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Nabarralde | About Nabarra
The
Basque Struggle against
French, Spanish Assimilation
France's
absolutist monarchy found strong opposition in the northern
Basque territories in France. The mercenaries of Louis XIV
killed all the farmers in Zuberoa who rebelled against the
policies of centralisation imposed by the monarchy. Bernard
Goyhenetxe who led the rebellion in Zuberoa was guillotined.
Many of
the Basque revolts against French centralisation were led
by women: Mugerre and Iturbe in 1696; Ainhoa in 1724; Baiona
and Donibane Garazi in 1728. In 1784, hundreds of women
in Hasparren challenged 150 `grenadiers' and 5 brigades
of the marechaussee. The intervention of the village
priest prevented a confrontation between the women and the
French forces.
The French
National Assembly decreed the abolition of the feudal regime
and the tithe on the night of August 4, 1789 - happily for
everyone including the Basques. However, it also abolished
the constitutions of the Basque territories of Nabarra,
Lapurdi and Zuberoa. On August 26 it introduced the "Declaration
of the Rights of Man and the Citizen." The Constituent Assembly
furthered these reforms, proclaiming the revolutionary idea
that people had the right of self-determination.
In 1790,
the Basque territories were incorporated, together with
Bearn, into the Departement de Basses Pyrenees.
A new assembly
(the Convention) met in September 1792. It proclaimed an
end to the monarchy and established the republic. The convention
introduced governmental limitations on prices, declared
that education should be free and compulsory, imposed taxes
on the rich and made other economic and social "reforms."
The Convention
took terrible measures in the Basque territories whose constitutions
had been abolished by the National Assembly. Citizens of
Sara, Ainhoa, Azkain, Itsaso, and Ezpeleta, without distinction
of age or sex, were deported to Landes and Gers. Suspects
in Kambo, Biriato, Macaio, Larresore, Medionde and Lohosa
were held prisoners in churches. More than half of the deportees
died of starvation, and illnesses from lack of hygiene.
Survivors returned to their homes only to find these had
been plundered.
The Revolution
ended in 1799 when Napoleon Bonaparte entered Paris and
was crowned First Consul. Napoleon established a powerful
central administration and a strong code of law. He introduced
the `department prefets' and obligatory military service
outside the provinces. French became the only official language
of France.
Among its
positive aspects, the French Revolution abolished the feudal
regime and monarchy. It achieved the victory of liberalism
and of an individual conception of society. In the Basque
territories, however, "revolution" centralism suppressed
the collective rights of a community: its language, laws,
and institutions.
The society
that emerged in the Basque territories after the French
Revolution was in the hands of a small group of nobles,
landowners, and merchants who were unable to guarantee the
development of an industrial or commercial capitalism. Poverty
and underdevelopment during the last centuries generated
massive migration of their citizens to Bordeaux, Paris,
and especially, to the United States.
In Spain,
the main agency for the diffusion of the ideas of the Englightenment
and liberalism into Araba, Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa was the
Real Sociedad Bascongada de Amigos del Pais (Royal Basque
Society of Friends of the Country), founded by the Basque
aristocracy in Azcoitia in 1764. This society provided Carlos
III (1759-88) - the same monarch who made Bolivian indian
females wear dresses copied from the regional costumes of
Basque and Andalusian peasant women - with the model for
the subsequent establishment of similar societies throughout
Spain. The main attentions of the society were oriented
toward the modernization of agriculture and the Basque metallurgical
industry, the two main pillars of Spanish Basque aristocratic
income.
This Spanish
Basque elite - both urban and rural - regarded itself as
the direct descendants of those, "uncontaminated by either
Jewish or Moorish blood", who had reconquered Spain from
infidels and restored civilization and Christianity to the
country. Although many were familiar with Euskera, Spanish
was their preferred language both domestically and publically.
The nouveau riche had the most costly foods brought
from France; Europe's top couturiers cut their dresses and
outfits; and they sent their children to study at British
and French schools. They imagined themselves at the pinnacle
of European culture.
