Politics, Economy, or Culture?

The Rise and Development of Basque Nationalism in the

Light of Social Movement Theory
Author(s): Ludger Mees
Source: Theory and Society, Vol. 33, No. 3/4, Special Issue: Current Routes to the Study of
Contentious Politics and Social Change (Jun. - Aug., 2004), pp. 311-331
Published by: Springer
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4144875
Accessed: 06-07-2016 11:50 UTC
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Politics, economy, or culture? The rise and development

of Basque nationalism in the light of social movement
theory
LUDGER MEES
Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea-Universidad del Pais Vasco, Bilbao, Spain

Abstract. Nationalism and social mobilization are two of the most prominent areas of research within the social sciences since the end of the Second World War.

Yet, the scholarly specialization has so far impeded a mutual exchange of the theoretical and methodological literatures of both areas. While theorists on nationalism
dispute about the validity and scientific efficacy of approaches such as primordialism, perennialism, modernism, functionalism or-more recently - ethno-symbolism,
scholars concerned with social movement theory have been divided about approaches
commonly known as resource mobilization, political process, framing, or new social
movement theories. The recent proposal forwarded by McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly
(MTT) in their book Dynamics of Contention is an important attempt to overcome
the scholarly specialization by presenting a new explanatory framework that aims at
opening new analytical perspectives to a better comprehension of contentious politics
beyond the "classic social movements agenda." This article on the rise and development of Basque nationalism, however, while accepting the proposal as a valid focus
for the macro-analysis and comparison of broad structures and processes, is rather
sceptical as far as its hypothetical productivity on the theoretical meso-level (analysis
and comparison of one or a few single cases) is concerned. Instead, in the light of
the historical evolution of Basque nationalism since the end of the nineteenth century,

including its more recent violent dimension, it is suggested that a productive and intelligent combination of approaches coming from both areas: theories on nationalism
and on social movements, is still a useful and necessary task to carry out in order to
facilitate a better understanding of nationalism in particular and contentious politics in

general.

Ethnicity and social movements: An essential theoretical encounter

Since the end of the Second World War, nationalism and social
mobilization have received great attention from social scientists.
Both have attracted the productive interest of large communities
of scholars, who ever since have engaged in endless disputes over
methodologies, theories and paradigms. Yet, with only a very few
Theory and Society 33: 311-331, 2004.
? 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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312

exceptions, these disputes have generally taken place within the

boundaries of each community and despite the fact that the theoretical
literature on social movements usually identifies nationalism and ethnic conflict as two of the most prominent and powerful themes of social

movements. McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly (MTT) are right to denounce

the surprising lack of communication between these two areas of research, as they do in their contribution to the first number of the review

Mobilization. According to the authors, this individualistic blindness

is due to a growing "scholarly specialization," that "has left many
ethnic conflict scholars largely uninformed of recent advances in social
movement theory," while on the other hand, "social movement theorists

from the West have generally chosen more bounded, less volatile
movements to study than those based on ethnicity and religion."'

This scholarly specialization is indeed a reality, notwithstanding the

fact that the questions raised and the analytical foci chosen by either
academic community do not differ fundamentally. Let me just mention one example. It is well known that both collectives have produced
very controversial discussions about the origins and causes both of
nationalism and social movements and that this debate has generated
deep splits and alternative theories within either collective. Scholars of
nationalism are divided along a set of competing paradigms, according
to which nationalism can already be found in premodern societies (primordialism; perennialism) or, on the contrary, is considered a modem,
extremely functional phenomenon that came up together with liberal
thinking, capitalism and industrialization (modernism, functionalism).
More recently, and as a consequence of the enormous impact of culturalism on the social sciences, new approaches tend to overcome the
rigid, exclusivist and somehow artificial bipolarization by a new view
on nationalism, which admits both the premodern preconditions of
nationalism and its decisive shape by the circumstances of modernization, while moving the focus to the analysis of cultural, more subjective elements in the construction of nationalist discourse and movement
such as memory, value, sentiment, myth or symbol (ethno-symbolism).2

Similar disputes over competing paradigms, but also a surprising parallelism in the more recent theoretical tendencies, can be found in the
field of social movement research and theory. Despite a broad consensus in considering social movements as a qualitatively new product of
secularization and modern society, and after discarding the classical
collective behavior approaches that understood social movements as
irrational, emotional and spontaneous dysfunctions from normal life,

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313

and sidelining the relative deprivation theory, the main struggle was be-

tween resource mobilization, on the one hand, and the political process
perspective with its focus on mobilizing (or demobilizing) opportunities and threat. Again, the culturalists' voices received a remarkable
echo, which was translated into a growing interest in issues such as
identity, memory, discourses, attribution of meaning or cultural patterns and belief systems as expressed by scholars inspired by the new
social movements theorem or the framing approach. And again, as in
the theoretical debate on nationalism, during the 1990s a certain convergence between the competing paradigms occurred, since the new
proposals produced much more a "shift of emphasis, a subtle and in-

cremental reevaluation, than (...) a qualitative break from existing

paradigms."3
Indeed, according to the assessment of the MTT trio, the convergence
has been completed by the setting up of a common theoretical program:
the "classic social movements agenda."4 This amalgamation was a con-

sequence of the fact that, in the opinions of the three social scientists,
"by the 1980s most North American students of social movements had

adopted a common social movement agenda, and differed chiefly in

their relative emphasis on different components of that agenda."5 This
mutual theoretical and methodological enrichment, however, has not
produced a more precise and sophisticated tool for the explanation and
comprehension of collective mobilization, since - continuing the argument of MTT - the classic agenda sticks to the deficiencies and problems of each of its components, which are defined and criticized as too
"static" or "single-actor oriented" and therefore not appropriate for the
analysis and comparison of very different forms of contentious politics.

