Basque Political Systems

11m_..... ·· _~ ~ - -= ,_.... ff) • ' I I -' - i ~ t I V Center for Basque Studies - University of Nevada, Reno BASQUE POLITICS SERIES Center for Basque Studies Basque Politics Series, No. 2 Basque Political Systems Edited by Pedro Ibarra Güell and Xabier Irujo Ametzaga Translated by Cameron J. Watson Center for Basque Studies University of Nevada, Reno Reno, Nevada This book was published with generous financial support from the Basque government. Center for Basque Studies Basque Politics Series, No. 2 Series Editor: Xabier Irujo Ametzaga Center for Basque Studies University of Nevada, Reno Reno, Nevada 89557 http://basque.unr.edu Copyright © 2011 by the Center for Basque Studies All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Cover and Series design © 2011 Jose Luis Agote. Cover Illustration: Juan Azpeitia Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Basque political systems / edited by Pedro Ibarra G?ell, and Xabier Irujo Ametzaga ; translated by Cameron J. Watson. p. cm. -- (Basque politics series ; No. 2) Includes index. Summary: “Collection of articles on the Basque political system within its own context and larger national and global contexts”--Provided by publisher. ISBN 978-1-935709-03-9 (pbk.) 1. País Vasco (Spain)--Politics and government. I. Ibarra Güell, Pedro. II. Irujo Ame- tzaga, Xabier. JN8399.P342B37 2011 320.446’6--dc22 2011001811 CONTENTS Introduction .......................................................................... 7 PEDRO IBARRA GÜELL and XABIER IRUJO AMETZAGA 1. Hegoalde and the Post-Franco Spanish State ................................... 13 XABIER IRUJO AMETZAGA 2. Political Institutions in Hegoalde................................................ 33 MIKEL IRUJO AMETZAGA 3. Political Institutions and Mobilization in Iparralde ............................. 53 IGOR AHEDO GURRUTXAGA 4. Fiscal Pacts in Hegoalde ......................................................... 71 PATXI JUARISTI LARRINAGA 5. The European Union and a New Basque Economic Framework . 83 MIKEL IRUJO AMETZAGA 6. The Autonomous Community of the Basque Country in the European Institutional Architecture...................................... 87 Igor Filibi 7. The Foreign Policy of the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country .......................................................... 99 MIKEL IRUJO AMETZAGA 8. Education, Health, Housing, and Security in Hegoalde . 111 ADELA MESA and RUTH AGUILAR 9. Linguistic Policy in the Basque Country ....................................... 125 IÑIGO URRUTIA 10. Political Parties and the Party System in Hegoalde . 145 ASIER BLAS MENDOZA 11. Political Parties in Iparralde ..................................................... 167 IGOR AHEDO GURRUTXAGA 6 Contents 12. ETA: Political Violence, Its Historical Evolution, and Conflict Resolution . 185 FRANCISCO LETAMENDIA 13. Political Culture in the Basque Country........................................ 209 NOEMI BERGANTIÑOS 14. Basque Social Movements: Euskara, Feminism, and Environmentalism . 219 IÑAKI BARCENA AND RAFAEL AJANGIZ 15. Labor Unions and Employers in the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country . 235 FRANCISCO LETAMENDIA AND JONE MARTÍNEZ PALACIOS 16. Political Projects for the Future of Hegoalde . 251 PEDRO IBARRA GÜELL and XABIER IRUJO AMETZAGA Index .................................................................................. 259 List of Contributors . 285 Introduction PEDRO IBARRA GÜELL and XABIER IRUJO AMETZAGA This book is about the Basque political system. The concept of a political system is more precise than that of just politics. Therefore here, embracing an analytical focus on a specific political system is a means of explaining, from within, politics in the Basque Country. It is a way of demonstrating how politics functions, how and why actors, activities, and institutions generically related to politics interact with one another. In order to understand the concept of a political system, our initial task is to single out those people—political, but also social, actors—who, more or less, have power. How- ever, a political system also implies studying a process within a specific national community; a process in which diverse political, social, and institutional actors—influenced at the same time by different cultural, social, economic, and juridical contexts—operate, and that, ultimately, is crystallized in the political decisions of a state belonging to that national community. As a consequence, and proceeding a little further in our introductory explanation, any analysis of a political system should explain what a specific society thinks about politics, about power, about what its leaders should decide and do, and why this society thinks the way it does. Similarly, any such analysis should also consider how these views and demands, originating in society as a whole, are transmitted to politicians. We must therefore reflect on why citizens elect politicians—what it is that people want to achieve by choosing their elected representatives. Yet we must also observe how citizens organ- ize themselves to influence power—to see both their individual and collective interests satisfied. Politicians are elected and then make decisions within different institutions: the Spanish national government and Spanish parliament and judicial power, together with city halls, provincial governments, and autonomous regional governments. Some of these institutions are occupied directly by politicians, while others are under their control. 