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The Society of Basque Studies and the Autonomy of Euskadi (1918-1931) by José Luis Granja Chair of Contemporary History, University of the Basque Country [This article is a summary and review of Idoia Estornés Zubizarreta’s book La construcción de una nacionalidad vasca. El Autonomismo de Eusko-Ikaskuntza (1918-1931), published in San Sebastián by Eusko Ikaskuntza-Sociedad de Eustudios Vascos, 1990, with a prologue by Gregorio Monreal Zia.] This new book by Idoia Estornés is the text of her extensive doctoral thesis (abridged only in the document appendix). Her thesis was directed by Professor Olibarri and was read at the University of Navarra in 1988. In 1983 this historian had already published a book on the Society of Basque Studies (Sociedad de Eustudios Vascos-SEV) and its contribution to Basque culture since its foundation in 1918 until the Civil War. Her current work centers around the political activity of the ideologically suprapartisan and pluralistic Society, overturned in achieving autonomy for Euskadi. These activities culminated in the creation of the “Estatuto General del Estado Vasco” (General Statute of the Basque Country) in May of 1931, the first autonomous Basque project to take place during the Second Republic. The content of the work is much broader than its subtitle would lead us to believe. Chronologically, the First Part is a synthesis of historical antecedents of legality based on the old laws and the autonomist movement in the Basque provinces from the end of the eighteenth century until 1918. Thematically, in the years under investigation (1918-1931), the Second Part studies the Basque question not only through the prism of the SEV, but also by focusing attention on all the political forces at work and examining the political signposts and the legal texts of that process. Even though it is important in the history of the last few years of the Restoration, the principal contribution of this work deals with the period of 1930 and 1931 in Euskadi and comprises a detailed study of Basque politics from the Pact of San Sebastián to the elections to the constituent Assemblies (or Cortes Constituyentes), especially that of the first three months of the Republican regime. The study is a careful analysis that follows the thread of autonomy throughout the period. Perhaps it would have been convenient to have prolonged the investigation up to the point when the parliament rejected the Statute of Estella in the fall of 1931. This marked the end of the first stage of the Basque autonomic process in the Republic: the pre-constitutional projects, the SEV, and the approval in Assembly of Estella, clearly contrary to the Spanish Constitution of December 1931. Not the least of this book’s many contributions is the sharing of the complete results of the 1931 municipal elections in Euskadi. They are presented in an easy-to-use appendix, along with other data of interest such as population, the presence or absence of the speaking of Basque, and the position of the 549 Basque municipalities with regard to the Statute. One must emphasize Dr. Estornés’s great efforts given the methodological difficulties that these elections embody, owing to several factors: the absence of official figures, the disparity of sources, and the political party changes of many councilmen after the advent of the Republican regime. With this effort she has considerably facilitated a global analysis of those primaries throughout the Basque Country, going far beyond the books we have seen so far that have detailed studies at the local level (in the case of Vitoria) or at the provincial level (Navarra). Another outstanding aspect of this work is the author’s clear vision concerning the disparate political strategies of the two nationalistic parties upon the attainment of autonomy early in the Republic: the confessional PNV (Basque Nationalist Party), leading the movement of mayors along with the traditionalist and Catholic right; and the non-confessional ANV (Basque Nationalist Action), supporting the provincial Comisiones Gestoras alongside the Republicans and socialists. If the former achieved electoral success and hegemony within the nationalist movement, its alliance with Carlism (CT) contributed decisively to the failure of the Basque Statute in 1931. Owing to its small size and its quick defeat in the constituent elections in June, the Basque Action party played a notable role in attracting the left toward the autonomy movement and blazed the trail that the PNV would talk about for years afterward when the Statute was finally achieved at the hands of the Popular Front in the Civil War. Estornés writes in her conclusions, “With time (a little time), the PNV will make the ANV’s postulates of liberal nationalism their own, ...but the delays of 1931...resulted in the deceleration and freezing of the autonomous process during the years that followed.” The ANV’s role of precursor in the modernization of Basque nationalism did not help it achieve political success because, as Professor Monreal points out in his prologue, “for the first time in contemporary Basque history, the ANV experienced the difficulties and contradictions inherent in a double nationalistic and leftist calling.” There are clear and recent examples of this very thing in Euskadi. Undoubtedly, the pith and substance of the book is its exhaustive investigation of the birth and editing of the SEV Statute, as well as