Hizketa and the Trib

The Webshell at Angelfire is not working, so, this post looks a little cryptic because is missing the pics I wanted to post, anyway, the North American Basque Organization has acknowledge the labour of love by the International Basque Organization for Human Rights by printing the letter to the Chicago Tribune in which it is requested from the news outlet to stop swaping the terms "Basques" and "terrorists".

You can visit the NABO site and look for the Newsletter/Hizketa link.

Once there all you have to do is go to Page 2, by the way, do you remember when I told you about the special relationship between the Basques and the Irish? Well, the relationship just got a little bit more "cozy" and you can read about it on the same page.

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Franco, the Lucky Coward

I have always considered Francisco Franco a complete coward, but a lucky one. Somehow his image has been cleaned for decades and today there is even a few derelicts that deny that he was on Hitler's side throughout the whole period previous to WWII and if Spain did not enter the war on the side of the Axis was because the Generalisimo was far from being an able military leader and Hitler ordered him to stay out of it.

It is high time the international community acknowledges that Franco and Hitler were about to unleash a Holocaust on the Basque people. If they failed was because it is hard to put a Basque and his family in a train and ship them out without the fella breaking a couple of German necks in the process.

This is a note about the demand of the Basque people for Madrid to finally acknowledge Franco's role on the massacre, it appeared today at Berria English:

Mayor wants recognition that Franco ordered the bombing

The mayor of Gernika has made this request to the Spanish Government on the 67th anniversary of the massacre of the town

Editorial Staff – BILBO

Yesterday was the 67th anniversary of the bombing of Gernika by the German Condor Legion on the orders of the dictator Francisco Franco. Although many years have passed since those events and numerous calls have been made for Franco’s responsibility to be acknowledged, there has been no response as yet from the Spanish Government. That is the request made by Migel Angel Aranaz, the mayor of Gernika, to Jose Luis Rodriguez-Zapatero’s Government: to admit that Franco ordered the bombing of Gernika.

Aranaz pointed out that many people who experienced the massacre and descendants of those killed there are still alive “and their wounds have not yet been closed”. In the mayor’s view a formal acknowledgement by the Spanish Government would help them to come to terms with what they went through.

“Germany acknowledged seven years ago that it was the Condor Legion which had bombed Gernika and it had of course done so on Franco’s orders,” explained Aranaz in an interview broadcast on the Euskadi Irratia radio station. That being the case the mayor of Gernika said: “We want the Spanish Government to admit its responsibility, too.” He added: “67 years have gone by and it’s time that things were recognised.”

In a letter presented in the Spanish Senate (upper house) Iñaki Anasagasti, the EAJ-PNV Senator, called on the Government to accept responsibility for the bombing. In it he recalled that Congress (the lower house) took the decision to formally admit responsibility in 1999 and with the support of all the parties; so “the decisions taken should be fulfilled”.

Numerous events were also organised to mark the anniversary. Yesterday the official event was held in Gernika. A floral tribute was made to those who suffered the bombing and who are still alive. Among those present were Idoia Zenarruzabeitia, the Deputy Lehendakari or President of the Basque Autonomous Community Government, Jose Luis Bilbao, the Head of the Provincial Council of Bizkaia, and the mayor of Gernika himself. The time of the bombing was marked by the sound of a siren and the Matraka play on the war was performed in the streets of this town in Bizkaia.

The XIV International Culture and Peace Symposium organised by the Gernika Gogoratuz association is currently being held. The Gernika Committee and the Arrano Cultural Association also organised a round-table discussion yesterday. Martxelo Otamendi, BERRIA’s Editor-in-Chief, and Alizia Stürtze, historian, were among those who took part.

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Remembering Gernika

Check this out:

• In 1937, planes from Nazi Germany raided the Basque town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War.

Stark, just like that.

On one line the world remembers today what happened in Gernika 67 years ago.

To the world it may be easy to remember the events that took place that market day in Gernika on one stark line, not so to the Basques.

To us Gernika represents the heart of the Basque Country, just last week we mourned the death of our Gernikako Arbola, our Oak of Gernika, the tree that embodies the Basque freedoms and laws, the same tree that survived the attack by the Luftwaffe's Kondor Legion.

