The Ajuria Enea mansion house was the first ever seat of the Basque Government. On July 18, 1936, the date of the military rebellion led by Franco against the Republic, the Basque Government, with its first president, José Antonio Aguirre y Lekube, transferred its centre of operations to the Hotel Carlton in Bilbao.

Designed in 1919 by Manuel Maria Smith, the Carlton has over the years witnessed some major social and cultural events in contemporary Basque history. From the hotel, Aguirre and his government organized the Basque army that fought in the Spanish Civil War to defend the democratic values of the Republic. Today it is a landmark building in the city centre. Located in the Plaza Federico Moyúa, hub of the city's financial centre, it was recently declared an architectural, historic, artistic and cultural monument by the Basque Government. A magnificent example of refined classicism, the Carlton's artistic value is clear in every detail. The Hotel Carlton was completely revamped in 1994 to bring it into line with modern requirements.

After the fall of Bilbao in June1937, José Antonio Aguirre's government moved to Barcelona, to number 66 in the Paseo de Gracia. A plaque in the Catalonian and Basque languages was recently put up there to mark the building's brief term as the official seat of the Basque Government during the tragic ensuing months.

While in Barcelona, the main concern of Aguirre's government was to prepare for exile, by creating centres of coordination abroad for a possible exodus as the situation worsened. Basque consulates were opened in London, Bayonne and Buenos Aires, although the official seat of the Basque Government in exile was eventually acquired in Paris.

Thanks to the relations of several expatriates linked to the Basque nationalist movement, the Government acquired number 11 of the central Rue Marceau. With the Civil War lost, the Basque Government centralized its efforts to shelter thousands of Basque refugees at this historic Parisian chateau, while introducing an international policy designed to convince the European democracies of the need to re-establish the democratic order swept away by Franco.

When Paris fell to the Nazis in May 1940, the Government was dismantled and its offices subsequently occupied by Franco's police. However, the defeat of the Axis powers was the signal for the Basque Government to return to Rue Marceau, where it organized a number of major political events, including the signing in 1947 of the foundation of the NIT, the New International Teams, embryo of the later European Union of Christian Democrats, whose most charismatic leader was Konrad Adenauer.

Unfortunately, things did not get any easier for the beleaguered Government in exile. On 28 June 1951, the French Government definitively evicted the Basque Government from the chateau in Rue Marceau, by virtue of a recently passed Spanish law decreeing that all goods and assets of the Republic were to pass to Franco's regime. Together with some heavy pressure from the new regime, the law ensured the decision to evict was irrevocable. José Antonio Aguirre used to say that one of his worst experiences was the confiscation of the house on Rue Marceau, a property that has never been returned to the Basque authorities. The building has served as the headquarters of the Cervantes Institute in Paris since 1991.

Fortunately, some members of the exiled Basque Government found a new home in Paris at number 48, Rue Singer, in Paris as the official centre in exile. A three-storey mansion, number 48 was demolished in 1965 as part of a redevelopment plan. The Government in exile occupied the basement of number 50, Rue Singer until President Leizaola returned home on 15 December 1979.