In 1767
the Society, promoters and sponsors of the Hirurak Bat
(Baskongadak as the Basque Country), founded the Academy
of Vergara, the first secular school established in Spain.
This illustrious sector also gave the "entrepreneurial inspiration"
to the Royal Guipuzcoan Company, a Basque controlled trading
company in Venezuela. The Royal Guipuzcoan Company's publicity
brochures pointed with pride to the company's Venezuelan
philanthropies much as, two centuries later, the American
Standard Oil proclaimed its own virtues. The profits extracted
from one of the world's reachest countries by these pundits,
in proportion to the capital invested, are only comparable
with those obtained by old-time slave merchants and pirates.
Nabarra's
hour of revenge seemed to have stricken in 1833 when peasants,
artisans and small traders arouse in arms for equality and
social justice and in defense of their fueros or
laws.
With the
ascendance of the Bourbon dynasty to the Spanish throne
in the eighteenth century, state centralism became an overriding
goal. The Spanish Liberal Constitution drafted by Joseph
Bonaparte and ratified by the Cortes in 1812 aroused fierce
opposition among Basques.
Known as
the Carlists Wars (1833-1872), these guerrilla wars took
the form of a popular uprising in the defence of Basque
liberties and laws as opposed to Spanish centralism. Liberalism
which sought the disentailment of common lands together
with political and economic uniformity was an obvious political
creed for the Basque urban bourgeoisie. The Basque urbanites
and their liberal cronies in Madrid united to attack frontally
the Basque political system based on fueros. Peasants,
artisans, and small traders were fiercely opposed to integration
into a Spanish national market. Integration meant the free
import of Castilian cereals and livestock which would increase
competition and further decrease prices. Imposition of Spanish
customs duties would also result in a dramatic increase
in taxation on rural consumption. In addition, the sale
of common lands, which had intensified throughout the early
19th century due to liberal disentailment legislation, had
already undercut a crucial buttress of the Basque peasant
economy.
The liberal
Basque urbanites saw in the rural Carlists only a symbol
of barbarism, the backwardeness and ignorance, the anachronism
of the countryside confronting urban civilization, the beret
and the abarketa against the frock coat, the stone and the
knife against the troops of the line, Euskera against Spanish,
illiteracy against the school. Such scorn and hatred were
an expression of antipatriotism clearly tinged with political
economy.
The first
Carlist war broke out in 1833 and ended in 1839 with the
Treaty of Bergara. The Carlists wars developed in the Spanish
State but fundamentally in the three Basque provinces of
Araba, Bizkaia, and Gipuzkoa and in Nabarra, the conquered
Basque state.
The Carlist leadership was based in Nabarra. Fearing the
end of their regional autonomy, Basques aligned with the
Catholic church and the followers of Don Carlos, a contender
to the Spanish throne, in a war against the Liberal central
government. For seven years, Carlists organized their own
state which spanned the Basque speaking areas of the southern
territories and had the massive support of the peasants.
The Carlist army comprised of volunteer Basque peasants.
Historians think that the military potency of Carlism resided
in the guerrilla tactics employed by its army. The first
Carlist war ended four years after the death of the Carlist
General Zumalakarregi.
The Treaty
of Bergara offered to guarantee the Basque fueros
or laws. However, the Law of 1839 which confirmed the treaty
stated that "[t]he Fueros of the Basque provinces and Nabarra
are reaffirmed unless they are prejudicial to the constitutional
unity of the monarchy." Nabarra never accepted the treaty
but Araba, Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa went along. There was a
split between the Basque traditionalists of the interior
and the liberals of the cities of Bilbo and Donostia.
Spain was
paving the road to the annexation of Nabarra. In 1841 the
Spanish government passed the law of Modification of the
Fueros (aka Pacted Law) and Nabarra was transformed from
a viceroyalty into a province. All legislative and executive
powers were transferred from the Assembly to the Spanish
parliament and government. A Provincial Assembly, an administrative
body with no control over public funds, was set up as the
main institution of Nabarra. The establishment of compulsory
military service caused uprisings during the following eight
years. In 1833, a royal charter restructured the Spanish
state into forty nine administratively equivalent provinces.
