Reflexiones sobre las raíces del nacionalismo étnico vasco y su influencia en el proceso político

Abstract

The objective of the working paper is to establish a relationship between the Basque nationalist ideology in its two principal manifestations (the nonterrorist approach of the PNV and the terrorist movement of ETA) and the influence that it exerts on the general political activity of Spain’s democracy as well as on the daytoday lives of the people in the country. The main reason for the role played by this phenomenon is not the weight of the nationalist ideology itself (which Spain’s population sees as antiquated), but rather the “pro domo sua” use which nonterrorist nationalism makes of the acts of violence and the threats against democracy by the terrorists. Following an analysis of the main characteristics defining the Basque nationalist ideology, the conclusion is that the PNV consists of a bourgeois machinery designed at the end of the 19th century in order to attain and hold power with a scarcely democratic ideological base, which uses the support of the terrorist movement (even though it may not share all of its objectives, which ETA defines ambiguously as independence and socialism) but rather because the terrorist activity facilitates the line of argumentation that the terrible violence inflicted upon the Basque people can only be resolved by means of political concessions which should lead to independence under the guidance of the PNV. This is nothing more than a fallacy, ignoring the fact that Basque society is not a homogeneous society, but rather is terribly divided into two halves, to which a democratic decisionmaking mechanism of a simple majority cannot be applied, as the situation calls for a consociationbased democracy. Even a number of outstanding nonterrorist nationalists believe that it is neither possible nor acceptable to carry out a reform of the Statute that would involve the supplanting of the political subject constituted on the basis of a covenant by another political subject constituted simply by the decision of a relative majority.