Let me start by quoting from the Amazon reviews of the book:
Straddling the border of southern France and northern Spain, the land of the Basques has long been home to a people who had no country of their own but have always viewed themselves as a nation. In this marvelous work of cultural history and appreciation, Kurlansky traces Basque history from pre-Roman times, when Basques worked as the mercenaries of Carthage, to the region's recent renaissance in language and arts. Along the way, he explains how the Basques came to be among Europe's first whalers, capitalists, explorers, industrialists and international traders. (Publishers Weekly)
"The singular remarkable fact about the Basques is that they still exist," Kurlansky asserts. Without a defined country (other than Euskadi, otherwise known as "Basqueland"), with no known related ethnic groups, the Basques are an anomaly in Europe. What unites the Basques, above all, is their language--Euskera. According to ETA, "Euskera is the quintessence of Euskadi. So long as Euskera is alive, Euskadi will live." (Sunny Delaney, Amazon.com)
Ideas of the nation-state
Have the Basques “always viewed themselves as a nation”? I thought nationalism in the sense of “one culture, one state” to be a 19th century concept. Certainly there are many states today that span more than one ethnic group living in its ancestral homeland, as there have been in the past. Certainly there are ethnic groups speaking closely related dialects of the same language with similar cultures that are split among different states, as there have been in the past. The idea of the nation state is not universal, nor does it seem to be a “law of nature”.
Basques today clearly understand that they live in Spain or in France, and that they are subject to the laws of the nation in which they live. Kurlansky tells us that they also appreciate being Europeans, living under the political and economic system of the European Union. Since the 1970’s, some authority has been devolved to the regional and local governments in Spain.
Kurlansky clearly makes the point that in many ways Basque culture clashes with Spanish and French national cultures. But what legitimate political powers do the Basques want to be devolved to what kinds of governmental organizations, where?
The statement above, of course suggests that Basques have an agreed upon position on an issue which itself seems unlikely. Like other peoples, Basques are individuals and history indicates that they often disagree among themselves. How a Basque position can be legitimately formulated is the very core of the political issue before us.
Cultural change
Kurlansky’s book clearly makes the point, that I suspected anyway, that Basque culture changes over time. The language itself is changing. Various dialects, some not mutually intelligible, are merging since books have documented a formal grammar. (The first Euskera grammar was apparently published in 1729, and important grammars were apparently published in the latter part of the 19th century.) There is now a standardized dialect (Batua) which is taught in the schools and used on TV and another (Classical Labourdin) used for radio broadcasts and some newspapers. New words are being introduced to express new concepts.
A publishing industry has created a body of Basque literature, and a recording industry a body of recorded Basque music. Kurlansky is very interested in food, and he tells us how Basque cuisine has changed radically over the centuries. The Basques are described as very Catholic, with some hangovers from their pre-Christian religious traditions, but Catholicism itself has changed significantly in recent decades. Indeed, Basques (Loyola and Xavier) founded the Jesuits as a revolutionary order within the Catholic church. Kurlansky demonstrates that Basques have been in the forefront of economic development, creating whaling, fishing and boat-building industries in the distant past, then coal and iron industries in the industrial revolution, and eventually building a banking industry (based on the wealth accumulated from the others). Thus Basque culture has changed radically to accommodate new forms of economic production and new occupations. We are told that the Guggenheim Bilbão is an exceptional example of Frank Gehry’s architecture, and that it is well accepted by the Basque public, suggesting a cultural willingness to accept new architectural developments. Indeed, the interest in showing Picasso’s Guernica in the Basque provinces suggests an openness to even radical innovation in the visual arts.
The Basques have experienced a Diaspora, and I have met people proud of their Basque family background in the United States and South America. It seems hard to believe that a people willing to immigrate to new countries with very un-Basque cultures are excessively culturally conservative. Moreover, links between Euskadi Basques and their relatives in the Diaspora must exist, are likely to be growing more influential, and must help to produce cultural dynamism.
The ETA has used violence to express demands for Basque self-government, but the demand for a return to traditional Basque governmental forms and further devolution of power is apparently much more widely felt among the couple of million people living in the Basque provinces, and especially in the million or so speakers of Euskera. Thus, one must conclude that while Basques are quite willing to change their culture in many ways, they are willing to persevere and even to fight to retain other aspects of that culture. Unfortunately, Kurlansky doesn’t tell us what differentiates the two classes of cultural elements.
Of course, there would be no problem were the governments of Spain and of France willing to give up the power sought be the Basques. One must assume that those governments, legitimately representing most of their constituents, are responding to strong cultural preferences of those constituencies – that there is something more fundamental than power that they fear to lose through giving up power. Both the French and the Spanish also have accepted radical transformations in some aspects of culture (society, political systems, etc.) Is the roadblock simply economic? Probably not.
One suspects that the failure to find a political solution satisfactory to the Basques and to the other French and Spanish is most fundamentally a failure of imagination. Neither group can fully imagine the interests of the other, and perhaps neither can imagine an institutional alternative that will satisfice both its own and the other’s felt needs.
Why this extended comment?
If we could understand the disagreement between the Basques in Spain and the rest of the people of Spain, or between the Basques in France and the rest of the people in France, perhaps we could generalize our approach to other cultures and other countries. There are many intra-state conflicts rooted in disagreements between an ethnic minority and the government representing the whole population. Indeed – like the Basques – the Kurds in Iraq, the Tamils in Sri Lanka or the Catholics in Northern Ireland represent ethnic minorities in their own countries who are part of a larger cultural community that crosses the national border. I don’t suggest that a devolution of power that would satisfy the Basques in Spain and the rest of the Spanish would work in these other nations. But just perhaps, the mental approach to mutual understanding and the promotion of dialog could be generalized.
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