Basque Nationalist PartyThe Basque Nationalist Party is a political party in the Basque region of Spain. In Basque it is called Eusko Alderdi Jeltzalea (EAJ) and in Spanish it is called the Partido Nacionalista Vasco (PNV). In Spain it is commonly referred to as EAJ-PNV. The French branch is the Parti Nationaliste Basque. The party has also offices among the Basque diaspora, mainly Venezuela, Argentina, Mexico, Uruguay, Chile and the United States. The party was founded in 1895 by Sabino de Arana y Goiri as a Catholic separatist party. Currently, it describes itself as Basque, democratic, participatory, plural, non-confessional and humanist. It is a moderate nationalist party which favours greater autonomy for the Basque region but opposes violence. In its beginnings, the party established a hierarchy among members based on the number of Basque surnames. During the single-party dictatorship rule of general Miguel Primo de Rivera, PNV was forbidden and persecuted. However, its activity continued under the guise of mountain (mendigoizale) and folklore clubs. The Spanish civil warAfter the coup of 18th July 1936, the party felt torn. It coincided with the rebel side in their Catholicity and there were pressure from the Vatican to keep away from the Republic, but the democratic Second Spanish Republic had already started a process to establish an autonomous Basque region, that was later realized during the war.
José Antonio Aguirre, the party leader, became the first lendakari (Basque president] of the wartime multipartite Basque Government, ruling the unconquered parts of Biscay and Guipuzcoa. After the surrendering of the Basque Army to the Italian Corpo Truppe Volontari in Santoña (1937), the exile government moved to Barcelona until the fall of Catalonia and then out of Spain to the exile, first to France where they organized the camps and services with the president heading it personally. He was in Belgium when Hitler occupied that country and so he started a long travel to Berlin under a false identity. Under the protection of a Panamanian ambassador, he was sent to Sweden and dodging the SS intelligency, he arrived to Brazil and Uruguay, where his dignity was reinstated and given visa to New York. When the United States decided to back Franco in 1952 he went to France anew where the Basque Government in exile was established. Also there he encountered that De Gaulle's government decided to back Franco and confiscate the Basque Government building, which today is the Instituto Cervantes premise, in a joke of destiny. Anyway the president of the government in exile was always a PNV member and even the Spanish sole representant in the United Nations was the Basque appointee Jesús de Galíndez until his murder in a obscure episode in the time of the Spanish entry in the United Nations. He also decided to put the big Basque exilees network at the service of the Main Allies|Allied side and colaborated with the CIA along the Cold War to fight Communism in Spanish America. To date, PNV has dominated in every administration of the Basque government, although the socialist Ramón Rubial started being head of the Basque General Council until the first autonomous elections. It was founder part of the Christian Democrat International. Now they are integrated in the recently formed European Democratic Party, with the French UDF, Italian Romano Prodi actual European President and other parties. See also: Acción Nacionalista Vasca, Batasuna, Comunión Nacionalista Vasca, Eusko Alkartasuna, batzoki, Basque Flag, Euzkadi, gudari, Basque Anthem, Carlism. External link
de:Eusko Alderdi Jeltzalea-Partido Nacionalista Vasco es:Partido Nacionalista Vasco Categories: Basque | Secessionist organizations | Spanish political parties |
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