Tilly and co-authors invite the reader to "abandon explanation of events

by matching them with the classic social movement model or any other
invariant general model,"6 while outlining a new, more dynamic and

interactive alternative: the concept of contentious politics.

This broader approach is presented as a new conceptual and methodological key for the understanding of a wide range of different forms
of political struggle, which develop according to similar mechanisms.
By conceptually bringing together these different forms of contentious

politics and comparing them, the already mentioned excessive compartmentalization of studies in the social sciences might be overcome,
the different scholarly branches of research would finally be able to
enter a productive process of intercommunication and, returning to the
initial words of this article, researchers on nationalism would no longer

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314

be condemned to ignore what their colleagues of the social movements

section are doing and vice versa.

It is beyond the scope of this article to discuss this new proposal and
to ask, for example, to what extent it really means a kind of theoretical
hara-kiri of the authors - each one of the three is a well-known guru with

a distinguished pedigree in the area of what they now somehow scornfully call the "classic social movements agenda" - or if the suggestions
might somehow still be compatible with a non-dogmatic interpretation
and application of an enriched version of the old-fashioned agenda.7
At first glance, and despite the necessarily still unfinished character of
MTT's proposal, I agree with several of the criticisms formulated so far
by other scholars of the social sciences, who among other points, have
opposed the excessively general condemnation of the classic theories

(which, according to D. Rucht, are treated as a "strawman"), while

criticizing both the not always convincing theoretical elaboration and
the empirical validity of the new concepts (mechanisms, processes,
episodes, etc.).8

As a historian who conceives history as a social science and consequently needs theories and comparisons for his empirical work, I would
like to add another point to these criticisms. It is no exaggeration to

state that the daily work of the immense majority of social scientists,
be they historians of society or scholars of other disciplines, pivots on
the empirical and theoretical exploration of one single research object,
which might then be compared with one or two other similar casesboth our work capacity and our level of knowledge are unfortunately
always limited - as a first step toward corroboration, specification or
alteration of the theoretical framework used in the research. This vol-

untary, but realistic delimitation of the scope of our work means, in

other words, that we normally move to a meso-level when dealing with
theories. Except MTT, I do not really know any serious social scientist
around the world who-with more or less convincing arguments-aspires
to explain it all together: revolutions, social movements, nationalism,
wars, religious contention, democratisation and all other expressions
of contentious politics in the contemporary world.
When reading DOC (Dynamics of Contention) and other prior or later
articles about the same proposal, I had the impression that the new
approach is likely to be productive when the analytical focus is broad,
more general and strongly comparative, whereas the "classic agenda"
still seems to work quite well in cases in which our purpose is not to

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315

compare a large number of different episodes, but to analyze a certain

example of contentious politics in the light of theory, e.g., a nationalist
movement or other social movement. Surprisingly, MTT seem to agree

with this impression,9 what is, however, somehow confusing, since we

are not informed about the real grasp of their proposal: Is it supposed
to be a revolutionary overthrow of the Ancien Regime by establishing a
new powerful paradigm in that huge area called contentious politics, or
is it a reformist modernization, but not elimination, of an existing theo-

retical groundwork which has evidenced deficiencies and failures when

applied to a certain kind of problems, i.e., large-scale and heavily comparative investigations? In a footnote I have already quoted McAdam's

statement about DOC being the "logical extension of the classical

agenda," a statement which apparently is not shared by the other two
authors. This indicates that these doubts are not exclusively mine.
Consequently, the following discussion of the rise and the development
of the Basque nationalist movement reflects both my healthy scepticism

about the significance and applicability of the DOC proposal and, at the
same time, my strong support for one of the main goals formulated by
its authors, i.e., the overcoming of the extreme compartmentalization
in the studies of contentious politics and the bringing together of the
different literatures. My argument is that the fulfilment of this aim is

not only possible, but absolutely necessary in the case of the studies on
nationalism and on social movements. Yet, as stated above, this theoretical encounter has been put into practice only on very rare occasions.
This is striking because nationalism - apart from being a language and

symbolism as well as an ideology of the nation - is also a sociopolitical movement. As such it "does not differ, in principle, from others
in terms of its organizations, activities and techniques, except in one
particular: its emphasis upon cultural gestation and representation."'0
For better comprehension of the rise and development of nationalist movements the old-fashioned "classic social movements agenda"

is still useful. It continues to provide important theoretical tools

for the analytical explanation of the phenomenon. In particular, my
analysis of the Basque case draws heavily on the idea of the opening-up
of a new opportunity structure as the basic condition for nationalist
mobilization. I argue that the opportunities were not only political, but
also socioeconomic. Yet, in order to explain the success of that movement during the twentieth century, we need also to make use of other
approaches, which address issues like culture and identity, as well as
organizational resources. In a final section, discussing the reasons for

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316

continuing political ethnic violence, this necessity of bringing together

different research agendas and theories becomes still more evident.

Basque nationalism and the world around it

Since Tilly's famous From Mobilization to Revolution, in political process theory the question of what has to be understood by an opportunity

has not led to a general consensus, but successive proposals of definitions have without any doubt made a great contribution to clarifying

the concept. In 1978, Tilly defined opportunity as "the relationship

between a group and the world around it. Changes in the relationship
sometimes threaten the group's interests. They sometimes provide new
chances to act on those interests."" Tilly himself and other scholars
continued working on that idea in order to specify it. One of the most
popular attempts to sharpen the concept of opportunity has been forwarded by Sidney Tarrow:
Not only when reform is pending, but when institutional access opens, when
alignments shift, when conflicts emerge among elites and when allies become

available, will challengers find favourable opportunities.'2

The debate on the so-called new social movements provided arguments for a revision of the theory. Dieter Rucht, to mention only one

example, criticized the nearly exclusively political interpretation of

the theory, which for that reason was unable to understand and explain
other determining factors of collective mobilization, one of these being

the "pattern of the dominant political culture." Consequently, Rucht

abandoned the concept of "political opportunity structure," replacing it by that of "contextual structure of society" ("Gesellschaftliche

