Spain
EH Bildu did not become the largest party, but achieved its best result ever. Remarkable enough after a campaign that was not about nationalism at all.
“A new era is dawning,” said Pello Otxandiano, Basque party EH Bildu’s candidate for the post of prime minister, as Sunday’s “impressive” election results came in. Never before has the left-wing, separatist party won more seats in the Basque parliament. Moreover, with 27 seats, the party is on par with the moderate nationalists of the PNV (Partido Nacionalista Vasco, ed.). This moderate, centre-right, nationalist party has ruled the Basque Country almost continuously since the start of Spanish democracy for almost forty years.
Once again, the PNV will be able to provide the prime minister, or lehendakari as it is called in Basque, with the support of the Social Democratic party of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. The PNV also supports the prime minister’s government coalition in Madrid. But something has changed in the Basque Country. Never before have the two nationalist forces obtained almost 75 percent of the seats. While the campaign was not about independence at all, but rather about social and economic issues. A big difference with the Catalan elections that are coming up in three weeks.
A party like any other
In that sense it was a remarkable victory party at EH Bildu. Because Otxandiano took the floor amid cries for independence. What’s that like? EH Bildu is a young party that emerged after a legal battle from the ashes of Batasuna, the political wing of the Basque terrorist movement ETA. In 2011, the Spanish Supreme Court declared the party ‘illegal’ and therefore banned, but the Constitutional Court removed that stamp. 2011 was also the year in which ETA announced that it would renounce violence. The movement was only actually disbanded in 2018. That EH Bildu was able to become so big says a lot about how the Basque Country has changed.
Otxandiano shook up the campaign by refusing to label ETA as a terrorist movement in an interview. But that didn’t stick. As a reporter from the Spanish newspaper El Mundo noted: for many young people, EH Bildu is now a party like any other party. She also did remarkably well among young voters. Today only 22 percent of Basques are in favor of independence. In 2005, that number was highest at 37 percent. The Basques have learned from the Catalan deconfiture and have not reacted abruptly.
“Strategic patience”
Independence remains an important goal of EH Bildu, which, according to strongman Arnaldo Otegi, requires “strategic patience”. For years, Otegi’s posters hung everywhere in the streets of the Basque Country, asking for his freedom. He was in jail because of his past as an ETA member.
In Spain, many analysts see with dismay how EH Bildu is becoming more important. Or as Joaquín Manso, editor-in-chief of El Mundo, wrote on Sunday: “Today the divisive political project has been normalized once and for all. It needed 853 murders to be successful. Even if Bildu is not yet the largest party in the Basque Country, it has become the only real political alternative in the Basque Country.”
