What has been the reality? Very different. After the change of strategy, ELA, in addition to depoliticizing strikes against labor reforms, has not only not developed a sovereign pedagogy against the PNV, but has artificially increased the distance with EH Bildu, while at the same time it has belittled the change in Navarre, maintaining positions that go beyond the necessary critical spirit. In addition, it has published numerous ad hoc justifications to condition the action unit with LAB. In other words, in full political and social transformation, instead of being a union agent, it has become a kind of terrible enfant in the new scenario.

The context after the change of strategy has become, above all, a problem to question its union project and does not consider it an opportunity to develop the sum of collective commitments to form a major articulation that drives political and social change. ELA is showing its obsession with building a social discourse and image, to approach quantitatively the new niches in unionism. That and a little more. It is legitimate to foresee the development of one's own organization, provided that ideological fraud is not committed, if theoretical and practical is not fooled, let alone if the historical moment we are living as a nation is not neglected.

We live in a very important moment. The State, immersed in a profound anti-democratic involution to respond to the crisis of its territorial model, has Catalonia in its sights, in the CAV there is a political majority in favor of the right to decide and the Government of Change has abandoned the regime in Navarra. In addition, we have a strong quantitative trade union majority and a social movement of great potential around the right to decide or the dynamics of recovery (feminism, pensioners, Altsasu...). Furthermore, since the State does not have the capacity to make a democratic offer, it has an enormous inability to legitimise itself in our country, which leads us to a confrontation that we must prepare properly, so we need the highest degree of active awareness of mass and society.

This context requires an effort to articulate the minima between us, both to develop the democratic confrontation against the legal frameworks that condition our national and social reality, and to formulate social and economic policies. But ALS, no.

On the national axis, it has strengthened its centrality as a factor of political and social change. He went from defending the 79's Statute to claiming his death and defending the minimal agreement with the PNV (*). At present, however, it has rejected the agreement of bases and principles approved by the PNV and EH Bildu. We insist: ELA defends a tactical proposal in which abertzales and progressives confluence before and after Lizarra-Garazi, until the Abertzale left reaches a strategy change. Recognition of the political subject, the right to decide, socio-occupational competences, the shielding of competition, consultations... Do they not qualitatively form the skeleton of a different statute that they defended 40 years ago? How do we understand that critical position when they met in Madrid to demand changes in the reform of collective bargaining?

What's the problem? The PNV and its credibility and degree of alliance? OK. We are not going to support the credibility of the PNV, but there are two positions to respond to that. One, maintaining a direct confrontation with the PNV on the national axis, which would require articulating the independence space and social change, and that ALS appeared as an independent organization. And another, that through tactical approaches the contents of new status in the CAV and Navarra, positively condition the possibilities of the political (PNV, Podemos...) and social sectors, with the aim of broadening the bases for sovereignty. But ELA is not in the first choice for lack of cohesion and determination in its strategic position, nor in the second for criteria of political opportunity linked to its union project.

On the contrary, it is subtracted to any tactical and strategic implication. To do so, it forms a left-wing stony discourse that contradicts the sovereign process. It argues for the need to extend sovereignty from the social point of view and therefore dismisses the PNV for any commitment at national level. So is only the thousands of PNV members and voters in ALS neoliberal? What are you going to do with them? In this situation, leftist testimonialism can make it easier for neoliberals who say they want to fight. Interestingly, the match between Urkullu, Vocento and ELA’s answers when the Abertzale left speaks of popular covenants.

Without bringing his army to the battlefield, ELA wants to condition the sovereign left that wants to articulate a majority in favor of political and social change. In our view, events of great potential are currently taking place. All this must be channelled and turned into a political and social tractor. We are talking about the potential of the mobilizations of women and pensioners; we are talking about the initiative of Dena Esku Dago; about the mobilizations for the return home of prisoners and exiles; about what the unity of action of the Abertzale syndicalism can bring; about a plural social, cultural and political space that demands the process of recognition and sovereignty of this people, which is synchronising with Catalonia.

We do not need hypocrisy or sustainable conditions. We need sums, sums of content in the same direction, sums with the will for articulation and social mobilization.

(*) Elorrieta said: “Some say we’re against the Ibarretxe Plan and it’s not true. We are opposed to them not being shared with their strategy’, ‘wherever they put the stinger, put it too’.

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