its transformation into the famous and much-debated Statute of Estella. The latter was defined, with good reason, as “the nationalistic confessional son” of the former. Moving away from traditional nationalist historiography, Idoia Estornés contributes to the demythification of both projects which suffered from a notorious lack of democracy (especially the Estella mater which was marked partisan). In this area, her work coincides with the recent works of various authors.1 Another assertion of her work is based on the emphasis placed on the emphasis placed on religious problem as a fundamental element of the coalition of the PNV and Carlism. This coalition vanquished the leftists in June of 1931 with the text of Estella as an electoral program. If we spoke of the autonomic key to explain the PNV’s attitude in the war, we believe that its policy of 1931 cannot be understood without keeping the religious key in mind, putting the defense of the Church before the viability of the Statute, the complete opposite of its actions in 1936. The substitution of the religious question for the one of autonomy as a priority factor in the PNV’s political behavior had as a consequence the inversion of its alliances and a change from the Catholic and righist majority (PNV+CT) of Euskadi in 1931 to the autonomist and Republican majority (PNV+Popular Front) in 1936. The religious question was the determining cause behind the bipolarization of the Basque political forces in the constituent elections of 1931 in which the two great blocks of right and left faced off, divided by their support of or rejection of the Statute of Estella, the essence of which was the Basque Concordat with the Vatican, as its supporters pointed out. This clerical clause, introduced by the PNV and the CT, had a possible, or even probable, “ecclesiastical inspiration” in Estornés’s opinion. She writes, “The secrecy that surrounds the ecclesiastical documentation prohibits us from the possibility, however, of contributing proof of that which is for us, according to the Anglo-Saxon formula, a personal conviction.” She was denied permission to consult the Bishop’s Archive in Vitoria under the pretext that “people implicated in some papers are still alive.” This leads us to a final observation. Once more it affirms the impossibility of access to the Church’s archives as well as to those of the Basque Nationalist Party, archives that are basic to the history of Euskadi during the Second Republic and the Civil War.2 That history has been rewritten during the last few years by different historians on the basis of other public and private archives, in spite of those two institutions that seem to be afraid of letting their own history be known. Fortunately, the PNV’s stand in this respect is beginning to change, thanks to the Sabino Arana Foundation, and it seems that in the current decade its historical archive will be opened to researchers. However, we will probably have to wait until the twenty-first century to consult the Church’s archives, considering that the Vatican Archive is only open up to the year 1922. In summary, Idoia Estornés’s book La construcción de una nacionalidad vasca is one of the most important works of contemporary history of the Basque Contry that has appeared in the last ten years. It brings the research of the history of Basque autonomy during the Second Republic to a climax, research that has given rise to noteworthy investigations during the 1980s through the initial synthesis of professors Castells and Fusi.3 It has become the best known theme of that which is known about the Republic in Euskadi. The question of autonomy was the backbone of Basque political life during the 1930s for good reason, and it was the cause of the main break in its party system. From now on, history should dedicate itself to the study of the other two key questions of that period, questions that also fragmented Basque political parties: the religious and the social questions, still insufficiently analyzed regardless of recent valuable works. Notes 1. See J.L. de la Granja, El Estatuto Vasco de 1936, IVAP, Oñati, 1988. J.M. Castells, “El componente foral de la inicial pretensión estatutaria vasca de la II República: el proyecto de la Sociedad de Estudios Vascos,” Cuadernos de Sección Derecho, 1989, no.4, pp. 221-230. J. Corcuera, “Fuerismo y autonomía en el estatutismo vasco durante la II República,” in V.A., Los nacionalismos en la España de la II República, Siglo XXI, Madrid, 1991, pp. 357-375. 2. In a recent doctoral thesis on El partido Nacionalista Vasco ante la Guerra de España (University of Navarra, April, 1991), F. de Meer recognizes “the limitation imposed on this study by not being able to consult with the PNV archives and those of the Holy See which are currently not open for the period being studied.” Equally, the writer M. Vázquez Montalbán, author of the interesting novel Galíndez, has declared: “The life of Galíndez will not be known in depth while the PNV archives remain closed” (interview published in the magazine Muga, March 1991, no. 76, pp. 13-14). 3. See J.M. Castells, El Estatuto Vasco, Haranburu, San Sebastián, 1976. J.P. Fusi, El problema vasco en la II República, Turner, Madrid, 1979. S. de Pablo, Alava y la autonomía vasca durante la II República, Diputación Foral de Alava, Vitoria, 1985. J.L. de la Granja, Nacionalismo y II República en el País Vasco, CIS-Siglo XXI, Madrid, 1986. |
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