Divided Spain

[Agnapostate]

Spanish unity can perhaps be said to have existed since the unification of Aragon with Castile and Leon created in the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella, which culminated in the expulsion of the Moors from Granada and discovery of territories in a new hemisphere to incorporate into the empire. But the bonds have always been tenuous at best. What is your attitude towards Spanish regional/ethnic separatism, most prominently exhibited in the Basque Country and Catalonia?

[Comrade Gwydion]

Emotionally, I feel much sympathy for Basque Country and Catalunya, especially since the latter combines national liberation with leftism.

Rationally though.... I'm not really sure. What good would it do?

[McCroskey]

and Catalunya, especially since the latter combines national liberation with leftism.


What? the main nationalist coalition, CIU, is a right-wing conservative demo-christian party. And when have you seen ERC even talking about socialism or even social democrat social construction? They only talk about nationalism, full stop. They would like an independent Catalonia no matter what the resulting political regime would be, that is secondary to them. Yes, from time to time they issue a local leaflet on local issues from a left wing perspective, but that´s all. They support the EU policies and want to see Catalonia as a EU state.

Spanish nationalisms are romantic and patriotic national movements whitout the smallest hint of class character. They actually do wonders to convince their local working class that they have more in common with the local capitalist burguoisie than with the spanish working class.

The miriad small organisations that could be seen as left radicals, like the extinct maulets, AUP or MDT, kept carrying the catalan flag and national sentiment to all social initiatives, and trying to portrait Catalonia as an oppressed and occupied society in the likes of Palestine, which is, at best, naive, and at worst, plain delusion.

Even progressive student unions at universities have a hard time to coordinate the struggle, as independentist student unions, more often than not, want to distance themselves from the wider spanish student movement, like they have nothing to do with them. And that is true of the political organisations too.

[Magón]

A long time ago, I probably would have, but since Franco's time in power, Spain in both the Catalan and Basque autonomous regions have sort of gone from Anarcho-Syndicalist/Communist ideals, to more Nationalist ideals like McCroskey mentioned. Going to Spain, you can see this a lot in the people, even though they're very friendly and giving, talking politics as a Leftist isn't really what they want to hear anymore. I wouldn't say that most Catalan's or Basque's are Right-Wing Nationalists, I'd say they're more Centered than Left or Right. Neither cared for Franco from what I know, and before his reign, they lost hope in the Left at the end and after their Civil War. I can accept them wanting to be their own nation and people, but really it wouldn't change much besides a few imaginary lines on a map and the EU's numbers.

[McCroskey]

I wouldn't say that most Catalan's or Basque's are Right-Wing Nationalists

I wouldn´t either. Their nationalist feelings are not class-based. It´s a matter of independence no matter what. The political organisations within the supposed "left" nationalist environment would sooner organise a mass demo for the recognition of their national sports teams than support a Spanish general strike against goverment cuts, for example. Their allegiance is to the catalan nation, not to a socio-political programme.

And what about Basque "nationalist unions"? The only other nationalist union I can think of in Spain was Franco´s "sindicato vertical". What has a union to do with nationalism where there is no oppression or occupation?

[Agnapostate]

The Basque Country is the home of the MONDRAGON Corporation, which is a network of workers' ownership, though not proper labor cooperatives. On the other hand, the social revolution was virtually nonexistent there.

[Kiev Communard]

As it was noted before in this thread, current nationalist forces of the Basque Country and Catalunya have dropped almost all hints of "leftist" rhetorics whatsoever by now, and even if they were genuine in their left-wing beliefs before (provided that nationalism could be combined with any genuinely socialist ideology at all), their present involution to the level of cynical neoliberal bureaucracies within the Spanish state shows quite obviously that in case of proclamation of independence almost nothing, save for state symbolism, would change for these regions.

[Agnapostate]

I have another question now, perhaps for a Spanish comrade, or for anyone sufficiently familiar with the topic: In many respects, the Spanish Civil War seemed to be a struggle of Castilian cultural dominance against the ethnic and cultural minorities of Spain (Basques, Catalans, Galicians, etc.), and Franco's government suppressed the freedom of these peoples after the Nationalist victory. To what extent did the anarchist social revolution coincide with anti-Castilian national or cultural liberation currents? The near-complete absence of collectivization in the Basque Country has always been remarkable to me.

[syndicat]

in the '30s the Basque country was one of the most conservative parts of Spain. the more left-nationalist sentiment (expressed nowadays by Herri Batasuna and their union LAB) only developed as a result of the Franco regime's oppression of the Basques. in the '30s 60 percent of the workers in the Basque country belonged to the Catholic union, Basque Worker Solidarity (ELA in its Basque initials). this was a class collaborationist Catholic union that rejected the class struggle. this is still a large union in the Basque country.

but you're mistaken if you think collectivization and militia formation was peculiar only to the Catalan speaking region (Catalunya and Valencia). The central Castillian region had many hundreds of collectivized villages. It was a land of large estates (south of the Guadarama mountains), and these were seized by the worker unions...mainly the UGT in that area. But the UGT in those rural areas was controlled by the Left Socialists who were in an alliance with the anarcho-syndicalists in the civil war.

the distinction, rather, is between the regions north and south of the Guadarama, for historical and economic reasons. The region to the north was mainly small holders, often intensely religious. The southern half of the country (south of the Guadarama, the mountain range just north of Madrid) was the land of vast estates controlled by 3,000 capitalist families. The 750,000 farm workers employed here were totally impoverished. this was the mass base of the UGT and to a lesser extent CNT farm labor unions. the southern half of the country had these vast latifundias as this was the area of medieval Castillian conquest, where officers in the army were granted huge tracts of land. in the early 1800s feudal land restrictions were lifted and capitalists bought up the estates. Also the farm workers in the southern region south of the Guadarama were not religious. Very few attended church services. Church was mainly a thing of the affluent middle class in the provincial cities.

Today the main bastion of the Left in Spanish electoral politics is Andalucia, followed by Catalunya. in the '30s Catalan nationalism was mainly identified with the middle and upper classes, the classes that voted for the Lliga Catalana and the ERC. Today the Catalan nationalist party, as mentioned above, is CiU...a conservative business party, very much in the Catalan nationalist tradition. The Catalan working class in the '30s were of course interested in their dignity as Catalans but they had no interest in the Catalan nationalist parties as they saw these parties as simply intruments of their oppressors. in their view, their interests as Catalans was defended by the CNT's federalism.

also, it's worth noting that Catalan nationalism in Valencia and Catalunya were historically different. the ERC was sort of a social-democratic party in its rhetoric whereas the Valencian Autonomist Party was proto-fascist far-right party. Nowadays the right wing Popular Party controls both the city and regional government in Valencia.

[Agnapostate]

Thanks for the interesting information. I've been searching for something that I stumbled across a few months ago, and I finally re-discovered it yesterday: Thanksgiving in Spain’s Basque country (http://www.rlnn.com/ArtDec04/BasqCountry.html)

I'm very interested in unity between indigenous rights movements, and the connections between them, and the one here is the opposition to Castilian cultural oppression. I know that ETA wanted to support the EZLN, but Marcos rejected them because of their violent militancy.