55% of the vote between them, with other smaller pro-independence parties picking up some votes and seats too.

The losers in this election were the Basque socialist PSE-EE, essentially just a regional branch of the Spanish socialist PSOE, committed to keeping Euskadi as part of Spain.

       

This is very significant for those who want to see Euskadi become independent, for it shows that left-leaning voters are now prepared to make a wholesale shift from the pro-Spanish left to the pro-independence left. In this sense the pro-independence left can finally be said to have got its act together to become a major, unified force in Basque politics, rather than a loose collection of different factions that fought amongst themselves, thereby allowing the PSE-EE to be the main political force on the left.

The nature of politics in Spain means that the municipal election results have a very significant effect on funding. This means that Bildu are now in a very strong position to mount an effective campaign for the elections to the Basque Parliament in a couple of years time. Having achieved this level of support—and, to put it bluntly, the respectability that goes with it—we might well see the PSE-EE completely crumble as the main party of the left, leaving Basque politics as a left-right contest between pro-independence parties.

I'd be willing to bet that a comfortable majority of deputies in the next Basque Parliament will have been elected on a pro-independence mandate, and that the Spanish will not be able to stop them achieving the independence they have wanted for so long.

Sortu

There have been quite a few developments in Euskadi over the last few months. In September last year ETA announced a ceasefire, which I wrote about in this post. It was not greeted with any great enthusiasm by Spain, and I hardly expected it to be. A ceasefire is a long way short of a permanent cessation of violence.

However this was followed up in January this year by the announcement that it was permanent, and that ETA wanted it to overseen by the international community:

In a statement released to the Basque newspaper Gara the group said: "Eta has decided to declare a permanent and general ceasefire which will be verifiable by the international community.

"This is Eta's firm commitment towards a process to achieve a lasting resolution and towards an end to the armed confrontation."

The armed group said that the solution to Basque conflict "will come through the democratic process with dialogue and negotiation as its tools."

Guardian, 10 January 2011

I don't particularly want to get involved in a discussion of when it is right to use armed force in the pursuit of political objectives in this post, though I would note that violence is not only done by those fighting against a state, but by states themselves. However I do think it should be of interest to us all how such situations can be progressed from a violence that gets neither side anywhere to the point where it can be resolved by peaceful political means.

As I see it, the main key is for there to be an effective means of political expression for those who either explicitly backed the violence before, or more passively accepted it as being—at least as they once saw it—the only way of achieving their political goals.

But Spain has not been good at allowing this strand of opinion to be expressed at a party political level. Batasuna, the main left-leaning party supporting an independent Euskadi (the EAJ-PNV being a centre-right party) which generally had the support of about 15% of the electorate, was banned in 2003; and other left wing nationalist parties that have been formed since then have been declared illegal. One of the most blatant instances of this was in the 2009 election to the Parliament of the Basque Autonomous Community when D3M and Askatasuna were banned at the very last moment, after the ballot papers had been printed, and their votes were counted as void. There were over 100,000 void votes in total compared with a normal void vote of under 5,000, which amounted to about 9% of the total. As a direct consequence of these votes not being counted the EAJ-PNV was unable to put together a broad nationalist coalition government for the first time in nearly thirty years.

       

Now a new chapter is beginning to unfold. Earlier this month a new political party was formed, and this is how one article describes it:

Sortu puts spotlight on Spanish justice system

There have been many signs that genuine change is afoot in the Basque Country in recent months, as ETA's political support has repeatedly urged the organisation to give a clear statement showing it is committed to a non-violent future. For the most part these expectations have not been met, with ETA failing to deliver – most recently in a January ceasefire statement that contained some new resolutions, but ultimately not enough.

     

But the unveiling on February 7 of a new party, Sortu, suggests that with or without ETA’s backing, the pro-independence landscape in the northern region has changed. Sortu, which means "to rise up" or "be born" in euskera, is a reincarnation of sorts of Batasuna, the party banned since 2002 for its links to ETA and refusal to condemn the terrorist group’s violence. However, while the personnel is similar, this new party has now taken the historic step of rejecting all terrorist violence. This is a rejection that "openly, and without ambiguity, includes ETA" according to Iñaki Zabaleta, a spokesman for Sortu. These are not just words uttered in a Bilbao press conference. They're written in Sortu’s statutes.

