From here, from Euskal Herria, nothing has happened as others tell us. Although they are committed, we are not French or Spanish. We are Basques above all strange constitutions and below all battles. We must not, therefore, change our view and take on the view of others. From Euskal Herria we must analyze our history and the past, measure our present and prepare the future.

This Spain, liberal or francoist, left or right, has been designed and built, radically, against the Basque Country in recent centuries. From the 18th century on, the liberal elites of the Spanish monarchy designed a complete strategic planning aimed at imposing on Spain a single state of nation and eliminating both Euskal Herria and other peninsular nations. Since 1776, the standardization of the language has been a declared objective. Spanish, by law and through education, has been imposed and universalized in all territories.

Since then, the strategy has focused on a single language and a single market. Since 1778, the free trade regulation had a rigorous impact on the economic and foral system of the Basque territories. To deepen this influence and make the project of the only nation Spain a reality, they needed the first national constitution, and to do so they enacted the Pepa of 1812, a progressive and progressive norm. The flag of the independence of the French occupants and that of the reactive sectors of the former regime were raised with the intention of presenting the new rule in an attractive way.

They had to seduce, buy, assimilate or otherwise neutralize all the obstacles that hindered the formation of a single Spanish nation-state, and for this they ignited the ideological battle against the Basque forces, believing that the constitution of the Basques itself was an outdated and reactionary rule, the privilege of the Castilian kings (Juan Antonio Llorente dixit). And beyond ideological debate, the argument of military force was very valuable. This was used in 1812 and 1813 when they sent Captain General Castaños Aragorri to “convince” the institutions of Hego Euskal Herria. That Spanish hero, who defeated the Napoleon army itself in the famous battle of Bailén, was of Basque origin, the father of Portugalete in Bizkaia and his mother, born in Ainhoa in Lapurdi. Splinter of the same wood to burst the Basque column. How many times that has happened to us!

In the early nineteenth century, therefore, the conflict between the Spanish project and the whole of the territories of Hego Euskal Herria is present, in its economic, institutional, political, academic and linguistic dimension. Spain, a unified and centralized state facing the Basque Country, a differentiated, foral, Basque nation.

There was only a lack of the armed dimension of this conflict, which also erupted in the two crude wars called Carlist Wars, the first in 1833-1840 and the second in 1872-1876. For the Basques, at least, these were not dynamic conflicts or religious wars. The wars between contradictory national projects were, in full law, the imposed Spanish nation-state and the Basque foreign nation.

This project imposed by the only Spanish nation has spent eight constitutions and three wars against the Basques in the last two centuries, and the post-war constitution of 1978 has used the same parameters as in the beginning of 1812: with arguments of democracy and progress, it seeks to deny the nationality of the Basques and to seduce or neutralize their citizens. You have forgotten that history, when you want to repeat it, becomes farce.