Kontextstruktur").13 As we have already seen above, the last step

in this process of conceptual revisionism was the confluence of the
original political-opportunity approach with other approaches, namely
the resource-mobilization theory and its special attention for socialmovements-organizations, or the framing-theory interested especially
in the production and reproduction of discourses and meaning. In our
exploration of Basque nationalism, we can rely on several of these ideas,
which are necessary but not completely sufficient for a comprehensive
account of that case.
A weak state in crisis

The origins of the modern Spanish state date back to the 15th century,
when the future "Catholic Monarchs" Isabel and Fernando prepared

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317

with their marriage (1469) the unification of Castile and Arag6n, the
two most powerful monarchies of the peninsula. Despite these early ori-

gins of Spanish state-building, recent historiography has revealed the

remarkable deficit of this process with its important costs for nationbuilding, mainly during the 19th century. Alluding to the debate on German history, I have described the Spanish history of the 19th century as

a "Spanischen Sonderweg," aparticular Spanish way towards the building of a modem nation state.14 This way was particular, since it was
exactly opposite to that of other Western states: During the last decades
of the century, when the western world entered a phase of extreme internal nationalism and external imperialism, Spain was degraded from
being the most influential colonial power in the world into a nearly
bankrupt third- or fourth-class state with tremendous internal problems of legitimacy, identity, penetration and participation, according
to the terminology used by Charles Tilly in another of his already classic
studies.15

Here I can only recite very briefly some of the facts like the loss of all
colonies (except a part of Morocco) in 1824 and then, after a humiliating

dr6le de guerre against the United States of America-which actually was no war, but an unconditional surrender after a sea-battle in 1898; the deep identity crisis following that disaster; the challenge
of the weak Spanish liberalism by traditionalist Carlism in three civil
wars; the fragile and territorially fragmented bourgeoisie; the underdeveloped system of public education, which left the transmission of
national identity to the enemies of liberalism, i.e., to the private institutions under the control of the traditionalist Catholic Church; the lack
of a really national army, which was only the army of the poor; the cor-

ruption of parliamentary democracy by patronage and clientelism; the

late invention of national symbols; and, last but not least, the durability

of regional and local cultural and even political particularisms, one of

these being the Basque one.
Aggravation of these structural problems by the disaster of 1898 under-

mined the already fragile fundaments of the Spanish national project,

opening up new opportunities for alternative national projects. It was
not by chance that Sabino Arana, the founder of the Basque Nation-

alist Party (Partido Nacionalista Vasco, PNV), won his first mandate in Parliament exactly in the year of the disaster, in the moment

when-in the words of a Spanish historian-"doubt was cast on the

Spanish nation."'16

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318

Laying the groundwork: Cultural and political protonationalism

Late 19th-century Basque nationalism did not start from zero. When

founding the party in 1895, Sabino Arana and his first followers in
Bilbao built upon a long tradition of particularism, which during the
19th century had developed into a sort ofprotonationalist conscience.17
How was this process triggered? We have to consider particularly three
factors. The first was the long experience of warfare. The Basque region
had been the center of the Carlist wars, in which the Basque rural population fought on the side of the Carlists against Spanish liberalism, first

because the liberals were considered enemies of the Catholic Church,

and later because they were said to support the abolition of Basque
self-government. The Basque bourgeoisie supported liberalism claiming for protective costumes against foreign products, for free access to
the Spanish market,18 as well as for a modification - not abolition - of
the traditional Basque self-government institutions dominated by the
rural elite. After three wars and the definite liberal victory, in 1876 the

Spanish government headed by the conservative Canovas del Castillo

abolished Basque self-government, contrary to the will of his Basque
liberal allies. That left as its only legacy substantial fiscal autonomy.
Frustration about the abolition of the "Fueros" gave rise to a broad
politico-cultural renaissance ("Fuerismo") in which the local history
was investigated and invented, national myths created, the decay of the

Basque language deplored and the "Golden Age" of Basque freedom

granted by the Fueros praised. This movement did not affect only the

urban classes. Its central message was brought by the popular bards
("Bertsolariak") to the population of the rural areas, where the decay
of the language, the glorification of the Fueros or the corruption of
the traditional moral, customs and Catholic faith became the core issues of the poems presented to important rural audiences during the
festivities of the villages and small towns.19 The "bad guy" of the
story told by poets, writers and even clergymen was Spain and its government, which was blamed for all the misery and asked to restore
the Fueros. This fuerismo can be considered a more culturally than
politically successful protonationalist movement stimulating the shaping of a Basque national consciousness, which nonetheless was not yet
completely incompatible with a Spanish identity.20

We can summarize 19th-century Spanish state- and nation-building

from the Basque perspective with a threefold hypothesis. First,

Spanish liberalism had been incapable of successfully carrying out
the "nationalization of the masses."21 Second, the new Spanish