"This is very significant. I think this was the step people were waiting for," said Paddy Woodworth, author of a history of the Basque Country and a book about the GAL anti-ETA death squad. "These statutes are so explicit, in their condemnation not just of terrorism but in general. They have produced statues which could have been written by a Supreme Court judge."

Qorreo, 20 February 2011

And that, of course, is the issue: whether a new party which specifically renounces violence to the extent that it is enshrined in what we would call its constitution is going to be allowed to participate in the democratic process of elections.

This is how things developed. On one hand, we had one High Court District Attorney make this announcement:

District Attorney says Batasuna and Sortu are two different parties

A new Basque nationalist left-wing party, considered to be the successor of outlawed party Batasuna, is not its continuation despite the fact that they have the same members, a Basque High Court District Attorney said on Tuesday.

In an interview with Basque radio station Radio Euskadi, Juan Calparsoro, District Attorney of the Basque Country High Court, said the new party, that goes under the name of Sortu and rejects violence by ETA, is not a successor of Batasuna.

According to Juan Calparsoro, although both parties share the same members, the "political project is not the same" and they "have said things never previously said."

Spain's attorney general's office will now determine if legal status can be granted to the new party. The government could allow the party to stand or challenge it and ask prosecutors to investigate. Any decision for declaring the party illegal is ultimately up to a special section of the Supreme Court.

EITB, 8 February 2011

Meanwhile, in Madrid, the Spanish Civil Guard filed a report recommending it should be banned:

Spanish Civil Guard says Sortu takes orders from Batasuna's ETA

On Wednesday, the Spanish Home Office forwarded a report by the Civil Guard to the Attorney General and State Legal Service about the new leftwing nationalist formation Sortu, its origins and possible links with the outlawed political party Batasuna, with which to appeal to the High Court.

In a statement, the Home Office said that along with the statutes registered at the Ministry by Sortu on February 9th, it had sent several reports concerning the new party so that the Attorney General and State Legal Service could act in accordance with the Constitutional Political Parties Law.

Included in the information on Sortu was a report written by the Spanish Civil Guard which claims that Sortu is "an instrument created by Batasuna" and states that, despite publicly rejecting the use of violence, behind those sponsoring the new party – apparently "clean" and without ties to Batasuna – was the political wing of ETA.

The document created by the Spanish Civil Guard contains evidence that allegedly proves that Sortu is a continuation of the outlawed party Batasuna.

Among the so-called evidence, six documents stand out which were seized during various arrests of ETA suspects. The cited material contains details of the armed group's plan to "create a political group to act as a successor to Batasuna". The Civil Guard claims in its report that Sortu has been born out of a specific strategy of ETA's "following the failure of the previous negotiations" and because of the need to re-enter the political system.

The police report echoes a statement made last Friday by Spanish Home Office Minister and Government Vice-president, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, in which he said it was "evident" that Sortu "is a continuation of the outlawed Batasuna group".

As proof of its continuity, sources in the report cite the contribution of Iruin at the presentation of Sortu, in which the lawyer admitted he had adapted the party's statutes in order to comply with the requirements imposed by the High Court in order to become a legitimate political group.

EITB, 17 February 2011

And, predictably, Spain's Attorney General has indeed recommended it should be banned:

Spain's attorney general to ask judges to illegalize "Sortu"

Spain's attorney general says a new Basque independence party is a repackaged version of the armed group ETA's banned political wing Batasuna and he will ask judges to deny the party legal status.

It is up to a special section of the Supreme Court to decide on legalizing the new party called Sortu, which unveiled its charter last week and insists it rejects ETA violence.

EITB, 19 February 2011

... with the equally predictable result that tens of thousands came out onto the wet streets of Bilbao this weekend in protest:

Tens of thousands rally in Bilbao to ask for legalization of "Sortu"

Tens of thousands of people rallied in the Basque city of Bilbao on Saturday to demand from the government that it allows the newly launched pro-independence party "Sortu" to run in upcoming elections.

