The death of Carlos Garaikoetxea, the first post-Franco Basque president, at 87, does not signal the end of a political era. Instead, his passing is part of a continuing struggle between the Basque and Catalan nations and the Spanish state, according to an analysis by VilaWeb.
This enduring tension, described as a constant arm-wrestle, has defined the last fifty years. Spain, after a forty-year dictatorship, has spent another forty attempting to accommodate these two nations, often unsuccessfully.
The Restoration of Institutions
The struggle began on 23 October 1977, with Josep Tarradellas' return to Catalonia, famously declaring, "I am here." This was not merely a sentimental event; it was the provisional restoration of the Generalitat, the only republican institution the Spanish state was forced to accept rather than demolish entirely. Two years later, in December 1979, Jesús María de Leizaola, the Basque president in exile since 1960, also returned to San Sebastián, closing the circle of the legitimate Basque government.
Almost simultaneously, on 25 October 1979, the Statutes of Sau (Catalonia) and Gernika (Basque Country) were voted on. By early 1980, Jordi Pujol in Catalonia and Carlos Garaikoetxea in the Basque Country took office, almost at the same time, as heads of the first autonomous governments elected from the ballot box. This synchronicity, often overlooked in Spanish history books, was not accidental and has continued ever since.
Building Autonomy and Persistent Conflict
Garaikoetxea, despite significant difficulties such as the Ortuella explosion, attempted coups, the Lemoiz nuclear threat, and economic crises, inaugurated the architecture of new Basque self-government. This included the Ertzaintza (Basque police), EITB (Basque public broadcaster), Osakidetza (Basque health system), and the economic agreement. Pujol undertook similar work in Catalonia.
When Garaikoetxea resigned in 1985 due to disagreements with Arzalluz and the battle over the historical territories law, founding Eusko Alkartasuna, the Spanish state believed the division of Basque nationalism would bring respite. This proved incorrect. During this apparent truce, Pujol consolidated institutional Catalanism, and Catalonia's administrative transversal nature became a fact, however incomplete or modest. Meanwhile, ETA continued to highlight an unfinished conflict, to which the Spanish socialist government responded with the terrorism of the GAL.
Renewed Calls for Sovereignty
By the late 1990s, when everything seemed to have "normalised" according to Spanish constitutionalists, Juan José Ibarretxe emerged. His plan reintroduced the fundamental question of sovereignty, not just management or autonomy. The Ibarretxe Plan, supported by Garaikoetxea, was approved by the Basque parliament on 30 December 2004 but rejected by the Spanish congress on 1 February 2005. This session, historians may note, was where Spain decided, once again, not to negotiate anything substantial, remaining as closed and resistant as ever. It set a precedent for Article 155.
The rhythm of this struggle is striking. Before the Ibarretxe Plan was fully buried, the Catalan Parliament approved a new statute in 2005 under President Maragall, proclaiming Catalonia a nation. This was cut back by the Spanish Cortes in 2006. On 28 June 2010, after the Constitutional Court had torn it apart, hundreds of thousands of Catalans took to the streets of Barcelona twelve days later with the slogan "We are a nation, we decide," marking the start of "the process."
A Syncopated Struggle
When the national question in the Basque Country seemed to be calming, with ETA abandoning arms and EH Bildu entering an institutional phase, Catalonia saw the years of the 2012 Diada, the 9-N consultation, the 1-O referendum, the declaration of independence, repression, exile, and imprisonment. Then, after 2019, when Catalonia seemed to pause, sovereignty movements in the Basque Country reorganised with Gure Esku Dago, EH Bildu growing electorally, and the return of the right to decide to the Basque institutional agenda.
This forty-year history is a syncopated arm-wrestle between the two peoples. When one nation appears tired, the other takes over. When the Spanish state believes it has definitively defeated one, the other reminds it that the problem was not just that one. Autonomous Catalonia and the three-province Basque Country, the Catalan Countries and Euskal Herria, form a political system of communicating vessels. This system prevents the Spanish state from achieving the calm it desires, the belief that things are settled and normal. They have never been allowed this, and it is unlikely they will be in the foreseeable future, at least not until Basques and Catalans achieve independence.
Garaikoetxea's Enduring Vision
Garaikoetxea understood this dynamic. After founding EA, he never fully abandoned the front line and supported the Catalan struggle for independence. He knew, having studied economics and law, and having dealt with Tarradellas, Pujol, Suárez, and Juan Carlos, that this was a long game. He understood that institutions, once conquered, are not given back. He knew that the native language, once saved from being an idiom "only spoken to animals," as he described his childhood in Sorauren, would not be lost again. He also knew that nations considering themselves as such only have one possible horizon: their own state, their own republic.
The death of this amiable and stubborn Navarrese, the first autonomous Basque president, founder of a still-active party, and political father to a generation, finds everyone in the midst of this titanic arm-wrestle. His passing neither closes nor exhausts it. The brotherhood of the Catalan Countries and Euskal Herria is an objective political fact. It is the circumstance that ensures Spain can never sleep peacefully, not for a single night. After forty years, and with proof that the problem was not "only" Francoism, the Spanish nation knows it will face permanent instability, always, and that one generation or another of Basques or Catalans will continue the fight.
