“Because that is the reality of the Basque Country!” How many times we have heard the Basques in recent times this statement. With different words, in different places (court judgments, institutional decisions, politicians’ speeches, opinion articles…). In short, a statement that is nothing more than stupidity is becoming a great political burden and a political position that can have serious consequences. Because with a supposed objective reality you can make very different readings. And more importantly, depending on what is decided to do in the face of this reality, different political actions will be developed, with implications and with other consequences. Decisions could be made to maintain reality as such or, on the contrary, to make decisions to transform it. And if we are talking about oppression, injustices and violations of rights, it is not the same to perpetuate them as to confront them in order to establish equality and justice.

As can be read in the ruling of the call for employment for the Municipal Police of Irun, taking into account the sociolinguistic reality of Irun, requesting the Basque Country as a municipal agent “is discriminatory for the Spanish speakers”. The Court considers it sufficient for the staff of the Local Police to know Euskera so that a citizen can be attended by balls from anyone who wants to be cared for in Euskera. Despite being on the other side of Irun and waiting for citizenship to stay all day long. In short, with the development of automatic translators, in the next sentence it will be added that it is enough for each public employee to have one of these in his pocket to communicate with the citizen who will be directed to him in Basque (also this heavy citizen who wants to speak in Basque). If not, witness the time!

Because the situation in the Basque Country is such, we have to ask the children of Lapurdi, Baja Navarra and Zuberoa for permission to transmit the language of their people. And as we have just seen, if the French Assembly authorises it, the Constitutional Council is prepared to rectify the collision of the legislative power. What happened in this case is a clear exponent of the subordination that we live as a people. As a normal colony, we Basques have to beg the metropolis to teach our children Euskera, almost on their knees, and when the House has given us the ambition to the manupetos, we are obliged to thank them.

But we can also hear a similar phrase from the Government of Navarre and most politicians: “That is the socio-linguistic reality of Navarra.” A sentence that justifies the division of Basque rights into three areas of Navarre (not the only one in other areas, or across Europe). This phrase implies scoring as merit the knowledge of German in the job calls, to the point that the knowledge of the Basque Country, besides granting it the next score, is considered almost negative. This phrase, moreover, means that a few thousand Basques from Navarra present themselves as oppressors of hundreds of thousands of non-Basques.

The basic problem is that the socio-political realities are not natural phenomena. These realities are built, like the rest of the social structures. And this construction is produced by the exercise of power competition. Because it has not been natural to be “La langue de la République est le français” and “Spanish is the official Spanish language of the State. Sending “All Spaniards have a duty to know it”, as if they were as natural as the sun and the moon, although sometimes the French and Spanish states want to transmit us like this. In times not far away through fines and rings, currently with judgments and rules. Beating with the first rule, now that we live in “democracy”, with sentences. But they have always, before and now, built through imposition and are constantly reconstructing a concrete socio-linguistic reality.

A socio-linguistic reality in which the Basques, being stubborn, try to overcome over and over again. Because, basically, that is the complaint that exists in the various judgments, in the laws and in the declarations: the Basques go too far. We, France and Spain, the highest of the modern states and nations in which we have civilized the world (you also wild Basques), have let you wish to survive, speak Basque in the kitchen on the shore, use to some extent Basque in the public sphere. But you, the Basques do not, continue to strive to make the Basque language an all-powerful language, to “normalize”, to build that invention “Euskararen Herria”. You also want our privileges for you. Well, we tell them it's enough.

The states have decided that it is enough and have taken the path of counter-reform. It is now up to the Basques to decide how we are going to act in the face of this involution.

In Euskal Herria Euskaraz, it has been said for decades that the paradigm that has been used in the last 40-50 years to “defend the Basque Country” has given what it should; that the linguistic policies that have been in force have reached their peak. There is no doubt that we have made progress, but it is not enough, the Basque country is still in a vulnerable situation. The challenge at the moment is there: to make a leap in the process of normalisation and to put the Basque language on the path of recovery thanks to the struggle of the Euskaltzales, or, if it does not, to fall into the backward trend.

Therefore, it is time to materialise the leap. It is time to make the claim a reality. To do this, it is necessary, among other things, to universalize the knowledge of the Basque Country, being the obligation of every Basque citizen to know the Basque Country, which requires overcoming the system of compulsory teaching models and that the Euskaldunization of adults be free. The public administration must at last be entirely Euskaldun, not only in the services to citizens, but also in its functioning. The public media only have to be in Basque; in Spanish and in French there are thousands of channels when Euskaldunes have one. In the world of work, it is necessary to make demands of Euskera in services to citizens, in advertising, in order to be able to access the contracts of the administration; just as the Spanish and French states have no shame or limits to impose it, in Euskal Herria it should also be so. Measures must be put in place to make the use of Euskera the main player in culture, leisure, sport, etc.

But it is clear that in order to be able to carry out this programme we need all sovereignty. That there should be no intervention from both States. The principle is very simple to understand: it is up to the Basques alone to decide what kind of linguistic organization we want in the Basque Country, and not anyone else.

The only way to achieve all this is to obtain the minimum consensus among the socio-political actors of the Basque Country and to set in motion the collaboration. There is no more. Therefore, in the face of the state offensive, EHE calls on the Basque agents to reach a consensus and to set in motion a country agreement to make the leap in the re-Euskaldunization of Euskal Herria.

Because we Euskaltzales are not prepared to accept this reality head-on!