Basque nationalism (Basque: eusko abertzaletasuna, Spanish: Nacionalismo Vasco) is a form of nationalism that asserts that Basques, an ethnic group indigenous to the western Pyrenees, are a nation, and promotes the political unity of the Basques, today scattered between Spain and France. Since its inception in the late 19th century, Basque nationalism has included separatist movements.
Basque nationalism, spanning three different regions in two states (the Basque Autonomous Community and Navarre in Spain, and the French Basque Country in France) is "irredentist in nature"[1] as it favors political unification of all the Basque-speaking provinces.
Basque nationalism is rooted in Carlism and the loss, by the laws of 1839 and 1876, of the Ancien Régime relationship between the Spanish Basque provinces and the crown of Spain. During this period, the reactionary and the liberal brand of the pro-fueros movement pleaded for the maintenance of the fueros system and territorial autonomy against the centralizing pressures from liberal or conservative governments in Madrid. The Spanish government suppressed the fueros after the Third Carlist War.
The fueros were the native decision making and justice system issued from consuetudinary law prevailing in the Basque territories and Pyrenees. They are first recorded in the Kingdom of Navarre, confirming its charter system also across the western Basque territories during the High Middle Ages.[2] In the wake of Castile's conquest of Gipuzkoa, Álava and Durango (1200), the fueros were partially ratified by the kings of Castile and acted as part of the Basque legal system dealing with matters regarding the political ties of the Basque districts with the crown. The Fueros guaranteed the Basques a separate position in Spain with their own tax and political status. While its corpus is extensive, prerogatives contained in them set out for one that Basques were not subject to direct levee to the Castilian army, although many volunteered.
The native Basque institutions and laws were abolished in 1876 after the Third Carlist War (called the Second in the Basque context), and replaced by the Basque Economic Agreements. The levelling process with other Spanish regions disquieted the Basques. According to Sabino Arana's views, the Biscayan (and Basque) personality was being diluted in the idea of an exclusive Spanish nation fostered by centralist authorities in Madrid. Arana was inspired by his brother Luis, a co-designer of the Basque flag ikurriña (1895), and a major nationalist figure after Sabino's death (1903).
Arana felt that not only the Basque personality was endangered but also its former religious institutions, like Church or the Society of Jesus, which still often spoke in Basque to its parishioners, unlike school or administration. Sabino characterized Catholicism as a sort of shelter for Basque personality. This became a point of contention with other personalities holding like views and clustering around Arana's manifesto Bizkaya por su independencia (1892). Later industrialist and prominent Basque nationalist Ramon de la Sota dismissed Sabino's positions of Catholicism as inherent to the national issue.
The Basques represent a nation, with their own history and culture. This nation consists of race, language and an own political system (the foruak). The liberty of Euzkadi [term created by Sabino Arana to refer to the Basque Country] has been destroyed by France and, mainly, by Spain, who subjugated by force the different Basque territories, including the former Kingdom of Navarre’s territories, with the exception La Rioja, as well as Lapurdi and Zuberoa. As a consequence of the lack of independence of the country, the country has a political despondency, which has its last expression in the suppression of the Basque Traditional Laws and its own institutional system, the economic submission towards France and Spain, and the disappearance of the signs of identity. The solution to all these problems is to restore independence, by breaking the political ties with France and Spain, and the construction of a Basque state with its own sovereignty.
In 1936, the main part of the Christian-Democrat PNV sided with the Second Spanish Republic in the Spanish Civil War. The promise of autonomy was valued over the ideological differences, especially on the religious matter, and PNV decided to support the legal republican government. After stopping the far-right military rebels in Intxorta (Biscay-Gipuzkoa border), autonomy was achieved in October 1936. A republican autonomous Basque government was established, with José Antonio Agirre (PNV) as Lehendakari (president) and ministers from the PNV and other republican parties (mainly leftist Spanish parties).