Mikel
Sorauren. Historian.
The
question of whether or not Navarre is a nation concerns our
community, which perceives itself different from other human
entities that consider themselves nations. It is true that
such perception is confusing because of the historical ups
and downs that has Navarre, a political entity that organized
its own State, subjected to a foreign state that attempts
to make it its own.
The
perception of Navarre by those who consider themselves Navarrese
is, by all means, confusing. Everyone acknowledges the particularity
but from different sources. To some, Navarre is a Spanish
region with an unassimilated personality that cannot be waived.
To others, Navarre is part of Euskal Herria. And, there are
those who have a more coherent approach, one that considers
Navarre as the political expression of Euskal Herria throughout
its history and a State destroyed by two other states, France
and Spain, which divided its territory among the two of them.
To
prove this is not an easy task; not because of the lack of
historic arguments but because of the fixed ideas and mental
structures that education has fostered. The traditional Spanish
historiography doesn't see Spain as a consequence of the historical
vicissitudes, a true historical carom, but as the product
formed by the pass of time that reached the indisputable present
reality. Unfortunately, that conception of 'old manual' History
still has its supporters. The ancient chronicles of conquests
and defeats, as seen by their writers, tend to praise the
feats of their protagonists with a vindicating and tendentious
intention, as they hide the human and political reality of
the territories.
As
for Euskal Herria, there are people who still think the chronicles
of the Visigoths and the Asturians about the Basques are accurate.
But the pretended domination of the Vascons claimed by these
chronicles has been ridiculed by modern critique. To base
their arguments on these chronicles when rewriting the History
of Navarre shows the ingenuity of an apprentice. The Basque
human and cultural fact is the only one present in the entire
peninsula and the Atlantic coast to the mouth of the Garonne
River, since the Upper Paleolithic. It is a human and historical
reality of which there is proof in the Asturian and the Visigothic
chronicles as well as in the French and the Cordoban chronicles,
all of which make incontestable the political reality of the
Basques even when they deny it.
The
fact is that when the whole territory that makes up Euskal
Herria --with the exception of those territories under Muslim
control-- are mentioned in these chronicles, they do as part
of the Kingdom of Pamplona, the first name of the Basque state.
Any claim of control of the Basque territories by the Asturians,
even by the Count of Castile, is weak and reflects more a
wish than a reality.
The
Cordoban chronicles refer to Sancho the Great as 'senior of
the Basques'. The human reality of the Basque territory is
the decisive factor of its own historical development. Vascons,
Basques, Vascongados... are all expressions that make reference
to the one and only reality that resists scholarly lucubration
because they reflect an undeniable reality--the cultural,
social... reality, which accepts the necessity of organizing
its own State. That State will seek to protect, precisely,
those characteristics, which foreign political entities attempt
to make their own.
Navarre
is that State; it is that nation. The human reality that is
given around the Pyrenees since Prehistory is still present
today because it was protected by such a State. On the contrary,
the entity of the surrounding territories, similar in their
origin, has been diluted as a consequence of their own actions.
Navarre didn't emerge as the result of the feudal disintegration
in those States in western Europe created by theGermanics,
but because of the dynamics that take Basque society to defend
its freedom.
It
can be argued that Navarre failed in this attempt. In a way,
it did. Spain and France divided the Navarrese territory among
the two of them in different phases; the conquest of the so-called
Higher Navarre, the forced incorporation of Iparralde [northern
Basque territories].... In spite of all this, the territories
maintained part of their original sovereignty, which the conquerors
had no intention to preserve. Those leftovers of the original
sovereignty were reduced to their minimal expression, an example
of which is the fiscal autonomy of the Basque institutions
that the Spanish state has been forced to recognize.
This
is the state of things in which we find ourselves as the result
of the violent imposition by the dominant states; first through
military force, then, by political violence. In any case it
can't be said that it was the result of the voluntary integration
of the Basques. On the contrary, the Basque resistance has
been in permanent conflict; a conflict that stills prevails.
By ignoring this reality, the attention is taken away from
the unquestionable fact of the existence of a Basque nation,
to which Navarre gave form, and understood in its authentic
dimension, which is very different from residual Navarre,
the Spanish province.
The
historical Basque unity as well as the resistance to Spanish
domination is also questioned. These are fireworks in view
of the indisputable resistance. The so-called Basque conflict
has no other cause but the persistency of the Spanish and
the French states in maintaining their control of another
state, the Basque, that never renounced his own. This background
allows facing the issue of the Navarrese nationality in the
right coordinates. For the national fact to be given a number
of conditions of human, cultural and territorial nature are
required to allow the configuration of a state. These are
historical conditions in which the collective conscience of
a national particularity is always present, regardless of
the historical circumstances that caused the temporary loss
of independence. The national fact and the demand for a State
to establish sovereignty must go hand in hand. In the case
of Navarre, all these circumstances are given historically.
The claim that Navarre is a nation can't end with its submission
to another state or the acceptance of the laws of another
state--i.e. the Spanish Constitution. This becomes more obvious
if one takes into account that Spain is the fundamental and
most responsible agent for the destruction of the sovereignty
and the institutions of Navarre. These institutions cannot
be recreated unless Spain and France stop exerting pressure
on them, which would turn around the historical process that
eliminated the Basque state.
Those
who claim the status of "Nation" for Navarre without a project,
one that goes beyond the limits established by the Spanish
Constitution, are facing this contradiction. They refuse to
accept that the Spanish Constitution only recognizes the nationalities,
a term which conceptually speaking is equivalent to traditional
regions. The recognition of a territory within the Spanish
state as a nationality or a region will never depend on such
territory but on the Spanish Constitution of the day. Today
Navarre can be a nationality; yesterday, it was a province.
To claim that Navarre is a nation and to accept the Spanish
Constitution, even the Spanish Constitution of 1978, is by
all means incoherent. To claim, on the one hand, that the
History of Navarre shows that Navarre is a nation and, on
the other, to claim that it is part of Spain, is nothing but
a frivolity.
