Pamplona, a left-wing internationalist family and Abertzale, has gone through the municipal ikastola… It is not a bad start of the article.

Pamplona has been a very fragile, musical, politically… very bipolar village. On the one hand, there is a great strength of Opus Dei, I do not know how many political prisoners on the other, and the conflict is very clear. Perhaps the segregation between Basques and Spaniards is greater than in other places, which makes the confrontation live differently. We lived on the road towards Zaragoza, looking south, and from the sixteen families of our block only two went to the ikastola. The struggle for municipal ikastola, as well as significant, left a mark on me. In our house we have always been Basque, we have always had admiration for culture, and we have always traveled a lot. Imagine, when I was 18, my brother and I, my parents offered us the opportunity to go to the brigades in Cuba.

That would also leave you the clue...

A year earlier, I was with my uncles in Nicaragua, because my uncle is from here, and curiously, in Cuba, I learned a lot from Euskal Herria. We left in 1992, in an interval called the " special period " , when the instability caused by the recent fall of the Soviet Union was generated. They were difficult times for Cuba. That will also influence memories, but it was the first time I contacted Basques from other countries as adults. As a result, I brought in the backpack a clearer picture of Euskal Herria, a more accurate picture of Basque citizenship, with all our capacities, virtues and misery.

To keep filling the backpack, you graduated in philosophy and started your thesis on the ethics of nationalism.

I tried to propose a general theoretical model that could be applied in different situations, rejecting the concept of ethics between the good and the bad and betting on pluralistic ethics. In each people, systems of values are built according to the political culture that has developed. In this sense, when we defend that we are a nation, it is not that ours is not a nation like Spain or France and from there all nations are equal. This value system has its own local characteristics. Admiration and international academic interest in nationalism is no coincidence. There are many theses about nationalism from very different points of view and disciplines. The Basques see the issue in a very privatizing way, as if it were ours, but contrary to what Unamuno said, you do not heal by traveling. Traveling you realize that others have another kind of nationalism.

What role should nationalism take in Basque identity?

We have to create this concept of pluralism. In this sense, there are many ways to justify the importance of identities. Firstly, and universally, the issue of identity is important to all people, even if it is only to oppose it. For me, there are no citizens of the world, even though many of them define themselves this way. This identity is also born, constructed, from a perspective far from reality. These citizens of the world should realise that in their approach there is a logical lapse. If you want to eat in a Chinese, have dinner in Japanese, watch a series produced in the United States and listen to the Nordic techno, go ahead, but all those things happen somewhere from a nationalist point of view. So I say that we have to drink in all the ways that exist to justify the importance of identity, and sometimes we can have a more essentialist, and then more instrumental, point of view. We have every reason to defend independence or Basque identity, because our alternatives, be they French or Spanish, are indefensible in today’s world. We must not be reductionist and we must be able to integrate all possible positive ways of building that identity. How long are we going to discuss with each other that we are Basques because it was the kingdom of Navarre, or because there is Euskera, or because we have an instrumental independence? This pluralism must be respected, because it is complementary, and because the road must be broken from a broader, more advanced and interesting point of view. I do not like that internal competition, the results, because in that competition we are always the Basques who lose ourselves.

The referendums also have a great deal of competence and results, and you, in 2006, were in Montenegro.

The first memories are very emotional, as the experience there was also very emotional. On the one hand, it was my first direct and professional relationship with journalism, and on the other, it was a liberating experience in every sense of the word. Intellectually, they left us great lessons. Independence had a great development in a short time and, despite independence, the independentists did not win. They still have a much more advanced and more left-wing political position in the current independent Montenegro. But independence was made a priority and a strategic agreement was reached with the regionalists of the time to move forward. In their smallness, they beat Javier Solana by reaching inclusive agreements with Serbia, and Solana wanted an exchange between Kosobo and Montenegro. In this sense, it must be clear that there are no liberating models that can be imported 100%, but you can integrate some elements into your political dynamics and culture. For example, when the processes of secession begin, the international community is in an uncomfortable situation. It is obliged to open the door from the moment the majority of citizens ask for it, but it cannot open the door too much. It seems to me that we are there, at the edge of that door, waiting for our moment, ready to enter the kitchen as soon as we see the slice. We must not forget that these victories also have their limits, and that by then, a great deal of work will have to be done in different areas.

