I would like to write about the friend who has just died, about the friend who has learned with him, about the agreement with him, about the dream of living with him. To remind him and to join his family.

For starters, Txillardegi abertzale. Establish the country in the language and base the kingdom on political freedom. In the last interview given to Gara, he said: “We need a State ...” with significant suspension points. Nothing less than independence, at least in dreams. And in the search for those dreams, what path has it taken!

There we have Txillardegi existentialist, reader of Unamuno, Kierkegaard, Camus and Sartre, knowledgeable of Carlos Santamaría. What a profound feeling, the agonical feeling of the one who was about to lose Euskera on the dark night of Franco, with the indifference of many (and many nationalists); what a humanist feeling is to recognize that we must rebel in order to link people’s dignity with the search for freedom.

José Luis knew that he was Basque by chance, that he lived in a specific historical situation of the Basques, and as a person, with total universality, he chose the most appropriate path, seeking dignity and freedom: democracy and socialism, an ethical option for the oppressed (in the line of Bertrand Russell). With these political instruments he answered his philosophical questions. Txillardegi was left-wing, left-wing and anti-totalitarian democrat. In the problems we had with Marxism, he was one of the first to denounce the totalitarian content of general conceptions and the first to name intelligent spirits as Merleau-Ponty.

Txillardegi is a writer, and he has written so much. Remember Elsa Scheelen, the absolute love, her man Pierre, delivered to the service of the people, and the tragic existence of both... I mention it because it has been written in Belgium, when life gave us the opportunity to meet her and her family, and I would throw her out of Euskaldunizar seriously.

Above all, a word to refer to your last political commitments. Before Lizarra-Garazi he was able to claim the need to change the model and then he has been able to accompany the change of model, always within a large Abertzale left, amidst a tragic situation and able to make compromises maintaining the motto of his life: dignity and rebellion.

Thank you very much, José Luis.