20.05.1997. Analysis of the week from 11th to 18th of May, 1997
in the Basque Country.

FRAUD, LIES AND VIDEOTAPES: BASQUE CONCERT AND QUOTA.

They "sell" as a victory to pay tributes as a result of a military defeat. This matter enlightens (and hides) the last century and a half of the Basque History.

If Sabino Arana, founder of the PNV, returned to live! He would have to call "betrayer" the guy of the PNV who dares to call himself President of the Sabino Arana Foundation. 103 years ago in his magazine called BIZKAITARRA Arana called "traitors" the Biscayan commisioners who accepted a net increase of one million pesetas of that time in the third economical Concert. Sabino Arana also the oligarchical nature of the Concert, which let the whole tax burden on the popular consuption, while biscayan industrialists and propietors kept on being exempt from paying and free to pile up their capital . (1)

The president of Sabino Arana Foundation is called Anton AURRE ELORRIETA and published last 16th an article that was a joyful pealing of bells, a elaborate retreat, a clamorous applause, a petal throwing by adolescents to the heads of the members of the government of the Autonomous Ragion to congratulate them because at the night of Wednesday 14th the vicepresidents of Spanish Government and Basque Regional Government had reached an agreement to renew the Economic Concert and the Five-Year Law of the Quota for the period 1997-2001 for the three provinces(Biscay, Gipuzkoa and Alava). In that article AURRE had the nerve to assert that: "we can say that Euskadi has got into the "right breakaway". A flight made up of three runners with the same faculties: European Treasury, Spanish State Treasury and Basque Treasuries. EUSKADI HAS IN THIS WAY THE SAME TAX AND FINANCIAL INSTRUMENTS AS ANY STATE" (2). The capital letters are mine, to emphisize the lie.

It isn´t an isolated and chance voice of the PNV. Some tens of hours later the euro MP of the PNV Josu Jon IMAZ stated in the same newspaper interview that "I don´t believe in founding a State" and observed that "the PNV gives up, has given up to statality (for the Basque Country)", insisting and emphasizing Aurre´s deceit. He said about the agreement that "it puts Euskadi in similar tax soveranity coordinates to those which any of the States or unities part of the European Union will have in the future" (3). And according to what can be heard in radios and read everywhere, the sacred elephants of the PNV and their acolytes trumpet that "doctrine". Televisions are full of videotapes showing those statements.

I draw your attention to this detail because it is very critical as well as revealling of the present situation in the Basque Country and enlightens (and hides) the last century and a half of the Basque History. It is well known that the main characteristic of the Capitalist Production Way is opacity, due to the fact that things aren´t what they seem to be. This topic I am explainig is not only an example of that opacity but also of the way in which the Basque People is cheated and deceived through lies and videotapes, by falsifying its present reality and by telling its history as if it were an invented rigmarole.

The beneficiaries of the betrayal of the PNV (and EA, which shares the government with the PNV and signed the agreement) to the Basque Country congratulate themselves and the PNV. Spanish newspapers of that 16th were full of editorials with warmly approving, laudatory comments swelled with satisfaction, extremly satisfied with the kindness of Spain and with the kindness of "good" Basques (that is: docile Basques, obedient Basques, kneeled Basques who pay tributes to Spain as fair punishment to their defeat in the hands of Spanish army). And everybody reinforces the falsification of History, showing off the fruits of bad faith, or, at best, of the dreadful ignorance of their editors.

The editorial of EL PAÍS called "Concierto 2000" lied when it stated that the Concert "is the heritage of the traditional "foral" autonomy (perntaining to the historic priviledges of the Basque Country)", and they were right when they asserted that it is "something within the logic of Basque Autonomy" and when it stressed the constitutional nature of that "historic singularity". EL CORREO ESPAÑOL inits editorial "Acuerdo clave" pomtificated that the agreement "makes deeper the self-government in Euskadi". EL MUNDO, in its editoril "El concierto concertado" exagerated when talking about "a peculiarity with deep historical roots" refering to an issue that is only six years older than a century and a half. ABC, in its editorial "Una singularidad legítima" broke all records of cynism and jeer by saying that "in the matter of taxis and tributes the Basque Country and, to a greater extense, Navarre enjoy a peculiar situation of QUASI-SOUVERANITY" (I put the capital letters) as a matter of fact just when the Concerts sealed and seal the lost of tax souveranity of the Basque Country.

