The first was the one carried out by the representatives of Arrasate Telebista to agree on a proposal for collaboration with those responsible for ETB. Those at the time at ETB considered local television to be more competitive than collaborative.

Five or six years ago, we had the opportunity to meet with those responsible for ETB again, and we felt a different attitude. We saw the possibility of breaking a stable path of collaboration and drawing a space for collaboration. Local TVs would be involved in making images of ETB’s local news when ETB needed it, and public TV in exchange would offer ETB’s images, news and intellectual property programming to local TVs. Of course, an economic assessment and compensation for the movement of content in one direction or another. The technical problems, especially those arising from the existence of different platforms, were a major obstacle to the implementation of the idea and the relationship had no consequences.

So and today, we've had non-institutional collaboration, and when ETB has asked us for some content, we've offered it without any problem. On the contrary, we have also collected their images when we have needed it. It's not common, but it's a natural relationship.

In the last four years, previous relationships have cooled down. We had a meeting with those responsible, thinking that the technical problems could be overcome, but they did not value the proposal as the previous ones.

Today, with the choice of a new direction, I would say that a window opens to optimism. Perhaps driven by the economic situation, but I am clear that the public and private actors working in this Basque world will have to work together in many areas. It's not up to us to design the future of ETB. Parliament and those responsible and professionals appointed by Parliament are present for this. We, on three points, will set out the role that, in our view, ETB should play in relations with us and from the point of view of the Basques.

1.- Communicate information, leisure and sensitivity to the Basque culture to the Euskaldunes of the different communities, prioritizing the Basque, ahead of the Spanish and the French.

2.- Consolidate the bases of a stable collaboration with local television in Euskera, overcoming the public-private dichotomy, assuming that we are an integral part of a unique and competing reality.

3.- The transformation into a tractor of the audiovisual sector of the Basque Country.

The issue also holds for more, but for today we will have to leave it here.

(*) Inazio Arrangi is director of Tokikom.