The attack was aimed at bringing fear into the hearts of the Basques who for months had been battling the combined forces of Hitler, Mussolini and Franco, Gernika was well behind the front line and had no means to defend itself, few weeks previous to that day the Germans had tried their bombers on the city of Durango killing dozens of people. This time Franco wanted to break the Basque will and allowed the Germans to go at it with everything, destroy Gernika and the Basques will surrender. At the end of the day up to 1,600 innocent civilians were dead, but the Basque resolve to face totalitarianism and the Oak of Gernika stood up, solid.

From that day on the people from cities around the world would experience such sort of violence aimed at breaking the spirit of their nation, time and again the attackers failed. They failed in Gernika in 1937, they failed in New York in 2001.

Today we mourn the victims of Gernika, but we honor them by continuing to work towards the peace and democratic will of the Basque Country.

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A Will to Negotiate

Years ago the Allies said "please negotiate, we will make sure the Basque Country obtains its independence as long as the Basques go at it peacefully", well, according to this note at Berria English, here we go again:

Ibarretxe calls for practical constitutionalism

Juan Jose Ibarretxe, the President of the Basque Autonomous Community, went to Madrid yesterday to ask that the “new opportunity” be seized by addressing the contents and not just the form, and to offer dialogue

Agencies – MADRID

In a speech given in Madrid yesterday Juan Jose Ibarretxe, the Lehendakari or President of the Basque Autonomous Community, highlighted a message in favour of dialogue. He said he had come to Madrid to offer “sincere dialogue and the readiness of the Basque institutions to resolve the problems of the Basque Country” and not to demand rectification or that people should give in. Lehendakari Juan Jose Ibarretxe had been invited by the Nueva Economía Forum to give a speech yesterday morning at a Madrid hotel. At midday he attended the opening of the legislative session of the Spanish Parliament.

Ibarretxe spoke about the “new opportunity” that had been presented by the elections and about the new atmosphere in favour of dialogue. His appearance in itself bore witness to the new atmosphere. Instead of the cool reception given to the Lehendakari of the Basque Government during the trips made in recent times, he received the support of Jose Luis Rodriguez-Zapatero’s new government: Jordi Sevilla, the Public Administration Minister, welcomed Ibarretxe. Numerous politicians attended the breakfast speech. Javier Rojo, the Speaker of the Senate or upper chamber of the Spanish parliament, Santiago Carrillo, the former secretary general of the PCE (Spanish Communist Party) and Ricardo Fluxa, the former Junior Minister for Security, were joined by others who had travelled down from the Basque Country. Among Ibarretxe’s listeners were Josu Jon Imaz, Chairman of the National Executive Committee (EBB) of the EAJ-PNV, Miren Azkarate, Basque Government spokesperson and Minister for Culture, Gorka Knörr, Deputy Speaker of the Basque Parliament, the PSOE MP Ramon Jauregui and the EAJ-PNV MP Josu Erkoreka.

Lehendakari Ibarretxe held the view that the new opportunity opened up by the PSOE coming to power should not be restricted to matters of form. In contrast, he referred to the need to “address the contents”. With respect to the reforms announced by the Spanish Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez-Zapatero, Ibarretxe felt it was necessary to choose between two options: either to go down the road of “constitutional fundamentalism” or to choose the way of “practical constitutionalism”. The second option requires that political consensus be achieved first and afterwards that the law be adapted in accordance with that consensus.

In this respect Ibarretxe recalled that Rodriguez-Zapatero had said that he was prepared to accept what the people and Parliament of Catalonia accepted. In Madrid Ibarretxe posed the question as to whether he would be prepared to accept what the Basque Parliament and Basque society accepted. Ibarretxe said he was looking forward to meeting with Zapatero soon, but a date had yet to be fixed.