    

Those behind the party, called "Sortu", insist it rejects armed group ETA's violence and hence merits legal status and the right to field candidates in May election. However, Spain's attorney general on Friday said it was merely a repackaged version of Batasuna, a party banned in 2003 on grounds it was part of ETA. It is up to a special section of the Supreme Court to decide on the new party's legal status.

Protesters began marching peacefully and largely in silence through downtown streets in the port city of Bilbao under banners reading, "Toward peace, legalization."

"Hope has begun to enter into Basque society and we want it to be for good this time," said separatist leader Kontxita Beitia at the end of the rally.

The attorney general's office said it would file its request that the court ban "Sortu" by March 11. It is likely that the court will not have enough time to arrive at a ruling before May 22, the election date, which will rule them out from running in the Basque regional polls.

Should "Sortu" be allowed to run it would give separatist politicians access to local and regional government posts and financial benefits that come with them.

Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba on Friday said that the government was prepared to take steps to stop Batasuna candidates from joining other Basque parties should the court ban "Sortu".

EITB, 20 February 2011

       

It should be said that ten of thousands of people have taken to the streets before in favour of the ban on Batasuna being lifted, and of course these are likely to be the same tens of thousands. But the issue is not really about whether people support one party or the other. The point is surely that left-leaning nationalists should be able to vote for a party that reflects left-leaning nationalist views. There is something Kafkaesque about the Civil Guard citing as evidence:

" ... the lawyer admitted he had adapted the party's statutes in order to comply with the requirements imposed by the High Court in order to become a legitimate political group."

Wouldn't any sane, law-abiding person think it was a good thing to have complied with the High Court's rulings in order to create a party that was within the law?

Not, apparently, in Spain.

The inescapable conclusion is that it simply doesn't matter to Spain whether a party completely renounces violence as a means of pursuing a perfectly reasonable political objective. They will still seek to ban it anyway ... not because of violence, but because they will not tolerate any move towards Euskadi becoming an independent nation.

Salmond looks up in Euskadi

Alex Salmond has just paid an official visit to Euskadi, and has in particular singled out the tax arrangements that the Basque Autonomous Community has with Spain as a model which could be applied to Scotland.

Basque tax system sets example for Scotland

Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond with the President of Iberdrola in Bilbao

Scottish First Minister, Alex Salmond, during an official visit to the Basque Country on Monday, took the opportunity to call for a similar tax system in Scotland to that established in the Autonomous Community. The First Minister believes the system has enabled the Basque Country to maintain an economic situation which is currently the most favorable in the Spanish state.

EITB, 13 September 2010

It is certainly true that the Basque Autonomous Community is the wealthiest parts of Spain in terms of GDP per capita, and the headline news there today is that its exports have risen 34% on the year. The BAC is responsible for setting its own taxes, which it retains, and then negotiates a settlement with the Spanish State for services that are provided centrally. In this respect it has greater autonomy that Catalunya.

I read an interesting article about the parallels between Euskadi and Scotland on Joan McAlpine's blog here:

     From the ashes of Guernica: what we can learn from the Basques

This is a short extract which describes the fiscal arrangements.

The Basque country, which enjoys the widest and deepest autonomy of all the Spanish regions, is an attractive model for Scotland.

Holyrood politicians send all taxes south then squabble over how to cut up a shrinking cake returned by Westminster. The Basques set, raise and collect all their own taxes, then negotiate an annual “cupo” with Madrid for central services, usually around 12%.

You might think anyone keen to extend Scotland’s economic powers should avoid discussions of an Iberian nature. Spain is in meltdown, with Europe’s third worst deficit after Greece and Ireland. Austerity measures so far announced are unpopular. Savings banks are collapsing. The federal socialist government want to restructure the labour market, to end infamous “Spanish practices”. Red flags will be raised in Bilbao as well, But while the Basque country is not immune to the global crisis, it is better placed to survive. The area outperforms Spain on nearly every indicator. Its GDP per capita is 34% higher and it has half the rate of unemployment. The credit agency Standard and Poor’s gives the Basques a better rating than the central government – because of its low debt burden, wealthy, diverse economy and “special system framework granting the region control over most of its tax revenues”. That’s a recommendation – CBI bosses take note.