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319

nation-state-completed in 1876 with the eradication of Basque selfgovernment - was mortgaged from its very beginnings due to the perception that it had been the result of military conquest, and not of
a political agreement. And third, intellectuals, poets and clergymen
were the main instigators of a protonationalist movement, which was
successful in terms of culture and identity, but failed to translate this
growing protonationalism into clearly defined political claims.
Without taking into account this long cultural process of growing par-

ticularism and self-consciousness, during which Basque people became aware and started to celebrate their cultural differentiae, their
common myths of ancestry and their shared memories, the emergence
of state-seeking nationalism in the Basque Country is hardly understandable. The opening up of different sets of opportunities for nationalist mobilization required a favorable context with historical roots

that can be traced back to the 15th century. In my opinion, at least as

far as the history of nationalism is concerned, the omission of these
longue-duree cultural preconditions is one of the major deficits of the
political-opportunity-structures theory. This is no plea for the fashionable discovery of nations and nationalisms in the Middle Ages or even
earlier. Instead, it is a proposal aiming at an improvement of our theoret-

ical tools for the analysis of social movements, in this case of national-

ism. Ideas and concepts forwarded by scholars like Anthony D. Smith,

interested in the ethno-cultural gestation of nations and nationalisms,
might be helpful.22 In the Basque case, cultural protonationalism was
transformed into a social movement with a clear political aspiration by
new socioeconomic and political opportunities.
Socioeconomic opportunities
Only a few years after the end of the last Carlist War in 1876, Bilbao
and its hinterland became the scenario of a fast and disruptive process
of socioeconomic modernization triggered by the massive production
and export of iron ore, which provided the capital needed for the construction of the heavy industry of huge steel factories and shipyards.23

This process of rapid and radical industrial growth can be interpreted

as a new opportunity favoring the genesis of nationalism in two ways.
First, industrialization turned the structure of society upside-down in
only a few years. Both the massive immigration of non-Basque workers
and the influx of local rural labor into industrial areas created the new,

ethnically heterogeneous industrial working class. After 1890, when

the first general strike was organized, frequent violent class conflicts

caused panic among the urban middle classes, who suddenly found

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320

barricades, strange people and police forces on their previously quiet

and peaceful streets.
The first nationalists were recruited from Bilbao's traumatized petty

bourgeoisie. This bourgeoisie was upset about the "foreign" Spanish

workers and their socialist organizations, who were blamed for being the promoters of violence, crime and anti-Basque agitation. Yet,
already at the beginning of the 20th century, the new urban upper mid-

dle class took the leadership of the nationalist movement opposing

both the socialist labor movement and Basque big business, which was
politically represented by the Spanish monarchist parties.24 Continuing socioeconomic modernization fuelled the nationalist movement.
In the Basque case, nationalism also soon demonstrated its capacity
of transcending social cleavages by becoming a popular cross-class
movement with a strong appeal also to the native working class, which
was unwilling to abandon Basque identity and join the socialist union
or party. Since 1911, nationalist workers had their own nationalist and
catholic union (Eusko Langileen Alkartasuna, ELA), which at the beginning of Primo de Rivera's dictatorship had become as strong as its
competitor, the socialist Uni6n General de Trabajo (UGT).25 Finally,
during the Second Republic, nationalism expanded to rural areas of the
industrializing coastal provinces of Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa,26 whereas
it remained weak in the two mostly agrarian provinces in the interior,
Alava and Navarre, which only during Francoism were modernized by
industrialization and economic growth.
Accelerated and disruptive modernization was also an opportunity for
nationalist mobilization in a second sense. The radicalism of the process and its revolutionizing consequences for the structure of society
undermined traditional ideologies like Carlism or Fuerism and set up
the conditions for the spreading of new ideologies, which had to be
as radical as the modernization process itself. These ideologies were
Basque socialism, which at least until the early 1920s was probably the
most radical and combative branch of the socialist movement within

the Spanish state and nationalism. During the first years of its existence,

Basque nationalism was a semi-legal movement with a clearly separatist and radically anti-socialist discourse having racist connotations.
To avoid repression and to facilitate expansion of the party into the mid-

dle and upper classes, in 1908 the Basque Nationalist Party moderated
its discourse, accepting in its program formally the legal and juridical framework and adopting the formula of the restoration of the old

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321

Fueros as the final aspiration of nationalist politics. To decide whether

this was a claim for independence or only for autonomy within the
Spanish state was up to each party member and his or her interpretation of what was exactly the political status of the Basque territories
before the abolition of the Fueros. This calculated ambiguity was the

basis of a political strategy that combined pragmatic Realpolitik with

separatist utopia, this patriotic pendulum being one of the reasons for
the long cohabitation of radicals and moderates within one and the
same party.27

Political opportunities
Basque nationalism is a good example of the dialectic relationship between social movements and democracy. As Charles Tilly has pointed

out recently, "development of democratic regimes reduced the attractiveness and effectiveness of the old direct actions. It gave increased
rewards to organized political actors that could establish their public presence as forces to be reckoned with in elections, parliamentary
deliberations, and executive decisions. In addition, social movements
provided a means for activists to draw public attention to populations,
issues, and programs that previously lacked political standing. In that
regard, social movements became wedges for democratization."28 The
nationalist movement in the Basque Country both profited from and
fostered democratization. It was politically articulated within the context of what might be looked upon as a classic example for the opening
up of institutional access, which in this case was carried out during
the second half of the 1880s by the Spanish government presided over
by the liberal leader Sagasta. The Sagasta administration passed two
crucial laws, which would remarkably alter the structure of the political

system by granting firstly the freedom of association and establishing

secondly universal male suffrage. The door to the introduction of the
masses into politics had been opened and both nationalists and socialists would henceforth make use of the new opportunities to voice the
claims of their constituencies.

Yet the ruling oligarchic elite of conservative and liberal monarchists was not willing to lose political power. The response of the
Spanish government to the increasing influence of the regime challengers came along by organizing a strictly hierarchic network of
clientelism and patronage ("Caciquismo"). The head of this network was located at the Interior Ministry, where results of elections were decided in advance. Its tentacles reached to the different

electoral districts and the local notables, who assured with money,

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promises, or menaces the correct results of the elections fixed in

Madrid.