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Gernikako Arbola

The Gernikako Arbola poem:

Gernikako arbola
Da bedeinkatua
Euskaldunen artean
Guztiz maitatua

Eman ta zabal zazu
Munduan frutua
Adoratzen zaitugu
Arbola santua

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Tree from gernika
Is sacred
Among Basques
Much loved

Give and disseminate
Your fruit through the world
We adore you
Sacred tree

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Oak of Guernica

A poem to the Gernikako Arbola by an Englishman:

Oak of Guernica! Tree of holier power
Than that which in Dodona did enshrine
(So faith too fondly deemed) a voice divine
Heard from the depths of its aerial bower,
How canst thou flourish at this blighting hour?
What hope, what joy can sunshine bring to thee,
Or the soft breezes from the Atlantic sea,
The dews of morn, or April's tender shower?
----Stroke merciful and welcome would that be
Which should extend thy branches on the ground,
If never more within their shady round
Those lofty-minded Lawgivers shall meet,
Peasant and Lord, in their appointed seat,
Guardians of Biscay's ancient liberty.

~ William Wordsworth

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Freedom Tree

Sad news today:

Basques mourn death of 'freedom tree'

From The Times

23apr04

THE Tree of Guernica, a symbol of freedom for Spain's Basque population, is dead.

The famous oak survived the Spanish Civil War bombing of the town made famous by Picasso's eponymous painting, but finally succumbed to, of all things, a heatwave.

News of a tree's demise rarely prompts obituaries in national newspapers, but that happened in Spain yesterday as Basques faced up to an uncertain political - and treeless - future.

The 146-year-old oak was at least the third known Tree of Guernica, in a tradition that stretches back to the Middle Ages.

Beneath their mighty boughs successive kings of Spain have had to swear the fueros - a centuries- old pact that guarantees Basque fiscal and political autonomy from the Spanish crown.

Basque political nationalism draws its strength from the tree's leafy shade, and the prime minister of the autonomous Basque region is sworn into office with a hand on its trunk, reciting: "Humble before God, standing on the Basque land ..."

And there lies the problem.

The change in the Spanish Government this month has raised the prospect of a difficult renegotiation of Basque freedoms from Madrid, in which the nationalists seek independence in all but name.

The Basques' more romantic supporters will worry that without their tree the talks will swing in favour of the Socialists in Madrid.

El Pais newspaper said the next months would be traumatic for the Basques, because it would take that long to remove the dead tree and replace it with a healthy one.

The recently deceased tree, according to an analysis of its rings, took root in 1858.

In April 1937, George Steer, a correspondent for The Times of London, took shelter under its branches as Guernica fell to a blitz by Nazi warplanes clandestinely supporting the rebel fascist general Francisco Franco.

Describing the devastating effect of the German bombers, Steer reported: "The whole town of Guernica was soon in flames ... but the famous oak of Guernica, the dried old stump of 600 years and the young new shoots of this century, was untouched."

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Chicagoko Aberri Eguna

A few days ago my friend Igor who lives in Chicago informed me about the celebration on Sunday 18th of the Aberri Eguna by the Basque comunity living in the windy city.

Right off the bat there was two problems; first of all my piece of shit car simply won't make it to Chicago, second, I was scheduled to work on Sunday.

I was not about to allow those two pity details to ruin my chance to meet with the few Basques living in the Midwest, so I called my co-worker Bryan to see if he could cover for me, he said yes without hesitating. Then I decided to rent a car to solve problem number two.

Next I proceeded to contact some friends to see if they wanted to tag along, the bad thing about short notice is that people usually have plans for the weekend, as a result no one could come, there was the one that didn't even bother getting back at me, that person is on the shit list now.

The trip to Chicago was uneventful with the exception of a fender bender that involved two SUV's and one van on Lakeshore Drive, and thanks to Mapquest it was easy to find the place which was not too far from the Loyola University, as on the Basque fella Ignatius de Loyola who founded the Jesuit order.

It was a lot of fun, I met some excellent people and had the chance to engage on brainy and fun conversations with quite a few of them, note to myself, I need to print some business cards for events like this one. Around 3:00 pm we ate and then there was some dancing to Basque music that would be a delight for any Irish person. I had to call it quits around 7:00 pm because one, I was getting tipsy and that is a long arse ride all the way back home from Chicago and two, the previous night some friends came by the house and we had dinner and drinks until 2:00 am, so I was a little tired.

I hope I can continue to meet with these most excellent Baskos from Chicago, and don't forget:

Gora Euskal Herria!