The Basque arrangement is similar to the system devised by the economists Andrew Hughes-Hallett and Drew Scott, which forms the basis of the Campaign for Fiscal Responsibility. Business leaders like Jim McColl and Tom Hunter and trade unionists such as Campbell Christie have backed the campaign, believing that fiscal powers offer Scotland its only option of growing the economy. The tax regime would be designed to meet specific, local, needs. The Basques for example, set a lower corporation tax than the rest of Spain and have borrowed to upgrade their infrastructure.

The two things I would particularly like to highlight are lower corporate taxation and the ability to borrow money to invest in infrastructure. These are two essential elements of what I, and Plaid Cymru, see as the main powers necessary to reverse the economic decline of Wales caused by decades of over-centralization in the UK economy.

And although there are parallels between Euskadi and Scotland which I certainly wouldn't want to detract from, I think there are even more similarities between the Basques and the Welsh. The Basque Autonomous Community is very slightly smaller than Wales has a similar heavy industrial heritage. The language situation is also very similar.

It is remarkable how their degree of autonomy has led to such prosperity, and provides an example of what we in Wales could do if we had control of our own economy.

Ingrained assumptions

It wasn't too much of a surprise that ETA announced their ceasefire this week, for some sort of announcement had been expected for some time. More telling was the reaction to it.

One advantage of the video being released exclusively to the BBC was that the BBC made the most of their scoop, and that meant that the heavier papers tried to keep up. But there were some aspects about the coverage that really weren't up to standard, and I'd like to pick up on some of those first.

     

The map above is from this page on the BBC website. The geography is accurate enough, it shows the Basque Autonomous Community, alongside Navarre in Spain and Iparralde (the northern side) in France. Together they make up Euskadi, the Basque Country. The problem is that the BBC caption suggests that it is only ETA who claim more than the BAC as part of Euskadi. That's not true; most Basques do. Some Basques might not necessarily want to see it as a unified independent country, but most Basques recognize these shaded areas as their homeland, certainly in historical and cultural terms, even though they might disagree over the political status of the various provinces.

Then on this page, there was a paragraph which says:

But despite the fact that Spain's Basque country today enjoys more autonomy than any other – it has its own parliament, police force, controls education and collects its own taxes – ETA and its hardline supporters have remained determined to push for full independence.

In the video on this page, the BBC reporter goes over the same list, but follows it up with this tagline:

But none of this has been good enough for ETA.

Again, part of it is true. The Basque Autonomous Community does have more autonomy than any of the other Communities: control of taxation is one thing it has that Catalunya does not have. But once again, why does the BBC not say that there are many more Basques who are equally determined to push for full independence, but who reject using violence as a way to pursue it?

So on two counts the BBC seems determined to present a picture of Basque nationalism and the desire for Basque independence as something limited to ETA and those who support it. Either that, or its ingrained assumptions about nationalism lead its journalists to write things that don't stand up to scrutiny, and its editors to allow them to stand.

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There is a certain two-facedness about the way states think that they are allowed to pursue their political ends by means of force while others are not, and perhaps that's why the BBC report in the way they do. Not so much out of sloppy journalism, but simply to reflect the assumptions that are ingrained into the way that the British establishment looks at things.

As an example of that way of thinking, our Coroners Courts routinely deliver verdicts of "unlawful killing" for service personnel killed in Afghanistan. But what on earth is remotely "unlawful" about killing an enemy solder in your own country? I don't want to in any way detract from these deaths, but every soldier knows that being killed is one of the risks of going to war, and each is brave enough to accept that being killed is a possibility. Yet if a exploding a bomb that kills a British soldier is routinely being described as "unlawful", then surely the bombs we drop from aircraft to kill those who are fighting against us must be unlawful too. What else but a two-faced self-righteousness would see it as lawful for our forces to kill their enemy, but unlawful for that enemy to fight back? Perhaps pointing the finger to condemn those who fight us is merely designed to make the UK's decision to use violence to support its own political ends seem "lawful"? It's the sort of sophistry that any child should be able to see through.

So we're embroiled in double standards about violence. As I've said before, I do think there are times when using violence might be justified, but I would never condone the use of indiscriminate violence. That means I have no time for those tactics when used by ETA—nor for their network of intimidation and extortion, either—although I fully support the independence they are fighting for.

