Until the late 19th century, the Basques enjoyed an unusual, limited kind of self-government based on their own laws. In the Middle and Modern ages the reigning Spanish monarchs took an oath to respect and observe the fueros, or Charter Laws, that enumerated the rights of people living in the Basque region. Despite modifications and adaptations, these laws remained effective until they were finally repealed on 21 July 1876, at the end of the second Carlist war, a move that many in the area saw as the abolition of their specific, long-standing rights.

While in Europe what we now know as nation-states were beginning to take shape and the democratic ideas of the French Revolution was busy burying the ancien regime of absolute monarchies, a major political faction in the Basque Country suffered military defeat and the entire region was deprived of its Charter Law rights, losing in the process the opportunity to create the kind of modern institutions gradually appearing in other parts of Europe. 

Apart from the loss of the Charter Laws, an added problem was caused by the slow frustration in Spain of the democratic revolution that was taking hold elsewhere in Europe. While democratic institutions were appearing in much of the continent, Spain had to endure two dictatorships in the 20th century. The relatively benign seven-year dictatorship of General Primo de Rivera was followed by General Franco’s altogether tougher and much longer-lasting regime, after the six-year hiatus of the ill-starred 2nd Republic. Democracy and a genuine measure of self-government would have to wait until the late 1970s.

© "Archivo del Nacionalismo". Sabino Arana Foundation"

During the 2nd Republic, the Basque Country’s claim to a modicum of self-government was upheld, and the region recovered some of its former Charter rights. The 2nd Republic granted the region a Statute of Autonomy that led to the creation of the first Basque Government and the election of the first President of the autonomous community of the Basque Country, Jose Antonio Aguirre, a leader of the PNV, the Basque nationalist party.

However, neither Aguirre nor his first Basque Government had much time to govern, largely because the Spanish Civil War broke out, their efforts being mostly devoted to fighting the faction that had rebelled against the 2nd Republic. Despite this, in the nine months it remained in the Basque Country, and subsequently in exile, Aguirre’s government worked hard to improve their political situation. Franco’s victory in the Civil War and the subsequent dictatorship forced José Antonio Aguirre and his entire government into exile, along with many other Spaniards that had lost the war. Aguirre never did return home, dying in exile and leaving as a legacy his commitment to democracy and freedom. Aguirre told the story of his exile and subsequent vicissitudes in a book entitled “From Guernica to New York via Berlin”.

© "Archivo del Nacionalismo. Sabino Arana Foundation"

Former Basque regional minister for Justice & Culture Jesús Maria Leizaola was named as President of the Basque Government in exile after Aguirre’s death in 1960. Leizaola settled in Paris, from where he worked hard to denounce the regime in Spain and keep alive the flame of freedom and Basque self-government. In 1979, after 43 years of exile, Leizaola came home to a country busy setting the grounds for a democratic regime and a new system of autonomous communities. He also combined politics with intellectual and literary concerns. A highly cultivated and learned man, Leizaola was the author of Basque Literature and Studies in Poetry.

With Franco dead, democracy and freedom came to the Basque Country. A new Statute of Autonomy, known as the Statute of Guernica, was approved in 1979. A year earlier, in February 1978, a pre-autonomous body called the General Council for the Basque Country was created, presided over first by the socialist Ramón Rubial and subsequently the nationalist politician Carlos Garaikoetxea. In 1980 the PNV won the first elections of the new democracy.

© Lehendakaritza

On 31 March 1980, the Basque Parliament elected Garaikoetxea as its President. A massive, highly emotive homage was paid beforehand in Bilbao to former President Leizaola and, through him, to all the members of the Basque Government in exile.

A lawyer and economics degree-holder, Garaikoetxea undertook the task of building the institutions for Basque self-government from scratch and of negotiating their development with the central Spanish government, something that would prove neither easy nor simple. He laid the foundations for Basque self-government and its institutions and began tentatively to work towards the renewal of the Basque economy, with many of its basic sectors, like the iron and steel industry, heading into decline. Under Garaikoetxea work began on developing the social services that are the mark of the welfare state. Like his successor, Garaikoetxea complained bitterly about the refusal of successive central governments to transfer the powers to which he considered the region was entitled to under the Statute of Guernica, democratically accepted by the Basques. Arguments about the exact powers conceded under the Statute continue to this day.

© Lehendakaritza

In 1985, the Basque Parliament chose José Antonio Ardanza as its new President. Spanning several legislatures, Ardanza’s mandate was to continue until 1999. The new President continued the work on self-government begun by his predecessor, concentrating particularly on social and economic development, modernizing the region and claiming greater levels of self-government. Much of Ardanza’s time and effort also went into bringing peace to the region and to denouncing the terrorism of ETA. One achievement was the Pact of Ajuria Enea, subscribed by virtually all the political parties in the region and designed to create a normal political environment in the Basque Country and eradicate violence. The modernization of the Basque Country that occurred under Ardanza’s mandate facilitated further economic and social development that gave Basque society levels of wealth and welfare comparable with most in Europe.