"A crossroad of national processes". Nationalization and political violence in the basque country, 1937-1978

Abstract

In the 1960s and 1970s Basque and Spanish nationalizing projects overlapped in the Basque Country, with violence exerting a major role in both of them. Franco’s Dictatorship used violence as a prominent tool to promote policies of memory extolling the Civil War as the foundational myth of the “New State”. But when this bellicose patriotism started to wane Basque nationalism created its own version with a belligerent discourse accompanied by a call to arms. This raising nationalistic project had a first and symbolic stage dedicated to destroy the Spanish imaginary. It then, since 1968, evolved into a new and violent phase characterized by the killing of prominent individuals who symbolized that memory. That campaign of violence intensified during the transition to Democracy, helping us to understand why the abertzale memory followed a different path from that of the collective memories recalled to support Spain’s democratic transition.