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So what is going to change as a result of this declaration? Right now, probably nothing. The Spanish reaction to the ceasefire was to dismiss it:

Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, Spain's interior minister, said, "The Interior Ministry will keep its anti-terrorism policy intact, absolutely intact. We are not going to change that policy one bit, not a single comma," he told Spanish National Television.

Independent, 7 September 2010

But that's not really where the problem lies. The problem is not Spain's attitude to terrorism, but Spain's attitude to democracy. It's all too easy to say that ETA should stop using violence as a means to gaining its political aims, but ignore the fact that Spain makes it quite explicit, through its Constitution, that it can use violence for its political aim of keeping Spain together. It's all too easy to say that the cause of Basque independence should be pursued purely by democratic means, but pointless to say it if you then close off the normal democratic means by which it can be pursued.

Spain is at fault on two counts: first, it has denied the people in the BAC the opportunity to vote in a referendum to determine the future they want; and second, it routinely bans the political parties through which those that have supported violence as a means to independence could express their support for the same political goals through the ballot box instead.

As for the first, nothing that's likely to happen in Euskadi will change that attitude much. Violence and democracy are not things that either the Spanish Government nor most Spanish people can distinguish between. In their eyes Basque independence is too tied to violence for a concession to democracy not to be seen as a concession to violence. That's why I think it's far more likely that the right to democratic self-determination will depend on what happens in Catalunya. If the pro-independence parties and groups win the Catalan election in November this year and unilaterally declare independence, Spain will either have to accept that independence or try to negotiate a completely new constitutional arrangement—some sort of federalism or confederalism—with the nations within it. In that case, it is unthinkable that the Basques would not get the same.

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But, much as I would like to see that happen, they might not get a majority; and if they don't, it's hard to imagine why Spain would want to change anything. Yet one thing that has struck me in the last few months is that the Spanish Authorities are not really making any warning statements about the election. They're not saying, "You can't turn the election into a matter of independence." Instead they seem to accept that people can vote for whatever parties they want, no matter what platform they're standing on, even if it is to unilaterally declare independence.

Now, this might well be because they reckon the Independentists won't get a majority, and they will then use the result as proof that the majority of Catalans want to stay part of Spain. That will effectively knock Catalan independence back by a few years ... but it's pretty blindingly obvious what the Basques will then do in their next elections in 2013. Having played it one way in 2010, the Spanish State will find it very hard to come up with a reason for doing something different three years later.

And the result should be positive. Juan José Ibarretxe would hardly have called for the 2008 Referendum if he didn't think it would be won, nor would Spain have blocked it unless they thought the same. The maths from the 2009 Basque election is pretty simple:

•  just under 39% voted for the centre-right EAJ-PNV, the Basque National Party.

•  just under 10% voted for the two pro-independence left parties that reject violence, Eusko Alkartasuna and Aralar. EA, alongside Plaid Cymru and the SNP, are part of the EFA in the European Parliament.

•  and just under 10% would vote for various left wing independence parties alleged to be sympathetic to ETA, although these keep changing as they get banned. In the 2009 election, D3M and Askatasuna were banned at the very last moment, after the ballot papers had been printed, and their votes were counted as void. There were over 100,000 void votes in total compared with a normal void vote of under 5,000. This was about 9% of the vote.

It's worth commenting that if the last minute ban had not been imposed, D3M would have won maybe six seats. These seats made all the difference to the balance of the Basque Parliament, and resulted in the socialist PSE-EE and right wing PP being able to form a government. Of course it is never presented in that way, the first non-nationalist government in 30 years was instead presented as evidence of a fall in support for independence.

Such blatant gerrymandering shows the lengths to which the Spanish authorities will go to deny democracy to those who want independence. But it could only have been done under the pretext of an alleged connexion to ETA. The mere mention of the word "terrorism" now seems to be accepted as an excuse for governments all over the world to do draconian things like this. And that is the importance of ETA's declaration. In itself, it will not achieve any response from the Spanish State, and we shouldn't expect it to. But—if ETA can indeed restrain itself from using violence until the 2013 election—this declaration will make it very much harder for the Spanish to use terrorism as an excuse to once more interfere with the democratic process.