And LA VANGUARDIA showed its contempt to History by entitling an "information" with "A centennary law interrupted by Franco" and by saying about it that "The Civil War and General Franco´s take over of power abolished the economical Concert". It is not "centenary" but "sesquicentenary" because the first economical Concert was that imposed on Navarre by the so-called "Ley Paccionada" from 1841, forcing in its article number 25 to pay to the Spanish Treasure one million eight hundred "reales" (coin of one quarter of a peseta) a year. And neither did Franco abolished the economical Concert because it followed in force in Alava and Navarre during the 40 years of dictatorship. He just left "out of effect" by means of the decree law of 23 May 1937 the officially approved system, that as regards economy was in force in the Basque provinces, in the two "treacherous" provinces (Gipuzkoa and Biskay) because "they had risen up in arms against the National Movement began on 17 July" and had made use of "the singularity of their tax and administrative rule to carry out the most vile anti-Spain policy". And the same preamble of the decre law where I am quoting from points out the necesity "to let the system subsist in Alava because it didn´t take part in any revolt action". As in Navarre, where according to the text that tax and administrative rule led in Navarre "to the even bigger exaltation of their national sense and the fervour of their adhesion to the common design of the mother country".

All these Spanish diaries almost awarded the king Juan Carlos I of Spain the motto Perdomuit feroces vascones (he overcome the fierce Basques), so many times awarded by the chroniclers of that time to all Visigotic kings ancestors of Juan Carlos in the VI, VII and VII centuries (to the point that the repetition itself showed the lie).

But let us leave falsifications, distortions and lies of the Spanish (and Basque sepay) media aside and let us talk about the facts hide.

1st (essential) fact. The economical concerts are the proof and the effect of the lost of the tax sovereignity of the Southern Basque Country, the poissoned fruit of a military defeat, the periodical loot, the annual tribute to the conqueror. So close in time (historicallay speaking) as in 1840, the Basques of the Southern Basque Country DID NOT HAVE TO PAY TAXES TO THE SPANISH CROWN. And THEY DID NOT HAVE TO GO AND SERVE THE SPANISH ARMY. It was only the defeat of the Basque rural masses at the hands of the Spanish army in the Carlsit wars what led to the abolition, in part at the beginning and total in the end, of the Basque jurisdiction (the "Fueros") and it brought with it the duty to pay taxes and to do the military service in the Spanish army.

As I stated some lines above, it is the wrongly called "Ley Paccionada" of 1841 which after the defeat at the 1st Carlist war forced Navarre to pay an annual quota to the Spanish Treasury. But it was the defeat of the Basque rural masses at the Carlist war of 1872-1876 what was punished with the total abolishment of the "Fueros" and with the lost of the tax sovereignity and with the duty to do military service.

The president of the Spanish cabinet, Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, knew what he was sayng when he wrote in the preamble of the royal decree of 28 February 1878 that led to the first economical concert for Álava, Gipuzkoa and Biskay that: "Sir: once the constitutional unity has been settled in the Basque provinces (refering to the three above mentioned); and the first call-up has been checked,… there was only left to make them join the economical concert; there was left that all tax issues were recorded in the State general budgets, and that all lien burdening on the property, industry and commerce affected the same to the natives of that country as to the rest of Spaniards".

2nd fact (determining factor of a hundred years of our recent history). In 1876 the Basque burgeoisie, to be exact the industrial and financial oligarchy which is its leading fraction, replaced the "jauntxos" (the Basque rural notables) in their position of ruling class, of unlawful holders (without any fair title) of the political and social power (and later of the legal instruments that will make it possible to perpetuate that power for one hundred years with the sole republican interval of 1931-1937) in the hands of the Spanish army and the Spanish state that defeated the Basque rural masses and which theose masses consider a foreign army and a foreign state. Already in 1875 the Spanish government had appointed Francisco MACMAHON, an important person of the oligarchical circle) as Governor of Biskay. When the Spanish goverment dissolved in 1877 the county councils of Biskay, Álava and Gipuzkoa, because they had resisted the application of the law of 21 June 1876 which abolished the "Fueros", the provisional "tolerant" county councils designated were made up of burgeoises that acted for their commercial and industrial interests.

