You were a child, too?

My father was a baker, a merchant and a clerk. Abertzale. Mother dressmaker. As the married grandmother of Zaldibar was detected at home, she had to move in a hurry to Amurrio, with her widow and two daughters. That is why little and superficially was said about politics in our country. Moreover, Amurrio was not a particularly godly people. Our crew was made up of the children of the workers and the children of the baserritars. There were also immigrants. We realized that they had taken her out of the land in the midst of the militant environments of civil war. But we lacked the thread to match them. For example, I was surprised in Madrid in May 1968, but I did not pay any special attention to it. I had no direct relationship with my life back then. Through the FLP [Popular Liberation Front] came the nearest fodder, the street was a continuous outbreak of mobilizations, new winds were noticeable...

Was he already a communist?

Yes, from a very critical current with socialism back then. It seemed to me that the bureaucratic caste had taken over the revolution, that revolutionary expressions and paths drowned. For me, the left-wing and social approach is part of the national perspective. It is no coincidence that in desperate political darkness people abide by historical models. Che Guevara or Rosa Luxembourg are still referents, the revolutions in Vietnam and Cuba have an influence beyond communism in our lives. That is why I consider myself the son of the ideas of the time. Although age has led me to consolidation into three or four concepts, at the heart of these principles is socialist democracy. That democracy should be rooted in personal relations, that it should influence the distribution of unpleasant domestic tasks, that it should be opened up in relations between men and women in the group, that it should put the neighborhood in the dance, that the workers should be in the factories and not the capital. Socialist democracy provides a pyramid with a broad base and a small height, not a vertical and hierarchical society like the present one.

Is the Congress of Deputies the reflection of this?

The Spanish Congress is the supreme symbol of hypocrisy. The agenda is not decided by the government, let alone by the citizens. Everything is in the hands of Brussels, the Troika and the factual powers of Spain. Labour reforms, cuts, Moldovan law, reform of the penal code, response to the right of self-determination of stateless nations... Everything is decided by extra-parliamentary powers. They are very reactionary forces. Imagine that you are not only against the right to decide, but against the right to consult! Feeling the breath of those forces in my neck has made me more independent than I was. That is why I say that the exercise of democracy from the bottom up is the only way to get rid of this suffocating closure. The December election campaign has, however, been absolutely television. Instead of encouraging people’s participation, the goal was to pin the voter in front of the screen. I find it as violent as it is painful to see people and society as an object of consumption. Is citizen participation limited to the consumption of what is in the shop window?

Now everything is fluid and even voting.

Political instability is one of the main features of recent years. In Catalonia, for example, the situation changes from day to day. This changes the agenda, the strategy of the parties, the positioning of the leaders... We have been swimming for some time in this political instability, soaked with great mobilizations, trapped in a life-and-death electoral whirlwind, and the emergence of new parties derived from factual powers has only made the mess thicker. The liquid vote is neither good nor bad, it is not synonymous with social paralysis, but it is the mirror of a convulsive political era. In addition, four years ago, like pp, with a false and cheat program, the demolition of the sand castles is not surprising. What are they still the first force? They've gained losing. The fact that Parliament is an empty and devoid of content helps them a great deal.

Is this empty container ever further away from citizenship?

Between the two there is not a chasm, but an ocean. The Spanish Congress is not a topic of democracy, but a temple of hypocrisy. Institutionally, a bridge is not built with citizenship, the languages, forms and clothing used have nothing to do with street people, there is no form of participation, when an expert is called to a commission is not to justify himself when assessing his opinion. The system is all hypnotized. I am therefore ashamed that two-thirds of Members of Parliament have not intervened for four years. Is it the job of a parliamentarian to vote on party discipline and to ask a couple of simple questions in writing? Do not be surprised if in plenary where there are no votes there is only 20% attendance. In Pamplona, I go out into the street and people talk to me about the problems of the neighbour or the crew, that one is unemployed, that at the end of the month the other comes in serious, that he has divorced, I do not know who, that they have to take the house away from the other. There's nothing like that in Congress.

