Juan José Ibarretxe, former CAV lehendakari, Gemma Zabaleta, former Minister for Social Policy and member of the PSE, and Floren Aoiz, director of the Iratzar de sortu Foundation, met at a round table organised by Bilbao’s Esku dago. All three were in favour of the right to decide in the Paraninfo of the UPV/EHU. The most notable parts of the papers are as follows.

Juan José Ibarretxe: “This is unstoppable”

“We are in a process in which power will necessarily be returned to the citizen. This is unstoppable, we are seeing it every day and we are going to see it also in Basque society with the right to decide. (...)

We must be aware that democracy is at the heart of the debate and not so much the nation. In this country, the project of the nation legitimizes the project of many people, but the right to decide legitimizes much more. (...)

Today, at the political level, the world is based on an Anglo-Saxon concept: Voice or exit. Either you promise me, or I leave. Or the right to decide, or the unilateral declaration of independence. As a result of this binomial, the less democracy in the world is more independent. (...)

It is not a legal issue, it is a political issue, it is basically up to us. Strong natural majorities must be achieved, not by the right to decide, because rights are indisputable; we can discuss whether to implement those rights, but not the right itself”.

Floren Aoiz: “We can’t think of center and periphery”

"No one doubts where Scotland begins and ends. In the case of our people, the situation is more complicated by the territoriality at stake. Therefore, it is very important to explain and make effective the right to decide in response to this complexity. The last thing we can do is think there's a center and a periphery. (...)

There is one great thing in politics: passions must be taken into account. Feelings and emotions. Maybe we can think in the lab that the right to decide can confer; but now and here we can affirm the number of people who can gather the demand for the exercise of the right to decide, and the people we have opposed on other occasions. There is no other claim in this country that is capable of gathering so many people and strength.”

Gemma Zabaleta: “We must weave the work of political parties into others”

"You can defend the right to decide without being an abertzale, without being an independentist. It can be defended when one is in favour of a genuine political recovery. That is why I am here discussing this. (...)

Is there a way to go? Do you have this medicine? I would say yes. And you don't have to invent a new discourse. We have nothing more to do with the work that the main political parties have done on other occasions, sewing what they have been able to do at other times. That is all that is needed, that courage and that political will.”