De Fabel van de illegaal on internet
april 2000
Supportgroup uncritical of Basque nationalism
For already more than a year Basque trade union activist Esteban Murillo Zubiri is imprisoned in the Haarlem Jail. The Dutch ministery of Justice is working on his extradition to Spain. Murillo fears that he might end up in a Spanish torture chamber. Trying to keep him out of the hands of the Spanish police, a group of Dutch activists recently started a support group, which turned out to be rather uncritical of Basque nationalism.
Murillo started his political career as an activist during the fascist Franco era. He became a member of the "Left-nationalist" trade union LAB. He was arrested and tortured by the police in 1975, 1977 and 1983. He was being followed and threatened all the time. In those days dozens of other Basque activists were murdered by the GAL dead squads of the Spanish state.
In 1986 several arrested ETA-members said to the police that Murillo also belonged to their organisation, and that in 1980 he had lent them his car for a succeeded murder attempt on a policeman. Murrillo denies that he is an ETA-member and says he didn't know what his car was being used for. Later the ETA-prisoners withdrew their statements, saying they had been tortured at the time.
Murillo went to France and became a refugee. In 1990 France wanted to extradite him to Spain and Murillo fled to Mexico. At first he was accepted as a political refugee, but later also Mexico started threatening him with extradition. He had to leave again and arrived on Schiphol Airport on January 8th 1999 on his way to some other destination. He was arrested and sent to jail.
Spanish lobby
Spain immediately asked for his extradition. Murillo's lawyer fears that his client will be tortured when he gets back to Spain. Amnesty International and the European Committee against Torture have acknowledged that prisoners are being tortured in Spanish jails. On August 24th 1999 the Haarlem court, however, decided that Murillo's extradition could go on because he would not be in danger in Spain. Murillo went to the higher court, which confirmed the earlier decision. Now the ministry of Justice will decide.
To be able to get their hands on activists like Murillo, Spain tried to do away with the possibilities for citizens to get asylum in other European countries. They didn't succeed back then. Last year, on the Euro-summit in Tampere the Spanish lobby tried hard again. Not without success this time, because the EU countries decided to make extradition easier. In theory, it's still possible now for activists like Murillo to be accepted as refugees, but that might also change in the near future.
The public galleries of the court were crowded with sympathizers every time the Murillo case was on. The committee "Staika in solidarity with the Basque country" on March 13th 1999 organised its first demonstration in Haarlem against Murillo's extradition. On June 27th there was a second protest, this time set up by Jarrai, the Basque youth organisation. And on January 8th this year, when Murillo was imprisoned for exactly one year, 50 activists demonstrated. The demonstration ended when the police started beating the protestors.
Anti-nationalism
Meanwhile the Esteban Murillo solidarity-committee was founded. New actions are planned. The committee wants to hand over dozens of letters of solidarity to the minister of Justice. The support organisation for illegalized people "De Fabel van de illegaal" also signed such a declaration, to protest the imprisonment and deportation of refugees.
However, "De Fabel" does not sympathise with the Basque independence movement. We do not agree with the Murillo support group on this issue. They do not criticise Basque nationalism and even seem to support it: "The Basque independence movement is nationalist in the sense that they feel affinity with the Basque language and the Basque culture, and they want to protect these against Spanish oppression. They resist the idea that Spain is an everlasting unity, with one culture, one language and one people, or like Franco always said: España, una, grande y libre. One could even say that the Basque independence movement is anti-nationalist, that is: anti-Spanish nationalist. Anyway, according to the independence movement autonomy and territorial unity (a Basque country including Naffaroa and French Basque country) are needed to guarantee survival of the Basque culture and language", the commitee wrote.
Just like comparable movements Basque nationalism indeed started as a reaction to some other, more dominant, nationalism. But it is nonsense to call the Basque independance movement "anti-nationalist". In fact, it is precisely the "Left-nationalist" Basque movement that have always heavily fought and isolated the more anti-nationalist and internationalist organisations in Basque country.
Pure blood
Basque nationalism started out extreme right and catholic. Around 1900, the movement arose from the local protest against the grand scale industrialising process of northern Spain. Leader was Sabino de Arana y Giori, a member of the regional elite. He saw his company being destroyed by the economic modernisation. Arana said Spanish "grand capital" was responsible and also the migrant workers, pouring in from poor and more rural parts of Spain. They came to work in the new factories in Basque country, and, according to Arana, they brought the "godless" socialism.
Arana developed a new Basque racism in which the purity of blood was a central issue. He thought that Spanish blood had become unclean by the centuries long contact with Arabs and Jews, who lived in large parts of Spain until 1492. According to Arana, only Basque country had been spared. There, a kingdom had kept the Jews and Arabs out, and so kept the Basque blood undiluted.
From 7 local languages Arana developed a standard Basque language, cleaned of all Spanish words. He also made up a new name for Basque country: Euskadi. Being at it, he also drew a flag. It got a blood-red background, symbolising the Basque people. He placed a diagonal green cross over that, symbolising the law that should govern the Basques, and on top a white cross for the catholic moral, which should be above everything in the land. Many Basques believe that these symbols date from the almost mythical mediaeval kingdom, which has always been idealised by the movement. Historically however, it was just another tiny feudal country, nothing special.
Arana also founded the Basque National Party (PNV), nowadays still the largest party in Basque country. The present leader of the PNV still thinks Basques have a special type of blood and different skull measurements. The PNV also still does not welcome migrant workers, these days mostly arriving from the Maghreb countries.
Language and culture
In the fifties PNV students radicalised under the influence of the anti-fascist struggle against the Franco regime. They started building the armed underground organisation ETA. They moved to the political Left and started writing about the "Basque workers" instead of the "Basque people" as a whole. Race theories were thrown out, which gave Spanish migrant workers a chance of joining the movement. The "Left-nationalist" movement allowed everyone, who could speak the language, to call himself a Basque. The language and culture became the central issues for the "Left-nationalists".
Together with ETA a complete "Left-nationalist" movement arose, consisting of the womens organisation Egizan, youth organisation Jarrai, some Left wing unions, like the one of Murillo, and ultimately the political party Herri Batasuna. However, the leftish character of the movement remained shallow. Although the movement struggled against Spanish "grand capital", it didn't seem to have a problem with the local Basque capitalists. The mediaeval kingdom, hailed by the entire movement, was fantasised by the "Left-nationalists" as the first communist state in history.
Militarisation
The Basque "Left-nationalists" are walking a dead end trail. They found themselves isolated from other Left wing movements, because of their own actions against more internationalist movements in Basque country. The almost complete militarisation of the conflict with the Spanish state has left almost no space for the struggle on social issues. The movement seems reduced to the struggle to get the Basque prisoners placed back to Basque country, in itself a just cause to fight for.
"These days about a fifth of the Basque population sympathises with the Left-nationalist independence movement", the solidarity commitee Esteban Murillo wrote, with some admiration. The movement wants democratic self-determination for the Basque people and acknowledgement of Basque territory. But some 70 percent of the inhabitants of the territory, that they call Basque country, do not speak Basque. So, according to the "Left-nationalist" this majority does not belong to the "Basque people". If, in the future, it will ever come to such a democratic self-determination, the majority will have a hard time.
Eric Krebbers
Sources: