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Chapter One. The Early Spanish State
- University of Nevada Press
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Basque nationalism can be understood only in the context of a particular historical process: the construction, transformation, and evolution of the Spanish state and its relationship with Spanish nation-building. The erection of the Spanish state began in the fifteenth century with the dynastic alliance leading to the creation of Spain, although the roots of the territorial structuring of the Iberian Peninsula date back to the Reconquista that unfolded in the previous seven hundred years or so. The crucial consideration here is that the creation of the Spanish state was not followed by efforts at nation-building. Differently put, the timing of the erection of the Spanish state (in the sixteenth century) in relation to the first nation-building efforts (in the nineteenth century) is very important for understanding the emergence of Basque nationalism. Juan Linz has argued that part of the explanation for the fact that Spain is “not a nation for important minorities” is that “Spanish state-building went on before the age of nationalism.”1 Explaining the development of Basque nationalism necessitates an appreciation for early forms of political and territorial organization in the Iberian Peninsula. The seeds of the Basque identity underpinning contemporary nationalist politics were planted during this period by institutional arrangements that formalized the existence of Basque territories and gave certain qualities to their populations.There was a strong path-dependency effect to the relationship between the early Spanish state and the political status of the three Basque provinces of Araba, Bizkaia, and Gipuzkoa: the longer the Spanish state allowed these provinces to remain relatively self-governing, the more autonomy became a central feature of their politics. As a result, integrating the Basque provinces within a centralized Spanish state was an option that grew to present very high political costs and that would be favored only when circumstances left little choice. At the broadest level, the beginning of this path-dependency process of identity construction was the Reconquista by Christian forces of Iberian territories controlled by the Moors. The Reconquista led to the creation of various kingdoms whose integrity was guaranteed by a series of political arrangements that fostered traditions of autonomy and exceptionalism. It therefore represents the historical basis for Spain’s contemporary plurality of identity. More crucial is the fact that Spain remained a loose arrangement of semiautonomous territories several centuries Chapter One The Early Spanish State after it was created because the state was, at times, unwilling and, at others, unable to alter this status quo. Spain was, in other words, a confederal-like state. Historian José Ortega y Gasset put it best when he said that particularism had historically been at the center of the Spanish state and constituted a universal feature of Spain.2 The approach to territorial management of the early Spanish state emphasizing autonomy and asymmetry, and the state’s later failure to impose a different model, represents the first critical juncture in the development of Basque nationalism. However, all states have been built from a variety of territories; what is important for their contemporary territorial politics is their subsequent approach to territorial management. In Spain, it was the continuing use of autonomy and other accommodation strategies toward the Basque provinces that set up the formal articulation of nationalism later on. From this perspective, this critical juncture precedes the outcome to be explained. Indeed, nationalism actually takes form in the Basque Country during the late nineteenth century. The argument, however, is that the structure of the early Spanish state is central to the later emergence and continued strength of Basque nationalism insofar as the building of the Spanish state was not accompanied by a comprehensive effort to build a Spanish nation that would include all of the Crown’s subjects in the Iberian Peninsula. The complex political makeup of the territories of present-day Spain before unification discouraged the imposition of centralized and symmetrical structures, and made difficult an effective integration of all the kingdoms. The practice of the fueros used by the early Spanish state in lieu of such an integration served as a unifying force for the three Basque provinces. Still today, these fueros underpin Basque identity (as well as the individuality of the provinces) and claims for self-determination. The early choices made by the governing dynasties of Spain do indeed loom large in contemporary Spanish politics. This chapter explains how the territorial configuration generated by the Reconquista was maintained following unification by practices that constructed a tradition of Basque autonomy above and beyond...