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Nation-building, or the liberation of the
State of Navarre?

Tomas Urzainqui Mina. Historian

It seems as if a kind of "Public Works" syndrome invaded political speech. The talk about nation building suggests an ex novo structure. This error, however, has roots. It is the direct consequence of a situation not understood by many people--the cultural, social, political and economic minorisation of the Navarrese nation.

The problem dates from the time when some people came to realize they were not free. Then they thought it was at that very moment, that national liberation had to begin, but what had happened before went down into a memory hole. People didn't appreciate that the process of minorisation profoundly affected each of them in a way that eliminated any notion of national essence. Because they couldn't build from nothing, they grabbed what was at hand, the merchandise most marred-the architecture of domination--which just happened to be those very own institutions created after the conquest designed to consolidate the occupation and subjection.

Some of these founding fathers of Basque nationalism, undoubtedly with good faith, confused apples with oranges. They thought that the administrative-political-territorial division in which they have been born was endemic and had existed from the beginning of time, ignoring that, in fact, they were divisions that happened after the invasion and had emerged as a consequence of the national domination. This subject is treated in more detail in "La Navarra maritima".

This historical misinformation was not enough and they gave free rein to the imagination. They created the myth of the "Basque states" to justify their theory of the political pacts. Thus, the circle of deceit was closed: "Araba, Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa, as sovereign states, pacted their surrender with Spain, as equals, from power to power". This approach has had a disintegrating and intra-national secessionist effect. On the other hand, it facilitated the emergence of the Spanish statute of autonomy by constitutional law. It should be noted that throughout the 20th Century, only one project for a Basque constitution was written in 1940 by the Consejo Nacional Vasco in London.

One of the most damaging consequences of the minorisation of a nation is that this one may not come to realize it is minorised. That is, it doesn't feel, realize and perceive itself as primitive, marginal and commanded. It doesn't realize that its national state, judicial system, laws, languages, culture, society, history, economy, population, politics, territory, are subjected to a permanent national genocide with the resulting linguistic genocide as well as its social and psychological minorisation, cultural primitivism, commanded laws and marginal centrality.

Probably this is why the present tempus lacks this fundamental clarification and verification, because it is not enough to assert that we find ourselves before a historical conflict of a political nature with the Spanish and the French states. It is required to make very clear, from the beginning, that this conflict is the consequence of the aggression, conquest and domination by those states, and the reason we suffer a permanent situation of genocide and prostration-a process of minorisation of the cultural and psychological health of the society or its citizens as well as their individual and collective human rights.

Lately we hear more and more about "nation building", a term with much repercussion in the powerful media outlets of the two dominant grand-national states. During the so-called transition of Franco's regime, 25 years ago, the idea of "making country" and nation-building was launched by some of the dominated peripheral nations. But with the passing of the constitutional roller, they were downgraded to a statute of autonomy for the nationalities which make up the Spanish nation, the only nation, which, by the way, is a contradiction in terminus.

Perhaps this is why the propaganda media have been told to show outrage at the idea of "nation building" promoted by those nations under Spanish rule. Like that, on the quiet, they maintain those sacred concepts like "the State", "the Constitution", and "the central government", which are taken for granted to be indifferent or even compatible with "nation-building". Here is the crux of the matter. This way, the recovery of the dominated nation is guaranteed. It is a new edition of the old recipe with its conflicting and unethical claim of "the nation of nations", the phalangist "universal common fate", the "everyday plebiscite" or the last order for the "common project".

Today, "the political conflict with the Spanish and the French states", "territoriality" and other existing problems can't be treated separately since all of them are reduced to one: our own national state, which is kidnapped by the Spanish and the French states. That's why it is important not to play into the distorted political speech of the two dominant nations. If the liberation of the dominated national society is what is really sought, the first thing this one has to do is to acquire and use a democratic speech that is different from that of the dominant states.

PreIt is not about nation-building but liberating the national state. That is, to free in the broadest sense. To free all the social potentials in order to make our own nation-state function and break the ties that keep it subjected to the dominant Spanish and French grand-national states. Our own nation-state does exist; with its sovereignty reduced, mortgaged, out of order, in disuse, occupied and subjected. The task is to set off a process of liberation that takes the state of Navarre as the legitimizing referent.

made concepts that have the intention of taking away or preventing the right to self-determination of the citizens of the dominated society, must be corrected or replaced with concepts that are not determined by the dominant speech and its structured hierarchy of political values, which aims at reinforcing the status quo. When we speak of "the State", it is taken for granted that we are referring to the Spanish or the French. The same happens with "the Constitution" or with "the central government". Those concepts must be rescued.

