Basque conflict

(Graffiti in support of ETA, Pasha (2003))

Basque conflict was an armed conflict (during the years 1959 to 2011), which overlapped on the one hand Spain and France, and on the other Basque National Liberation Movement and its supporters.

Basque Country (in Basque: Euskadi) is an autonomous community in northern Spain, with a total population of 2.19 million. inhabitants (2012), mainly Basque, but in addition there are important communities in the northern Basque Autonomous Community of Navarre and the French region of Labourd.

The roots of disagreements between Basque and Spanish population plunges much in the history of relations between the two populations, the seed of discord may be localized at the beginning of the nineteenth century, although differences were evident long before. In fact, misunderstandings worsened during that period, having a much deeper history steeped in the past history of Spain.

(A republican mural in Belfast showing solidarity with the Basque nationalism., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Muralbelfast2.jpg)

The first rift between the two sides occurred in the eighteenth century, when Bourbons liquidated the regulations of crown of Aragon, making from Navari and Basque people the only areas remembering the old municipal ordinances. Later in the nineteenth century, the Basques were noted by initiating intellectual debate to solve minority problem that loomed increasingly acute.

The most significant moment which resulted in the impossibility of solving this conflict probably occurred after Carlist War of 1872-1876, when the Basques began to be represented and perceived as a barbaric nation, strongly linked to the agricultural environment, which was a mirror of the Spanish liberal society of the late nineteenth century, adept of anti-foral patriotism.

Seen as savage, primitive, archaic, theocrat, feudal, oligarch, matriarchal, rural, illiterate, violent, and not least mentally unbalanced people, it was almost impossible to not arise an ethnic conflict in that circumstances.

Politicians, intellectuals and war correspondents, described inhabited areas populated by humans Basque as an incomprehensible language, with habits and behavior refractive to modernity. The magnitude of the conflict which was to acquire a turn more difficult to control was offered by the King of Spain himself , in 1876. Alfonso XII concentrated in one sentence a conflict that exists today and certainly will continue to “color” Spanish society:

“… it should be noted that this is another country, different from the rest of Spain in customs and traditions, ideas and thought. A Sparta that will always be against what Spain will decide even if it will be in his interest too.”