We're working. For two years now, your editorial commitment has much to do with the current scenario.

We fixed the editorial line when there was nothing clear, which gives us the credibility that it is one of the axes of our work. We, when the debate that has brought this scenario arose, had it clear that we should wager on what is happening, because we believed that this scenario was positive for our readers, for our social base, for the community that created us, but also for all Basque citizens. Not only that, but we were convinced that, as a people, we had more to win at this juncture. The previous process exposed the strengths of this people, and it was up to us in journalism to bet on them. We defend a journalistic model, and yes, all journalism is political. In addition, it is clear that our model is independent, that our editorial is political but not supportive. That gave us the freedom to position ourselves. In addition, we attach particular importance to the community that created us. It's very fashionable to create communities from a company. Community of leftover consumers, community of non-alcoholic beer drinkers... Currently, this is considered to be the way to ensure viability in the business world. In our case, on the contrary, we have that community, that community that created us, but it didn't create us to make ourselves known, but to have a social impact. In this mission it is essential to advance as a people, to work a better situation for the citizens, and that is why we are also committed to this scenario.

Betting is betting, the media has a very important educational role at all times of change.

The media have a limit to political pedagogy: the work of politicians. If what politicians do is nothing pedagogical, it is difficult for the media to do that work. Although parties think otherwise, the media cannot fix what they do not have. In my opinion, newspapers earn a lot when they do journalism and lose a lot when they start making history, pedagogy or sociology. These topics can be addressed from the journalistic point of view, but when it passes the border, its work loses meaning to the point of becoming counterproductive. Why was I going to feel so bad? Because you can hardly do pedagogy if your interests are so obvious. In any case, I believe that the media still have a pedagogic force, but not so much politically, but as far as relations of social life and power are concerned. In this sense, pedagogical work must go beyond mere political competence and be based on values that have a political dimension.

Is that possible at a time when it seems that the media cares about anything other than information?

In addition to the general crisis, the press suffers from a particular crisis. On the one hand, the business model has been suspended, and on the other, we have devalued our work. I mean, if you get for a euro an 80-page newspaper, a DVD, the Real sneakers, the Athletic lining, a pajama, the Arzak knife, a tupperware and a coupon for a TDT tuner, what value does journalism have? What value does our work have? In addition, we have not faced the technological and cultural challenge. I think people are reducing change to development and technological innovation, but the most profound change is in our ways of life, in relation to our information. However, in Euskal Herria, as well as in politics, there is an important commitment to journalism, and compared to other countries, we are in a better situation. That means there are very interesting things to do in that vertex where journalism and politics come together, and freeing ourselves from party competition without being neutral, we can reclaim our main value. Credibility is built with an explicit editorial line.

What is now explicit is that, in some countries, Gara will be the newspaper of power.

There are two ways to understand the relationship with power that summarize “fight the power” and “take the power back”. When power is unfair, we have to fight, but that does not mean that we have to maintain a metaphysical and anti-political position against power. I prefer a discourse against power to recover power, because from a left-wing and internationalist point of view the goal is power. When we come to power, we will manage the contradictions, because it is about building a better society and not about no contradictions. So it's true that journalism carries power control in its genetic code, but that control doesn't have to be an antisystem. We live in a very paradoxical country, and where there is an Abertzale and progressive majority, it is very easy for a person who went on strike to read in the newspaper that reads the majority who did not go on strike. We are faced with this paradox and the only way to deal with it is to recover power, because we have it, and that power must also have its reflection in the institutions.

In these times of power recovery, can there be temptations not to play to lose rather than win?

We need another way of doing things, because the Basque Country we have to bring is different. We have a lot to learn from this tragedy that we have experienced, and if not, let us not forget that the elements of the tragic are still alive in that fact. The issue of prisoners is there, there are victims, cases of torture, arrests... There is still a great danger that things will become complicated. However, we must begin to imagine the people we want, the concept of citizenship, the relationship we are going to have with foreigners, how we are going to weave social relations, how we are going to develop economically, what relationship we will have with nature ... If we enter the political agenda and reach agreement among all, this people has a great potential to make a very positive offer, both for those of us who live and for others. We can't lose/win based on the schema, because we all have a lot to gain, and so Bildu will have to prove that this scenario is positive for everyone.