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Statutes of Autonomy |
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TheStatute of Autonomy of the Basque Country of 1979 (Basque:Euskal Autonomia Erkidegoko Estatutua;Spanish:Estatuto de Autonomía del País Vasco), widely known as theStatute ofGernika (Basque:Gernikako Estatutua;Spanish:Estatuto de Guernica), is the legal document organizing the political system of theAutonomous Community of the Basque Country' (Basque:Euskadiko Autonomi Erkidegoa) which includes the historical territories ofAlava,Biscay andGipuzkoa. It forms the region into one of the autonomous communities envisioned in theSpanish Constitution of 1978. The Statute was named "Statute of Gernika" after the city of Gernika, where its final form was approved on 29 December 1978. It was ratified byreferendum on 25 October 1979, despite the abstention of more than 40% of the electorate. The statute was accepted by thelower house of the Spanish Parliament on November 29 and theSpanish Senate on December 12.
The statute was meant to encompass all the historical provinces inhabited by theBasque people in Spain, who had proved a strong will for acknowledgement of a separate identity and status, even in non Basque nationalist circles. A draft statute for theSpanish Basque Country was then drawn up to provide for that urge with a view to comprising all the historically Basque territories. However, the blueprint came up against much opposition inNavarre (Unión del Pueblo Navarro party founded) and rightist and nationalist circles of the still Francoist central administration. At the beginning of the 1980s the Spanish Socialist party and their regional branch too swerved to a Navarre-only stance, paving the way to a separate autonomous community.
The Statute of Autonomy of the Basque Country retained though in its wording the spirit of the original blueprint, namely allowing the necessary means for the development in liberty of the Basque people, while now limited only to the westernÁlava,Gipuzkoa andBiscay provinces. The possibility ofNavarre joining in is anyway emphasized and provisioned for, insomuch as they are identified as Basque people, should that be their will.
It established a system ofparliamentary government, in which the president (chief of government) orlehendakari is elected by theBasque Autonomous Parliament among its members. Election of the Parliament is byuniversal suffrage and parliament consists of 75 deputies, 25 from each of the three Historic Territories of the community. The parliament is vested with powers over a broad variety of areas, including agriculture, industry; from culture, arts and libraries, totax collection,policing, andtransportation.Basque (as a right) andSpanish (as a right and duty) are official languages.
The equal representation of the provinces regardless of actual population was a wink to Alava and Navarre, the least populated and least prone toBasque nationalism of the provinces. However the Navarrese society seems content with its currentAmejoramiento del Fuero.
TheIbarretxe Plan was a proposal to revise the statute so as to amplify Basque autonomy put forward by the rulingBasque Nationalist Party.
Up to early 19th century, theBasque districts maintained a great degree of self-government undertheir charters (they came to be known as theExempt Provinces), i.e. they held a different status from other areas within the Crown of Castile/Spain, involving taxes and customs, separate military conscription, etc.), operating almost autonomously.
After theFirst Carlist War (1833–1839), home rule was abolished and substituted by theCompromise Act (Ley Paccionada) in Navarre (1841) and a diminished chartered regime in the three western provinces (up to 1876). After the definite abolition of the Charters (end of Third Carlist War), former laws and customs were largely absorbed into Spanish centralist rule with little regard for regional idiosyncrasies. As a result, attempts were made byCarlists, Basque nationalists and some liberal forces inthe Basque region of Spain to establish a collaboration among them and restore some kind of self-empowerment ("autonomy"), while the Catalans developed their ownCatalan Commonwealth.
Attempts at a unified Basque statute including Navarre were repeatedly postponed until the occasion seemed to have arrived at the onset of theSecond Spanish Republic with a statute for the four Basque provinces. Adraft Basque Statute was approved by all four provinces (1931), but Carlists were divided, and the 1931 draft Statute of Estelladid not achieve enough support, against a backdrop of heated controversy over the validity of the votes, as well as allegations of strong pressures on local representatives to tip the scale against the unitarian option (Assembly of Pamplona, 1932).
Following the works started for the Basque Statute, another proposal was eventually approved by the government of the Spanish Republic, already awash in theCivil War, this time only including the provinces of Gipuzkoa, Biscay and Álava. Its effectivity was limited to the Republic-controlled areas of Biscay and a fringe of Gipuzkoa.
After the surrendering of theBasque Army in 1937, the statute was abolished. However,Francisco Franco allowed the continuation of a limited self-government for Alava and Navarre, thanking their support for the Spanish Nationalist uprising.
It is on the republican statute and the Alavese institutions that the current Statute of Gernika takes its legitimacy.