- I've been the speaker at Joxe Azurmendi's Congress. I have, more or less, brought to paper the words spoken at the conference. Joxe Azurmendi is critical of Basque history and also of Spain. Firstly, we will look briefly at yesterday’s, and then we will return to the morning and the day.
What bourgeois revolution was the so-called Spanish War of Independence? A revolution in the past, says Azurmendi. When the French troops seized the whole of Spain, he abdicated Fernando in Baiona VII.ak, and the leading Spanish enlightened men were anti-absolutist (supporters of the enlightened despot) and were Afrancessed, and collaborated with José Bonaparte. In France, Luis XVI.ari and Maria Antonieta were killed, in Spain? During the invasion of the French, the revolution had to be defined against the French and against all that it meant to be French. The revolution on the right, basically, like Franco's, in favor of differences.
J. The Professor of History Álvarez Junco (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) says: “It is difficult to deny the predominance of appeals in defense of the religion inherited from the revolutionary atheists, of terratenient from the lower clergy, to whom the French and their denunciations from the beginning as the main inducing agent of the insurrection”. Page 51-52. ).
"For Azurmendi, the so-called 'War of Independence', has been an invention of Spanish national mythology"
For Azurmendi, the so-called “War of Independence”, has been an invention of Spanish national mythology: “It seems that we have to confess: first, that there were no invaders; then, that the spontaneous uprising of the people has been provoked and organized by the church and nobility; and, finally, that this cruel war, more than a war of independence, has been a religious crusade, in the best Spanish tradition of the Catholic King and Filipe II.aren, “What a Christian!” This is, therefore, what is at the beginning of the construction of the Spanish state nation. And in its evolution?
What has been the construction of the Spanish state nation for the Galicians, the Catalans and the Basque nations?
It says that it has been a bad experiment for Catalans, Galicians and Basques, the concept of the nation-state, which is the invention of liberals, since the nineteenth century, since when rethinking the political body of the Old Regime, which was unified in the head of the monarch, they took as a reference the Mystical Body the National Church of the Nation of the State, with all the inquisitive dogmas. The new Spanish nation was invented a history worthy of being favorable, especially linked to progress and progress, disregarding that of the other peoples. Now, necessarily, you have to be Spanish, and the essence of Spain is never Catalan, Galician or Basque, but Castilian.
"A single culture and a historical memory for all citizens of the State: A Constitution, a language: other languages are tolerated, but only imposed, prioritized, privileged, weakened and perverted the others"
A single culture and historical memory for all citizens of the State: A Constitution, a language (the other languages are tolerated, but they are imposed only, prioritised, privileged, weakened and all the others corrupt).
And the inability of Spain, the intellectuals, the non-lawyers, to accept a truly federal Spain. What has been the creation of the modern Spanish state for Azurmendi? : “A wild, equally religious, secular, equally cruel and devastating crusade, equally dogmatic. And if we don’t like the 11th and 12th century Crusades, why should we like the Liberal Crusades?”
Looking to the future?
In the book La lengua, la Nación, el Estado (2017), which reflects what was said in his 2015 speech in Pamplona, it tells us that it is the last hope in which there is no hope other than independence, the last solution. If Spain and France were not so centralist and Jacobins, other approaches could be possible, in line with true federalism or confederalism.
Azurmendi believes that salbabidea is the separatism in which a small differentiated community survives between France and Spain. Otherwise, the path of all stateless nations will be altered, dissolved and disappeared.
"Azurmendi's words are twofold. How will they be the guarantors of the current status quo to break that thing and set in motion another that would be more democratic for Euskal Herria?"
Of course. separatism is not the absence of relations, but sovereignty: “It does not depend on Paris and Madrid intervening in all our functions. No dependency on the dirty Spanish political justice of the Ministry of the Interior of Torture. No dependency to decide on our work, economy, education and health. What is best for us. Own responsibility. No dependency, after all” (page 116). ).
We have just seen what they have agreed on the new political status or the new political status in 80%, the new PNV-PSE-Podemos majority, rejecting the confederal bases agreed by the majority of PNV-EH Bildu. Azurmendi’s words are twofold. How are they going to be the guarantors of the current status quo to break that thing and set in motion another that would be more democratic for Euskal Herria?
We have to thank Azurmendi for the work he has done to see history and politics and many other things with our own eyes.