These shifts in the Spanish political system - democratization and

oligarchic response - had two consequences for nationalist mobilization in the Basque Country. First, Sabino Arana immediately took advantage of the new law when founding the nationalist party in 1895,
5 years after the first general elections with universal male suffrage.
Despite the repression against its leader and newspapers, the party was
not banned. Instead, it was able to run elections and use town councils, regional institutions, and after 1918 also the Spanish parliament
to promote its program. Second, in the politically and socially mobilized capital of Bilbao, which was the center of the nationalist movement, monarchist big business was increasingly unable to control the
vote of the whole constituency. Despite spending enormous amounts
of money to buy votes for the monarchist candidates, non-monarchist
newspapers published severe criticisms against this particular manner
of understanding parliamentary democracy. Nationalists and socialists
did not miss the opportunity to exploit this popular indignation; they
presented themselves as the only defenders of the people's will and of
clean elections.

Claiming a new way of doing politics, Basque nationalists managed

to get rid of the bad reputation party politics had in the Restoration
Monarchy's Basque society. According to Sabino Arana and his followers, politics had to be made in the name and interest of the nation,
and not only in the defense of a certain particular political option. In
order to symbolize this message, from 1913 until the beginning of the

Second Republic, the party changed its name from Basque Nationalist Party to Basque Nationalist Community. This was not only the
consequence of strategic calculation and the party's populist discourse
of national solidarity and harmony. It was at the same time a formal
reflection of the Basque nationalists' spectacular apogee and power
increase. What initially began as a small semi-legal political party, by
the time of World War I was already a broad popular social movement.
Organizing and framing

One of the characteristic features of any social movement is its articulation as a broad, interactive network of individuals, groups and
organizations. In the Basque case, the nationalists created these mobilizing structures ex novo. They did not "appropriate" existing ones by
turning them "into vehicles of mobilization," as we might think when

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323

reading MTT.29 Yet, several of these structures matched pre-existing

cultural patterns with deep roots in Basque society. These are only two
examples: the nationalist club of mountaineering - which became extremely important for the mobilization of the population in the rural ar-

eas - was new, but the habit of many Basques to walk in the mountainsnot for fun, but for work-was not. The nationalist choruses and folk-

loric dance-groups were new, but the Basque passion for singing and
dancing had been documented a long time before nationalism arose.
Within the nationalist community, the political party (split in 1921;
reunited in 1930) was the movement's centre. As already indicated
above, and together with the socialist party, it was the first political
party in Spain to overcome the traditional model of a party controlled
by one or several notables. Instead, the PNV brought the masses into
politics by creating the figure of party members with equal rights,
who voted and appointed their local, regional, and national leadership
according to a strictly democratic mechanism from the bottom to the
top. In the orbit of the party, a broad network of organizations, groups,

and initiatives was set up. It included unions for the industrial workers,

employees, peasants, or fishermen; a women's organization; a very

powerful youth organization; another one for mountaineering; groups
for the learning and performing of Basque music, traditional dances,
theatre, or language.
An extremely important function for the coordination of all these parts

of the organizational network was fulfilled by the so-called Batzokiak,

which were flats or houses containing a bar or a restaurant run by
party-members, the offices of the local party branch, rooms for the
organization of the sportive and cultural initiatives just mentioned,
and-in the bigger localities - for political meetings. From the time of
World War I, such a politico-cultural center could be found in nearly
every Basque village or town of the most nationalist provinces of the

coast (Gipuzkoa and Bizkaia), whereas the presence in the interior

(Alava, Navarre) was minor.30
If we add to this organizational framework the nationalist success in
setting up an influential group of their own media (various journals
and, from 1913, a daily) or their skill in organizing and celebrating
meetings as cultural-religious festivals, we have mentioned the most
important mechanisms by which the nationalist belief system was created and reproduced and the party's discourse framed. The dictator
Primo de Rivera was apparently not aware of the importance of this

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324

interactive network. During the seven years of the dictatorship, all political expressions of nationalism were illegalized, but the Batzokiak

continued to be open to the public. When the dictatorship was replaced

by the Second Republic, Basque nationalism returned to the political
scenario with more power than ever before.31 Franco learned from this
experience, banning the entire politico-cultural network of Basque nationalism. Yet, this network was now reproduced in exile, while in the
Basque territories it mutated into new forms that, disguised as leisure
activities (group of friends joining daily to have some cups of wine;
clubs of cooking) or under the umbrella of the Catholic Church (private
schools teaching in Basque), assumed the same function of reproducing the nationalist belief system.32 The enormous success of nationalist
organizing and framing, even under especially adverse circumstances,
became evident in 1975 when Franco died.
Mobilization and violence

One of the characteristic features of what has been called the repertoires

of contention performed by social movements33 is the substitution for

traditional risky and frequently violent forms of direct action and their

substitution by symbolic, cumulative, and indirect patterns of claimmaking.34 Yet, it is well known that even if the frequency of violence
has declined, it has not been banned from the repertoire of social move-

ments. At least since Ted Gurr's publication of his (both praised and
criticized) Why Men Rebel in 1970,35 research on violence, its political
background and goals, including ethnic violence and terrorism, has
become an important sector in the academic production of the social
sciences.36 Cum grano salis, in this debate on violence several of the
main theoretical approaches applied in the area of the social movement
studies are reproduced in the discourses of academics, whether the relative deprivation paradigm, the opportunity structure theory or others.
In this field, "scholarly compartmentalization" is apparently not as rigid

as in other areas. Yet, as this final discussion of the Basque case will
show, the debate on political violence is far from being conclusive, as
many questions still remain unresolved. Progress in this field requires
a still more intensive cooperation between different sectors of research
and theory, bringing together the still too separated agendas of scholars

interested in ethnicity, social movements, political violence and even

in the sociology of religion.
In the Basque Country, the nationalist movement has historically fulfilled its role as a symbolic, cumulative and indirect movement that per-

formed collective claims on authorities using a repertoire of lobbying,

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325

creation of special associations, public meetings, demonstrations, creation and use of mass media, symbols, elections, and so on. This claimmaking has been pretty successful. At the beginning of the 21st century, Basque society is a pluralistic society with a slight majority for
the different nationalist options. In fact, since more than a century of
mobilization, nationalism has reached the peak of its political and social power. Yet, under the leadership of the underground-group ETA,
during the 1960s a new leftist and violent nationalism came up. After more than four decades, ETA and ethnic violence still continue to
condition politics in the Basque Country.
Instead of referring to nationalism in the singular, we should stress this
division into two different blocs, the first being the democratic nation-

alist parties that reject the use of violence for political purposes, and
the second the organizations of the so-called Basque National Liberation Movement, which remains close to terrorism. After the hopefully
peaceful settlement of the Northern Irish conflict, the Basque Country
is the only region within the European Union where violent paramilitaries kill, hurt, destroy, and menace in order to achieve political goals,

i.e., independence. This activity has seriously jeopardized democracy.