8 Pedro Ibarra Güell and Xabier Irujo Ametzaga These institutions make decisions that are received with different levels of enthusiasm by citizens. They, in turn, in response to these decisions and taking account of political events and change (or not, as the case may be) within this political culture, support or do not support new political parties to gain power. Consequently, citizens mobilize and exert pressure (or not, as the case may be) from society to achieve their goals. Thus, a cycle is closed and reopened repeatedly. Consequently, when one studies either a political system in general or one of its constituent features, one must always employ two perspectives or criteria: a dynamic and a relational approach. One can only understand a political system if one examines its interior dynamism—that is, its continual transformation, reshaping, and evolution. Such a system is, similarly, only comprehensible if we understand how all its variables interrelate with one another. For example, and returning to the previous discussion about citizen participation in this system, election results must be interpreted within the context of the existent political culture. Similarly, we must evaluate a specific public policy according to the existent context and institutional limits. These are general reflections on how to approach the study of a political system, but this broad focus needs to be qualified by some additional or specific information when addressing the Basque Country. From a theoretical perspective, we identified a political system with a process that develops within a specific territory and national community that, at the same time, possesses its own political power (its own state). In a conventional political system, political actors, groups, and movements—together with institutions whose actions have decisive political consequences (laws that must be obeyed)—operate in a specific demarcated political or state community or tout court in a particular state. This is not, however, the case of the Basque Country, because there is not a Basque political community with its own state. In short, there is no Basque state. On the one hand, there exists the denomination Euskal Herria (literally, the land of Basque speakers)—a term describing a geographical unit composed of territories or republics that historically were independent: six in total until 1521, and seven thereafter: Araba (Álava in Spanish), Nafarroa Beherea (Basse Navarre in French), Bizkaia (Vizcaya in Spanish), Gipuzkoa (Guipúzcoa in Spanish), Navarre (Nafarroa in Basque; Navarra in Spanish), Lapurdi (Labourd in French), and Zuberoa (Soule in French). However, these territories make up a very different political configuration today. Three of them make up the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country (CAPV-EAE by its Spanish/ Basque acronym) within the Spanish state. Navarre has its own autonomous community, the Foral Community of Navarre (CFN by its Spanish acronym), which is also in the Spanish state. These four to the southern side of the international frontier between Spain and France are collectively known as Hegoalde—the Southern Basque Country. The remaining three territories—generically known as Iparralde in Basque (meaning “the northern side” of the Basque Country)—do not make up, politically speaking, a distinct unit within the (strongly centralist) French state. Instead, together with other historic (and non-Basque) territories, they made up one of the original eighty-three departments Introduction 9 of the modern French state when it was created after the outbreak of the French Revolu- tion in 1789. This was originally known as the department of the Basses-Pyrénées (Low Pyrenees), a name later changed to Pyrénées-Atlantiques (Atlantic Pyrenees). However, and despite their different political status, these constituent territories do make up a cultural community—that is, a differentiated people or a nation. It is a cultural community due to the fact that the people who inhabit it share, in greater or lesser degrees, a history,

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