Farewell

Spokespeople from Batasuna, on a press conference January 3. (From The Washington Post)

Yesterday the French section of the nationalist Basque party Batasuna announced its dissolution. In a press conference, its spokespeople, Maite Goyenetxe and Jean-Claude Aguerre, said that the organization had “reached the goal to build the Euskal Herreria [Basque Country] by means of a political way in front of the oppressive Spanish and French states.” The new face of Batasuna will be the party Sortu, currently under construction.

The antecessor of the current Batasuna, Herri Batasuna, was created in the 1970s with the objective of creating an independent Basque socialist state that would comprise lands of Spain and France. Ever since the beginning, it was closely linked with the terrorist separatist organization ETA, up to the point that it was widely thought of as being its political arm. The party ran for national and European Parliament elections, winning for the former no more than 5 seats each time and for the latter no more than 1 seat in each contest. In 2001, it was re-launched under the name of Batasuna. In 2003, the party was declared illegal in Spain by the Judge Baltassar Garzón because of its relationship with ETA. Its activities were not banned in France, where it continued to present candidates to elections, obtaining representatives to local administrations.

In the last years, ETA, with which Batasuna shared the ultimate goal of creating the independent Basque state, was constantly weakened until its own dissolution in late 2011. Several factors contributed to this. First, the imprisonment of many of its leaders, most notably those in charge of the organization’s finances. Second, the evident lack of advancement of its violent way (claiming the lives of about 800 people), which never produced the yielding of the Spanish or French governments to its demands, and, perhaps more importantly, which contributed to the alienation of the Spanish (and Basque) public. Third, the relative success of more moderate discourse and more institutional nationalist alternatives, such as the Basque coalition Bildu, which became the strongest political force in the Spanish Basque region local elections of May 2011.

Under this scenario, the French branch of Batasuna was the remnant of a worldview and a set of means of action that were no longer acceptable to the Basques (if they ever supported the violent alternative to independence) and which were greatly weakened already. As the creation of its successor, Sortu, is underway, it remains an open question if this new party is capable of regaining support from the French Basque.