Notwithstanding the efforts of the Spanish and Basque police forces,
currently all politicians of the non-nationalist parties, all judges, many
journalists and a group of university teachers are forced to live protected by body-guards. It is beyond the scope of this article to analyze
the origin and causes of this problem. Yet, since our aim here is the
discussion of different theoretical approaches in order to identify helpful tools for the explanation of social mobilization and - in this case
violent - ethnicity, I would like to end my contribution continuing this
debate with five hypotheses that might cast some light on the phenomenon of terrorist violence in the Basque Country37:
1. Since ETA's first violent intervention with a fatal outcome, about 35

years have passed. Ever since, scholars have focused their studies
on the causes of the nationalist schism at the end of the 1950s and
the following articulation of a nationalist left that opted for armed

struggle as a new repertoire of contention. Yet, these theoretical

explanations do not serve any more to explain the continuity of
political violence at the beginning of the 21st century. Even in the
international debate, the research on violent underground groups
with long life cycles is scarce and still to be done.
2. In the Basque case, it is evident and nearly goes without saying that
the opportunity structures offered by a dictatorship that proceeds

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326

with violent repression against all expressions of Basque identity are

completely different to those of a parliamentary democracy, which
in 1979 restored Basque home rule with quite far reaching rights in
areas like financial policies and taxation, education, mass media, or

policing.38 Political claims, even those for independence, can now

be tested in elections and channeled through the institutions. Remembering the nexus between democratization and the repertoires
of contention established by Tilly and referred to above, we might
expect that after a period of transition the opening-up of institutional

access should have encouraged a gradual transformation of violent

protest into new forms of democratic contention. It is true that the
autonomy granted in 1979 is based upon the Spanish Constitution,
which in the 1978 referendum did not reach a majority of yes-votes
in the Basque provinces, because the majority moderate nationalists
campaigned for abstention. But it is also true that only a minority of

the voters had followed the call of radical nationalism (and extreme
right-wing Spanish parties) to cast a no-vote. Finally, the other ar-

gument of ETA and radical nationalism to reject the autonomy was

that it perpetuated the territorial separation of the Basque nation,
because it did neither include Navarre nor the Basque territories in
France. Yet, this was not really a result of Spanish or French repres-

sion, but of the lack of political majorities to support integration

into Basque autonomy both in Navarre and on the French side of
the border.

3. If it is not state repression and the impossibility to articulate and

channel whatever political claims through institutions, what fuels vi-

olence and radicalism - what about economic deprivation? Statistics do not seem to indicate any relationship between the two factors. On the contrary, instead of a correlation between the intensity

of street violence and areas with high unemployment, the correlation is with nationalist areas, where the rates of unemployment are
relatively low. Furthermore, votes for the pro-ETA radical nationalist party do not correlate with economically deprived districts, but
with small and middle-scale rural and Basque-speaking areas. This
suggests that for the analysis of nationalist radicalism and violence
cleavages like rural/urban or ethnically Basque/Spanish seem to be
more significant than those of class structure.
4. Finally, we might ask if terrorist violence can be explained according to the rational-choice paradigm. Is Basque terrorism then the
result of a political cost-benefit calculation? The answer to this

question is twofold. On one hand, it is obvious that in a political system, where all public representatives of the non-nationalist

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327

parties - who speak on behalf of nearly half of the Basque

constituency-have to be protected by body-guards, the competition between the parties is suffering from a serious imbalance to
the detriment of those that ETA considers its enemies. On the other

hand, however, both elections and public opinion polls show that
popular support for terrorism is decreasing radically, even among
the voters of the radical nationalist party. The mobilization of the
Basque peace movement has strongly contributed to undermine the
legitimacy of terrorism especially among the Basque youth. The
cancellation of the ceasefire called in 1998 and the return to the

armed struggle after 15 months without fatal outrages has only been

understood by a few fanatics.39 Consequently, the Basque voters castigated the radical nationalist party in the elections of May 2001 by
dropping the number of seats in the Basque Parliament to half, from
fourteen to seven.

As I write these lines (March, 2003), the Spanish Supreme Court

has outlawed the party by applying the new "Law of Parties" voted
by the Spanish Parliament months before. The party is charged with
being the organic political wing of ETA. The moderate nationalist
parties, despite heavily criticizing the new law and the banning of
"Batasuna," have renounced any political cooperation with the radicals due to the latter's lack of political autonomy from ETA. In the
meantime, the cooperation of the different police forces, including
the French, is becoming more and more successful in the struggle
against the ETA commandoes. In other words, the continuity and
intensification of violence has provoked a remarkable loss of political power for violent, separatist nationalism, which never before in
its history has been politically that weak. If this political scenario
of an extraordinarily high cost without any tangible profit is a prod-

uct of any kind of rational choice, somebody must have made this
calculation rather poorly.
5. Concluding, I propose to tackle the problem of continuing polit-

ical violence in the Basque Country parting from the following

premises:
a. In part, the continuity of terrorism is a consequence of the moderate nationalists' classic simplification in their analysis of ETA

violence, which for a too long time was presented as a mere

consequence of an unresolved political problem, without recognizing the totalitarian character of the underground organization.