Do people ask for another way to make politics?

We wanted to show that there could be street people in Parliament, we tried to raise the concerns of the street from the pulpit of Parliament, to be close to form, content, language and costume, comprehensible and fair. The walls of Congress are not used to housing a social left, an Abertzale left. Thus, in February 2012 we made the same proposal to put the ceiling on the salaries of parliamentarians that we now use in full, we have endeavoured to bring down those absurd privileges such as the special pension funds of parliamentarians. It is no coincidence that in the last survey carried out among the parliamentary media we are the most leftist, both socially and nationally.

Polls, elections have left you out of Congress.

We have not been able to place these state elections in our country. We have not been able to position ourselves properly in this confused context. We've put the cart before the oxen. The right to decide has been the centrepiece of our campaign and we have not been able to give sufficient light to the socio-political problems here, underlining sufficiently the harmful consequences that the state policies of the last four years have had in our society. We have raised the right to decide as a funnel, forcing us to pass through all our political essence. The right to decide should be a response to State policy over the past four years, not a consequence of that State policy. We have not been able to say why and what we were going to Madrid, to define and define the role of an independent left group in Madrid. Knowing that there was the possibility that everything was possible from the oppression of PP, it was essential to fuel the debate about this function.

Can institutions and social movements feed each other?

Social movements are the key to system change. If we think about a different society, if we want to build a different Basque Country, it makes no sense for change to be linked only to the majority of a government. If this new Basque country does not involve any reform and social transformation, we have a party. No empowerment, no social participation, horizontal social organization

... Where are we going? It is true that social mobilization is complicated when it does not correspond to institutional change, but institutional change without social mobilization means more PP. Social change is not going to come from the elections, only with the election results does not create a different society. Self-organized spaces, increasingly powerful from a social, trade union and feminist point of view, bring about change. Without social movement, there is no new and different Basque Country.

If the bridges between social movements and institutions are not thatched...

Socialist democracy is about strengthening and consolidating these bridges. For example, the relationship model in the factories is vertical, it sends the company, it sucks the workers silently, and there is room to negotiate minimums. Is that democracy? What happens in the relations between men and women? The jobs and activities considered to be women have no social or political recognition, the wage differences are enormous, the lack of recognition is a dependency.

Unbalanced relationships and relationships violence. Is that democracy? Same thing in college. What is the university if it's not a cacique nest without democracy? That is why I say that democracy must take root in all areas of life, promote direct relations between society and institutions, bridge the gap between the two and promote joint work. The equal relationship between social movements and institutions should be a symptom of a government's health, not a sign of weakness. However, this is not achieved by voting on the laws on citizen participation. We must go to the bottom of the matter, acknowledge that social life is political and put a dose of democracy to the slightest decision.

Are political parties willing to share power with social movements?

Politicians are inclined towards the banalization of the social. People who have grown up and been educated in social movements are used as an electoral bait, but no one leaves the policy to fight evictions or work in the resident association. We all know that professional politicians jump to foundations or private companies in their own right. This shows that for most of our rulers, not all jobs have the same importance, that all they care about is that they stay in the vertex of the pyramid. Peter's principle of incompetence is clear: we all rise the social organization chart to the highest level of our disability.

Did you retire, will you retire?

I wasn't born yesterday, I've had two rounds of illegalization. My generation's, we have a 40-year-old movie stuck in the pupil. What we live today is on the verge of déjà vu. We do not know what the end of the film will look like, I would like to believe that the end is not yet written, that social mobilisations will have enough strength to mark the authorities’ roadmap. It's the turn of new people, we need young faces to aerate our ideas and refresh our programs. Before I came to get me to head the list, I clearly told him that I wouldn't introduce myself. Now I say it more strongly. I think I've done my job. It is my turn to my situation and my natural habitat.