This file is a mirror of EUSKAL HERRIA JOURNAL by Basque Red Net.

SOUTHERN BASQUE COUNTRY
DURING FRANCOISM:
THE BASQUE RESISTANCE

With the fall of Bilbo, the military occupation of Southern Basque Country by Franco's forces was soon accomplished. On July 1, 1937 the new mayor of Bilbo, and future politician in post-Franquism, Jose Maria Areilza, declared in his inaugural speech:

Franco's dictatorship lasted until his death in 1975. The dictator's goal was a "España, una, libre y grande" (Spain, united, free and great). On the cultural level the unity of Spain meant the unity of Spanish culture and language. Therefore, the regime embarked in a thorough campaign of cultural repression. Euskara was banned from public use. Basque names and publications, and the teaching of Euskara were strictly forbidden. However, since the civil war had shattered Spain's economy and infrastructure, and the Basque heavy industry was preserved intact thanks to the battalions of Basque soldiers which protected it from sabotage, Franco's punishment to Bascongadas was restrained in the economic level. He needed to retain the goodwill of the Basque industrialists and bourgeousie. Basque industry benefited greatly from Franco's generous export subsidies and policies which denied rights to independent trade unions or free collective bargaining. Basque bourgeoisie adapted well to Franquism and its policy of promoting industrialization while keeping wages low, ensuring respect for "social order" and thus making substantial profits possible.

The period following the Second World War witnessed the first massive strikes in the history of Franquism. Workers's mobilizations continued to spread right through the Aberri Eguna (Basque Homeland National Day) of 1947, when thousands of people assembled in the streets of Bilbo in spite of police repression. In response to the strike in Bizkaia on May 1947, the Civil Governor ordered security forces to take over the factories and the imprisonment of 6,000 workers. During the period 1951 to 1957 numerous strikes and mobilizations took place mainly in factories in Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa.

In the 1960s Araba and Nafarroa underwent an intense process of industrialization which brought with it the emergence of a militant proletariat. Trade union Comisiones Obreras (CC.OO, Workers Commissions) was established and ETA's militants worked together with it. The year of 1968 was marked by the intense struggle of workers in Laminaciones de Bandas (a steel production complex) from which ETA's Workers Front emerged.

Southern Basque Country underwent deep sociological changes as a result of the second great wave of Spanish immigration. Between the period 1955 to 1975 Southern Basque Country experienced the most rapid demographic growth in Spain with the exception of the province of Madrid. The population virtually doubled: 1.325,382 inhabitants in 1940; 2,556,297 in 1975. The population explosion was most dramatic in the new industrial areas and had a more far-reaching social impact than the pre-war one for three reasons: the number of immigrants was much greater, immigration now swept over most of the Basque region, and many of the new industrial centers grew up in the heart of the euskaldun (Basque speaking) rural hinterland. The process of industrialization was accelerated with the economically active population in the industrial sector, rising from 324,437 in 1955 to 521,288 in 1975. In the same period, the number of waged wokers rose from 330,000 in 1955 to 784,956 in 1975.

From 1968 onwards political strikes in support of ETA and nationalist demands increased. Death of ETA militants provoked immediate strike action if not general strikes. Even strikes of a more economic nature, organized by the communist-led Comisiones Obreras, also incorporated nationalist demands for Basque autonomy, recognition of Euskara, and amnesty for Basque political prisoners. The best known events of Basque resistance during Franquism were the Burgos trials, which brought sixteen ETA activists before a military court in Burgos in 1970 and, three years later, in 1973, ETA's supreme military achievement when 75 kilos of plastic explosives were detonated in a Madrid street killing the president of the Spanish government, Admiral Carrero Blanco, most likely Franco's heir.

The struggle intensified in 1975: a general strike was joined by more than 200,000 workers, paramilitary squads increased their activities, and Basque political prisoners initiated a hunger strike. In September, Franco ordered the execution of two ETA militants, Juan Paredes Manot, "Txiki", and Angel Otaegi Etxeberria, "Azpeitia". Euskadi Ta Askatasuna had united Basques and immigrants, nationalists and non-nationalists in a common struggle for a social and national change.

The Koordinadora Abertzale Sozialista (KAS, Patriotic Socialist Coordinator) was created during the last months of Franquism to coordinate the mobilizations against the executions in September 1975. KAS gathered the two branches of ETA (ETA-pm and ETA-m) as well as several other pro-independence groups. In 1976 KAS, which still exists, took on the added task of being the permanent meeting space for both the armed and unarmed militant groups. KAS presented their negotiating demands known as the "eight points" or "KAS alternative", which in January 1978 were reduced to five: the recognition of Basques' right to self-determination (including independence); withdrawal of the security forces and Civil Guard from Southern Basque Country; the unity of Bascongadas and Navarre; amnesty for Basque political prisoners; and the legalization of all pro-independence political parties.

During the so-called "Spanish political transition", from the death of Franco in 1975 to the first Spanish general elections in June 1977, six political strikes took place in Bascongadas: on December 11, 1975, a few days after the dictator's death, to demand amnesty for all Basque political prisoners; on March 4, 1976, to protest the killing of six workers in Gasteiz by the police; on September 13, 1976, to protest the killing of a demonstrator in Hondarribia by the police; on September 27, 1976, to demand amnesty; on March 10, 1977, to protest the killing of two ETA activists in Itxaso (Gipuzkoa) by the police; and on May 13, 1977, to demand amnesty.

Bibliography: Luis Nuñez Astrain, La Razón Vasca, Txalaparta (1995); Jose Luis Cereceda, Euskadi en guerre, Ekin (1987); Marianne Heiberg, The Making of the Basque Nation, Cambridge University Press (1987); Francisco Letamendia, Historia del Nacionalismo Vasco y de ETA (R&B Ediciones); Towards the National Liberation of Euskadi, Ekin (1992).