Only very recently have the moderate leaders come to the con-

clusion that the so-called Basque problem actually consists of

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328

two problems, which are not necessarily dependent one on the

other and which develop according to mutually related, but yet
autonomous dynamics: the problem of the Basque society's relationship with the Spanish state on one hand, and the problem
of democracy and violence on the other.
b. Terrorism has not yet disappeared because militant nationalism
has managed to set up its own organizational network in which

the discourse of radicalism and violence is daily framed and

thereby reproduced.40

c. Scholars interested in the group-dynamics of armed underground

organizations have highlighted the tendency of terrorist groups

to endure even if "objective" circumstances change. This is

due to the fact that the specific microcosm in which terrorists live is based on extreme security measures and very high
in-group solidarity. This lifestyle separates the activists from
their environment, making them unable to perceive any feature of reality not corresponding to their own one-dimensional
perception.41
d. As a consequence of this isolation, nationalist terrorism becomes
a kind of political religion, operating a transfer of sacredness
from religious thinking to political life and substituting the devotion to God by that to the nation.42 Since within the underground

group the "central beliefs in a community of history and destiny" of the nation are not undermined by the impact of "secular

materialism and individualism,"43 the nation becomes a sacred

community, for which it is worthwhile killing and dying. At least

in this point, the question that entitles this article seems to have
an easy answer, which as we have seen, however, is not the only
one. The explanation of nationalism as a social movement and

a particular form of contentious politics in the Basque Country

and elsewhere requires a multi-factor analytical approach. I have
tried to show that the theories of the "classic social movements

agenda" are not that dcmodes and still have something to say.
At least on the level of meso-sociological and historical studies,
I wonder whether the search for an all-explaining general theory
of contentious politics is not something similar to the search of
the Holy Grail: noble, but futile.
Notes

1. D. MacAdam, S. Tarrow and Charles Tilly, "To Map Contentious Politics," Mobilization I/1 (1996): 17-34, quotation 21.

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329

2. A good overview of these competing paradigms can be found in J. G. Kellas, The

Politics ofNationalism andEthnicity, 2nd edition (Houndmills: Macmillan, 1998);

and A. D. Smith, Nationalism. Theory, Ideology, History (Cambridge: Polity Press,

2001).
3. R. Garner and J. Tenuto, Social Movement Theory and Research. An Annotated
Bibliographical Guide (Lanham: The Scarecrow Press, 1997), 39.

4. D. McAdam, S. Tarrow and C. Tilly, Dynamics of Contention (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2001).
5. Dynamics, 16.
6. Dynamics, 312.
7. At least one of the three (McAdam) apparently prefers looking upon the new
proposal more in terms of a reincarnation in a better life than of a hara-kiri, adding

that "neither Chuck nor Sid may share my view that DOC (their book Dynamics
of Contention, L.M.) represents a logical extension of the classical model." See D.
McAdam, "'Eehh, What's Up (with) DOC?' Clarifying the Program," Mobilization

(2003): 126-134, quotation 129.

8. For a critical discussion of the new proposal see the contributions of M. Diani,

D. Rucht, R. Koopmans, P. E. Oliver and V Taylor, as well as McAdam's and

Tarrow's responses in the monographic section dedicated to DOC in the issue of
Mobilization quoted above.
9. "(...) the classic approach to social movements concentrates on mobilization and
demobilization; it provides relatively weak guides to explanation of action, actors,
identities, trajectories, or outcomes. Even within the zone of mobilization, it works

best when one or a few previously constituted political actors move into public
contention. To understand broader and less structured processes of contention, we

must develop an expanded research agenda." Dynamics, 37.

10. A. D. Smith, Nationalism, 6.
11. Charles Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution (New York: McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, 1978), 7.
12. Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements, Collective Action, and
Mass Politics in the Modern State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994),
81.

13. D. Rucht, Modernisierung und neue soziale Bewegungen (Frankfurt a.M.: Campus,

1994), 303-323.
14. L. Mees, "Der 'Spanische Sonderweg'. Staat und Nation(en) im Spanien des 19.
und 20. Jahrhunderts," Archivfiir Sozialgeschichte 40 (2000): 29-66.
15. Charles Tilly, "Western State-Making and Theories of Political Transformation," in
Charles Tilly, editor, The Formation ofNational States in Western Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), 601-638.

16. J. Alvarez Junco, "La naci6n en duda," in J. Pan Montojo, editor, Mdcs se perdi6

en Cuba. Espaina, 1898 y la crisis defin de siglo (Madrid: Alianza, 1998), 405475. See from the same author also Mater Dolorosa. La idea de Espania en el
siglo XIX (Madrid: Taurus, 2001); and S. Balfour, The End of the Spanish Empire
(1898-1923) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).
17. On the rise of Basque nationalism, see J. -C. Larronde, El nacionalismo vasco: su
origen y su ideologia en la obra de Sabino Arana (San Sebastian: Txertoa, 1977); S.
Payne, Basque Nationalism (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1975); J. Corcuera,

La patria de los vascos. Origenes, ideologia y organizaci6n del nacionalismo

vasco, 1876-1903 (Madrid: Taurus, 2001).

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330
18. Until 1841, the tariff border was in the interior and not at the coast. Consequently,

foreign products could enter the Basque provinces duty-free, whereas Basque
export to Spanish places depended on the payment of a tariff.

19. An analysis of the contents of this kind of folk culture can be found in L. Mees,

"De la Marcha de Cadiz al Arbol de Gernika. El Pais Vasco ante la Guerra y

la crisis del 98," Studia Historica. Historia Contemporanea, 15 (1997): 239264.