The "Hispanic" character of Nabarra, the dream of the Spanish
conquerors, had come true.
The Land
Reform of Madoz of 1855, despite its liberal and progressive
ambitions, prepared the way for the nascent mercantilist
oligarchy. Basque peasants and artisans, whose communal
lands passed into the hands of the commercial and landed
elites, would be turned into teeming proletariat of the
Spanish economy which was to devastate the Basque countryside.
The popular
insurrection, however, was used by the Carlist leadership
to advanced the political ambitions of Don Carlos, brother
of the deceased Spanish king, Fernando VII, allied against
the defenders of Isabel II, the unanticipated daughter of
the late king and the wife of his old age, Maria Cristina
of Naples.
Regrettably
the protection of the "Basque laws" was not the main goal
of the Carlist leadership, but the religious unification
of Spain. A second Carlist War broke out in 1872 and ended
in 1879 with the defeat of the Carlists. As a consequence
of the Carlist defeats, the fueros of Araba, Bizkaia and
Gipuzkoa were abolished. Basques lost their leadership and
their culture and language became under attack in their
own homeland. In 1893, a massive rally called the `Gamazada'
took place in Pamplone (Iruña in Basque language),
the capital of Nabarra. The rally gathered 80,000 people
protesting against the attempts of Spain's minister Gamazo
to abolish Nabarra's fiscal system. This was the first popular
mobilization uniting the Nabarrase people in the defence
of their laws.
From 1876
onwards, the integration of Spain's Basque territories into
a national market made possible the emergence of the first
monopolies of the Basque industrial and financial oligarchy
in Bizkaia, centered on five families linked by marriage.
With the abolition of the Basques fueros there was
no obstacle to free trade and the intensive extraction of
Bizkaian iron ore. Under the foral regime the mines were
municipal property and rights of usufruct were available
to all municipal residents.
The Spanish
Basque oligarchy was rewarded with an instrument for increasing
its profits and economic power: a special fiscal and administrative
regime - the economic concerts - for Araba, Bizkaia
and Gipuzkoa. This regime allowed the Spanish Basque oligarchy
to control the Provincial Councils (Diputaciones) and reduce
fiscal pressure on industrial production which was to have
repercussion on the working class and the popular strata.
"Very importantly,
however," writes Marianne Heiberg, "the Basque urban liberals
were dedicated to preserving within the new system of Spanish
constitutional unity the one aspect of the foral regime
which had been of considerable importance to their interests:
fiscal autonomy." The Spanish parliament approved a special
fiscal and administrative regime - the conciertos economicos
- for Araba, Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa. This regime enabled these
three Basque provinces to negotiate their own taxes with
Madrid and pay a fixed sum into the Madrid treasury. The
quotas agreed upon, which were significantly inferior to
the taxes paid out by other Spanish provinces, were to be
raised in whatever manner the Basque provincial governments
deemed suitable.
The Basque
oligarchy became a Spanish national bourgeoisie and opted
for the construction of a Spanish capitalist state. Industrialization
was largerly confined to the areas surrounding the city
and port of Bilbo and, to a lesser extent, specific urban
centers in Gipuzkoa. Nabarra and Araba remained mainly rural
until the 1950s. The heart of Basque industrial potential
lay in the rich deposits of high quality iron ore located
in the mines near Bilbo. This way, from the Adour river
to the Ebro, from Baiona to Bilbo, liberalism and the process
of consolidating the capitalist mode of production brought
with it the domination of the markets, cities and ports
by the bourgeoisies of the Basque territories.
Bibliography:
Mikel Sorauren, Historia de Navarra, el Estado vasco, 1999;
Tomas Urzainki, La Navarra maritima, Pamiela, 1998; Roger
Collins, The Basques, Basil Blackwell, 1986; Jean-Louis
Davant, Ebauche d'une histoire du peuple Basque, in Euskadi
en guerre, Ekin, 1982; Marianne Heiberg, The Making of the
Basque Nation, Cambridge University Press, 1989; Luis Nuñez
Astrain, La Razón Vasca, Txalaparta, 1995.
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