Basque nationalism has deep roots in the autonomy enjoyed by the provinces of Araba, Gipuzkoa and Bizkaia in the Middle Ages. Even after these provinces came under the rule of Navarra and Castile, and eventually the unitary Spanish state, they maintained their own traditional laws and fiscal privileges, the so-called fueros (charters). Only in 1839, at the end of a bloody civil war, were these fueros finally subordinated to the national constitution, as liberal forces promoted the creation of common Spanish institutions. When Sabino Arana founded the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) in 1885, it harked back to this lost autonomy. Even today members of the PNV, a centre-right party representing the biggest force in the Basque Autonomous Community, are known as “jelkides,” followers of “Jaungoikoa eta Lege Zaharrak” (“God and the Ancient Laws”). This name also highlights the cultural thrust of the early Basque nationalist movement, and in particular its devout Catholicism.
Early Basque nationalism was also shaped by the industrialization that took place in the final quarter of the nineteenth century, notably in the Bizkaia province and later in neighboring Gipuzkoa. These changes drove inward migration and a radical change in the Basque Country’s cultural, linguistic and national identity, at the same time as the central state was trying to galvanize a common Spanish nationality. This also set the terms of the opposition between the PNV and the Socialist PSOE, founded in 1879. While this latter party arose in reaction against the exploitation and terrible living standards in the mines and the steel industry, the PNV emerged in reaction against the Basque people’s loss of cultural identity and national political institutions. [...]
If at first ETA did not declare itself socialist, this changed considerably over subsequent years. The revolutions in Algeria, Vietnam and Cuba over the 1950s – socialist-hued national liberation movements, centering on the armed struggle – deeply impressed ETA. At its Third Assembly (April-May 1964) it asserted that the Basque Country, like Algeria, Vietnam and Cuba, was a colony subject to a foreign state. This projection of ETA’s own aspirations onto distant examples also allowed it to adopt a vaguely-defined “socialist” perspective, and most importantly a strategy focused on armed struggle. Since these far-flung insurrectionary models were hardly practicable under the Franco regime, at first ETA’s “direct action” was limited to propaganda and graffiti, or a few occasional homemade bombs chucked at government buildings. In practice, the most important consequence of the Third Assembly line was that ETA adopted the perspective that national liberation would first require a common front of nationalist organizations to create an independent Basque homeland, only after which it would be possible to begin the transition to socialism. [...]
Even in this period of Transition from Francoism, ETA’s armed activity intensified. Between 1978 and 1988 ETA pm and ETA M claimed a combined total of 513 victims, compared to 75 in the previous decade. This was also a time of significant mobilisations in the factories (and indeed among education workers) as well as around questions like opposition to nuclear power stations and Spain joining NATO. Faced with severe police repression, the nationalist Left was an important part of all such movements and gained major popular recognition for its role. This was also the period in which the LAB trade union federation stepped up its activity, rapidly gaining shopfloor influence. The context of continuing violence and repression in the Basque Country highlighted the limits of the “democratic” transition from Francoism. The state continued a paramilitary Dirty War against the nationalist Left, combined with direct police repression. If in late 1977, the end of the dictatorship allowed for the release of ETA’s political prisoners, by 1987 some 504 of its members languished in jail.
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