Democracy, Autonomy and Violence

Abstract

The establishment and consolidation of the new democracy in Spain as a consequence of the peaceful transition after Franco’s death in 1975 was the background to a spectacular increase of Basque nationalist power both in politics and society. Never before in the history of Basque nationalism since the foundation of the PNV in 1895, had the followers of Sabino Arana enjoyed such political and social influence as they achieved during the last three decades of the twentieth century. From an historical perspective, the transformation of the PNV, which to begin with was a small, semi-clandestine group of petits bourgeois in Bilbao, eventually becoming the dominant, governing, cross-class popular party in the region, was certainly astonishing. If we add the fact that the rise of this major nationalist party had not thwarted the emergence and expansion of other nationalist parties on the left of the PNV, it becomes evident that the institution-alization of post-Francoist democracy in the Basque Country was accompanied by the evolution of a new, historically unprecedented cycle of nationalist power.