In a democratic process of clarifying concepts, which is the true sense of exercising sovereignty, we must rid the political concepts of those determining factors that prevent them from being used by the citizens. In a society that seeks the democratic liberation of its national state, the conceptual references should not be subjected to the meanings imposed from outside. This way, if we speak of "the nation", logically we're talking about our own, otherwise we should say "the Portuguese nation" or "the Spanish nation" etc. The same goes for "the State", which refers to the Navarrese state (it is more appropriate to say Navarrese than Basque); if we speak of the dominant state, we should always say, "the Spanish state" or "the French state" but never "the State". "The Constitution" will evidently refer to the fundamental laws of our own nation-state, and when we speak of a foreign constitution, we should always specify the country.

To maintain concepts like "nation-building" is to legitimize the minimization and primitivization we are suffering. The dominant states have reinterpreted and put the concept of nation-building on an equal footing with the regions, nationalities or the autonomies. Nation-building and liberation are antithetic. We can't free what is not built or build what is not freed. This is why a total liberation must come first. That is, we have to start by accepting the reality of our own national state, which must be liberated, at the same time that a democratic process of liberation is set off to free all the social potentials that will make possible to recover our own state. It is necessary to break the infernal wheel that legitimizes the dominant state, because rebelliousness and civil disobedience, without taking the credit away from them, can be assimilated to perfect the dominant judicial code.

The political strategy of nation-building is stuck in an infernal wheel that prevents the liberation process from moving forward. Common elements in a normal society are confused with specific goals. The exercise of an essential mechanism like elections is put aside until independence is achieved and sovereignty later recovered. It is a catch-22 situation. Refusing to legitimize the imposed system holds back from the electoral mechanisms that are specific to the democratic legitimation.

It is necessary to break with the wheel. The only way to do it is by recovering our own legitimate national state. That is, to recover state sovereignty and the legitimation of the national state, kidnapped and hidden by the occupying grand-national state, being Spanish or French. From this moment, our own national state should be the referent of all social activity. Thus, elections will be legitimate as long as they conform to and relate to that referent. The same thing will happen to citizen relationships, among the people themselves as well as with the Administration, and which will be truly democratic and pluralistic in our own nation-state's society.

To recover the stolen or lost time is not only an urgent necessity for the subjected nation but also for the dominant nations. Regarding the former, the subjugated nation will have to liberate its social potential, recover its shattered sovereignty, and restore its referent which is its own legitimate national state--in order to be able to negotiate as equals with the other two states.

As for the latter, the dominant nations need to recover the lost time in order to recognize its imaginary groups and legal codes as equivalent to the democratic principles and the respect for human rights--specifically, the incorporation into its national law of the treaties they have subscribed but have not been capable of formalizing and enact within its jurisdiction. For example, the nations and the minority languages, the right of the nations to independence, the democratic freedoms, etc.

When we speak of the Basque conflict, we refer to the control that the Spanish and the French grand-national states exert over the European nation state of Navarre, a political nation; being Euskal Herria the cultural nation. Both names correspond to two concepts of the same society since Navarrese or Basque refer to the same people--one is a politico-juridical concept; the other, a cultural concept.

The false notion about the so-called disappearance of the state is being promoted, especially, by the entourage of the neoliberal globalization led by the dominant nations. Financial deregulation, cultural homogenization, the destruction of social achievements or the partial dismantling of the state, are part of the ideological heritage of the trumpeted globalization, whose slogans are heard in the vicinity.

The state can undergo a transformation, however, its function is irreplaceable. According to Pierre Bourdieu, the followers of the great neoliberal utopia attempt "the destruction of all the collective institutions capable of counteracting the effects of the infernal machine, primarily those of the state, repository of all the universal values associated with the idea of the public realm. Second is the imposition everywhere, in the upper spheres of the economy and the state as at the heart of the corporations, of that sort of moral Darwinism that, with the cult of the winner, schooled in higher mathematics and bungee jumping, institutes the struggle of all against all and cynicism as the norm of all action and behavior", and he concludes: "mundialization is more than anything a justifying myth, which is only real in the financial markets, and globalization is not an homogenization but rather the extension of the corporation of a small number of dominant nations over the national financial markets".

Translation by Gigi Bidarte.