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Basque Nationalist Party

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The Basque Nationalist Party is a political party in the Basque region of Spain. In Basque it is called Eusko Alderdi Jeltzalea (EAJ) and in Spanish it is called the Partido Nacionalista Vasco (PNV). In Spain it is commonly referred to as EAJ-PNV. The French branch is the Parti Nationaliste Basque. The party has also offices among the Basque diaspora, mainly Venezuela, Argentina, Mexico, Uruguay, Chile and the United States.

The party was founded in 1895 by Sabino de Arana y Goiri as a Catholic separatist party for the restoration of self-government. Currently, it describes itself as Basque, democratic, participatory, plural, non-confessional and humanist. It is a moderate nationalist party which favours greater autonomy for the Basque region but opposes violence.

In its beginnings, the party established required its members to prove Basque ancestry by having a minimum number of Basque surnames.

During the single-party dictatorship rule of general Miguel Primo de Rivera, PNV was forbidden and persecuted. However, its activity continued under the guise of mountain (mendigoizale) and folklore clubs.

The Spanish civil war

After the coup of 18th July 1936, the party felt torn. It coincided with the rebel side in their Catholicity and there were pressure from the Vatican to keep away from the Republic, but its Basque nationalism and anti-fascism sided them with the legitimate republican government and although with enough difficulties it brought to the realization of Basque autonomy within the Second Spanish Republic and inmediately recruited the Basque Army and started to resist the attacs of the rebel Spanish Nationalist, Italian and German armies:

  • The Biscayne and Guipuzcoan branches, the more important in number, declared support for the republic, democracy and anti-Fascism in the following Spanish Civil War.
  • Eli Gallastegi understood the war as a war among Spaniards, not Basques, and went to Ireland in exile.
  • In the territory seized by the rebels:
    • The Navarrese branch published on 20th July a press release declaring no support for the legitimate government.
    • The Alavese branch commanded its followers to obey the rebel authorities.

José Antonio Aguirre, the party leader, became the first lendakari (Basque president) of the wartime multipartite Basque Government, ruling the unconquered parts of Biscay and Guipuzcoa. After the surrendering of the Basque Army to the Italian Corpo Truppe Volontari in Santoña (1937), the exile government moved to Barcelona until the fall of Catalonia and then out of Spain to the exile, first to France where they organized the camps and services with the president heading it personally. He was in Belgium when Hitler occupied that country and so he started a long travel to Berlin under a false identity. Under the protection of a Panamanian ambassador, he got to reach Sweden and dodging the SS German intelligency, he arrived to Brazil and Uruguay, where his dignity was reinstated and given visa to New York, where he stablished under the protection of American-Basques as teacher of Columbia University. When the United States decided to back Franco in 1952 he went to France anew where the Basque Government in exile was established. Also there he encountered that the proNazi French government of Vichy confiscated the Basque Government building and De Gaulle maintained it under the Franco government possesion, building that today is the Instituto Cervantes premise, in a joke of destiny. Anyway the president of the government in exile was always a PNV member and even the Spanish sole representant in the United Nations was the Basque appointee Jesús de Galíndez until his murder in a obscure episode in the time of the Spanish entry in the United Nations. He also decided to put the big Basque exilees network at the service of the Allied side and colaborated with the US Secretary of State and the CIA along the Cold War to fight Communism in Spanish America.

To date, PNV has dominated in every administration of the Basque government, although the socialist Ramón Rubial started being head of the Basque General Council until the first autonomous elections.

It was a founder part of the Christian Democrat International. Now the party has joined the recently formed European Democratic Party, with the French UDF, the current European officer Romano Prodi and other parties.

See also: Aberria, Acción Nacionalista Vasca, Batasuna, Comunión Nacionalista Vasca, Eusko Alkartasuna, batzoki, Basque Flag, Euzkadi, gudari, Basque Anthem, Carlism.

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