20. J. Extramiana, Historia de las Guerras Carlista, 2 vols. (San Sebastian: Luis Aram-

buru, 1979); V Garmendia, La ideologia carlista (1868-1876). En los origenes

del nacionalismo vasco (San Sebastian: Diputaci6n Foral de Guipuizcoa, 1984); J.
Fernandez Sebastian, La genesis delfuerismo. Prensa e ideas politicas en la crisis
del Antiguo Regimen (Pais Vasco, 1750-1840) (Madrid: Siglo XXI, 1991).
21. G. L. Mosse, The Nationalization of the Masses. Political Symbolism and Mass
Movements in Germanyfrom the Napoleonic Wars through the ThirdReich (Ithaca,
New York: Cornell University Press, 1977).
22. A. D. Smith, Nationalism.

23. M. Gonzalez Portilla, Laformaci6n de la sociedad capitalista en el Pais Vasco, 2

vols. (San Sebastian: Luis Aramburu, 1981).
24. L. Mees, Nacionalismo vasco, movimiento obrero y cuesti6n social (1903-1923),
(Bilbao: Fundacion Sabino Arana, 1992).
25. L. Mees, "Social Solidarity and National Identity in the Basque Country: The Case
of the Nationalist Trade Union ELA/ST,' in P. Pasture and J. Verberckmoes,
editors, Working-Class Internationalism and the Appeal of National Identity:
Historical Debates and Current Perspectives (Oxford/New York: Berg, 1998),
43-81.

26. J. L. de la Granja, Nacionalismo y Segunda Reptiblica en el Pais Vasco (Madrid:

Centro de Investigaciones Sociol6gicas/Siglo XXI, 1986).
27. S. de Pablo, L. Mees and J. A. Rodriguez Ranz, El pendulo patriotico. Historia
del Partido Nacionalista Vasco, 2 vols. (Barcelona: Critica, 1999 and 2001).

28. Charles Tilly, "When Do (and Don't) Social Movements Promote Democratization?" in P. Ibarra, editor, Social Movements and Democracy (Houndmills:
Palgrave-Macmillan, 2003), 21-45, quotation 24.
29. Dynamics, 44.
30. M. Ugalde, Mujeres y nacionalismo vasco. Gdnesis y desarrollo de Emakume
Abertzale Batza, 1906-1936 (Bilbao: Universidad del Pais Vasco-Emakunde,
1993); I. Camino and L. de Guezala, Juventud y nacionalismo vasco. Bilbao
(1901-1937) (Bilbao: Fundaci6n Sabino Arana, 1991); I. Camino, Batzokis de
Bizkaia. Bilbao (Bilbao: Alderdi, 1988); J. L. de la Granja, "Los mendigoizales
nacionalistas: de propagandistas sabinianos a gudaris en la Guerra Civil," in E
Rodriguez de Coro, editor, Los ejdrcitos (Vitoria-Gasteiz: Fundaci6n Sancho el
Sabio, 1994), 295-314.
31. J. L. de la Granja, Nacionalismo.

32. A. Perez-Agote, La reproducci6n del nacionalismo. El caso vasco (Madrid:

CIS/Siglo XXI, 1984); A. Gurruchaga, El c6digo nacionalista vasco durante el
franquismo (Barcelona: Anthropos, 1985).

33. For a definition and discussion of this concept, as well as for an empirical analysis
of the transformation of these repertoires along with the rise of modern society,

see Charles Tilly, Popular Contention in Great Britain 1758-1834 (Cambridge:

Harvard University Press, 1995), especially 41-48.

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34. "Recall other changes that accompanied the installation of cosmopolitan, autonomous, modular forms of claim-making. The frequency of physical violence
in contention greatly declined." Popular Contention, 352.
35. T. Gurr, Why Men Rebel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970).

36. Here only a few examples: E. Zimmermann, Political Violence, Crises, and
Revolutions: Theories andResearch (Boston, MA: G. K. Hall, 1983); A. P. Schmid,
Political Terrorism: a Research Guide to Concepts, Theories, Data Bases and Literature (Amsterdam: North Holland, 1983); D. L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in
Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); T. R. Gurr, Minorities
at Risk. A Global View of Ethnopolitical Conflicts (Washington: United States
Institute of Peace, 1993); R. Munck and P. L. De Silva, Postmodern Insurgencies: Political Violence, Identity Formation, and Peacemaking in Comparative
Perspective (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999); M. E. Brown, et al., editors,
Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict, rev. edition (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001).
Unfortunately, this article was finished before the publication of Charles Tilly's The

Politics of Collective Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

37. A more detailed exposition of the arguments with plenty of references to the
specialized literature can be found in L. Mees, "Between Votes and Bullets. Conflicting ethnic identities in the Basque Country," Ethnic andRacial Studies XXIV/5

(2001): 798-827; L. Mees, Nationalism, Violence, and Democracy. The Basque

Clash ofIdentities (Houndmills: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2003).
38. J. Corcuera, Politica y derecho. La construcci6n de la autonomia vasca (Madrid:
Centro de Estudios Constitucionales, 1991).
39. For the history of the ceasefire as a consequence of a shift in the contextual
structure of Basque society during the 1990s, see L. Mees, "The Basque Peace
Process, Nationalism and Political Violence," in J. Darby and R. MacGinty, editors,

The Management of Peace Processes (Houndmills: Macmillan, 2000), 154-194.

40. J. M. Mata, El nacionalismo vasco radical. Discurso, organizaci6n y expresiones
(Bilbao: Universidad del Pais Vasco, 1993).
41. M. Crenshaw, "The Causes of Terrorism," in E. Moxon-Browne, editor, European
Terrorism (Aldershot: Dartmouth, 1993), 379-399.
42. J. P. Sironneau, Secularisation et religions politiques (Le Haye: Mouton, 1986).
43. A. D. Smith, Nationalism, 82, 145, 146.

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