And when the Basque industrial and financial oligarchy realised that the economical concerts would be an invaluable tool to defend their interests and that they could control the county councils, and through them, the taxes, they dropped all "Basque aim" and become pro-Spain, pro-Spain Basque. Not strange at all, as it was from that Spanish state from whom they obtained the legal instrument that proved to be priceless to increase their economical power: the economical concerts. Which let them get:

1. advantages at the competition against the Spanish industry, by reducing the tax burden on their own industries (in the tax year of 1880-1881 Biskay only paid 21.312 pesetas as taxes, in contrast to the 5.423.504 that Barcelona paid or to the 330.944 of Salamanca!);

2. to increase of the exploitation at work of the dominated classes, by increasing the tax burden on them (until 1912 the county council of Biskay didn´t set up any taxes on the real estates, crops, cattle, industry or commerce; in 1927 the proposal of the town council was to charge 899.815 to the industry in contrast with the 5.499.992 for consumtion);

3. to finance with public money the works that lessen their private expenses (railways, port, etc.); and

4. the top of the top, to use the institution as an ideological weapon, as the oligarchy mafes a false definition of the concerts and hides their nature and uses it as an economical weapon at their service, and succeeded in flying the kite that they are the expression of the Basque liberties, a compensation for the lost "Fueros". Exactly the same as the PNV is doing now.

As many other times the voice of the MLNV (Basque National Liberation Movement) through a press-release of HB (Herri Batasuna) released that very 16th, clarified the situation. They denounced hardly all the lies, shameful abandonment of their principles disguised as success and the alienating propaganda of the PNV to transform into a victory the tribute payment to the Spanish crown. HB said that "it is not possible to speak about whole tax powers", that "both in the agreement and in the concert are restrictions to the tax sovereignity" and that "it is high time that we demanded strongly that as long as the present relation with the Spanish state doesn´t change WE WON´T PAY A SINGLE PESETA MORE of quota". Recalling what was obvious but had been hidden by the PNV and its Spanish praisers, HB denounced that: "the concert, as well as the agreement and their respective quotas, are the result, not of a privilege, but of a military defeat and of the usurpation of the Basque treauries". HB also denounced that the PNV "accepts to send hundreds of thousands of millions of pesetas every year, so as the Spanish government carries on with the military, police and Crown expenses and with that of several megalomaniac projects and works". (4)

The Professor of Contemporary History at the University of the Basque Country Manuel Montero, not suspicious of being a Basque nationalist at all, has denounced that these economical concerts are even worse than the last ones. He has published that "in the historical economical concerts -those of 1878 and 1937- the Basque provinces had full normative powers. Moreover, they created their own taxes, which were quite different to those in the rest of Spain. Biskay, Gipuzkoa and Álava were tax heavens". (5)

And finally, it has been the majority trade union in the Autonomous Community , the nationalist union ELA, at present in coalition with the trade union of the MLNV LAB, who has denounced the anti-social way the governments of the PNV have applied the economical concerts. They stated that nowadays the tax lien burdens practiclly exclusively on the earned incomes, since the amount an employee pays on the average for the personal income-tax amounts 431.000 pesetas, whereas those who carry out business and professional activities pay only 161.000 pesetas. And that the use of the powers granted by the concerts has been disppointing: reduction of the income taxes of the companies and of the capital (on corporations and estates), not much improvement in the fight against tax fraud and the extension of it to the business, professional and capital incomes.

Did I exagerate when I entitled this analysis FRAUD, LIES AND VIDEOTAPES: BASQUE CONCERT AND QUOTA?

Justo DE LA CUEVA