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Basque Country as a Whole

I found this note at Google today, I need to find out more about this initiative, looks interesting:

Call to present list for whole of Basque Country in European elections

A group of citizens has “undertaken” to put forward a proposal to reflect the whole of the Basque Country in the June 13 elections; it will be debated on April 24 in an open assembly at the Miramar Palace in Donostia (San Sebastian)

Eider Goenaga – DONOSTIA (San Sebastian)

In Donostia yesterday a group of citizens put forward a proposal for the coming European elections to present a national electoral list that will take the whole of the Basque Country into consideration. “On June 13 all of us Basque citizens throughout the Basque Country and on the same day will for the first time have a historic opportunity to vote in Europe,” explained Robert Arranbide, the former elected representative of Hendaia (Hendaye), on behalf of the promoters of the initiative. He felt it would be “inexcusable and a great pity” to miss this chance to stand as a country before Europe: “They won’t be national elections, as we would have liked, but we will all be voting together on the same day in a national way and we regard this as indispensable to demonstrate the reality to Europe in the clearest of terms.”

The group of well-known and less well-known faces met together in the press conference to announce the initiative: Mikel Alzuart, Candido Esoain, Sabino Cuadra, Robert Arranbide, Sonia Gonzalez, Walter Wendellin, Xabier Silveira and Ane Agirregomezkorta. “If we leave political differences aside, what unites us is the fact that we are Basque citizens; we come from different parts of the Basque Country divided by frontiers we neither recognise nor accept; we do not represent anyone, nor do we wish to do so,” they said by way of defining themselves.

The people who had gathered for yesterday’s press conference not only proposed and sought a way for the whole of the Basque Country to be taken into consideration, they also proclaimed the right of “all citizens” to take part in the European elections. “They are European elections and all of us, the citizens of the oldest country in Europe, have the right to participate in the elections and, in particular, the obligation to be present, because this new European Union they are building could condition the future of the Basque Country.”

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Remember the GAL?

There is certain things that improve when there is a change in the status quo, but some don't, such is the case of the relationship between those in power in Madrid and the Basque people. Yes, Aznar and the PP are the worst thing ever to happen to Euskal Herria, after all, it was Franco's reign of terror all over again.

It was a little bit of cosmic justice to see the midget and his junta to go down in flames after they tried to use the tragedy in Madrid for political gain, they should be taken to The Hague for the way they tried to blame the bombings on the whole of the Basque society and the lies that they told to archive such lame goal.

But the truth is, Zapatero, the new Spanish Prime Minister brings with him the burden of the actions of his own party against the Basques, for it was the PSOE the party that deployed the GAL (Grupos Armados de Liberacion), a state sposored terrorist group that conducted abductions, assasinations and practiced torture against Basque activists.

That may explain what happened in Madrid, here is the note at Berria English:

EAJ-PNV, EA and Nafarroa Bai abstain in vote to endorse Zapatero

The Spanish Congress has nominated Zapatero as Prime Minister with the votes in favour of the PSOE, ERC, IU, BNG, CC and CHA

Aitziber Laskibar

With the investiture session over the deputies or members of the Spanish Congress (lower chamber of parliament) nominated Jose Luis Rodriguez-Zapatero as Spanish Prime Minister with an absolute majority. He won the support not only of his own party, the PSOE, but also of the ERC, the IU- ICV, the BNG, the CC and the CHA (Aragonese Party). Having secured a total of 183 votes Zapatero will be the next Spanish Prime Minister. The Basque nationalist parties represented in the Spanish parliament, however, did not back Zapatero’s nomination, but neither did they vote against it. The EAJ-PNV, EA and Nafarroa Bai wanted to express their “scepticism” by not voting in favour. Nevertheless, they also expressed the “hope” that things would change, because they did not vote against him. The CiU of Catalonia also abstained.

The votes in favour that endorsed the PSOE candidate as Prime Minister came from the 164 members of Zapatero’s own party, from the 8 ERC members, the 5 IU-ICV deputies, the 3 CC (Canary Islands Coalition) members, two came from the BNG and one from the Chunta Aragonesista (Aragonese Party). So Zapatero secured an absolute majority with the backing of 183 votes. The only party that voted against the socialist candidate was the PP. So there were 148 votes against the new Spanish Prime Minister.

With respect to the abstention of the Basque nationalist parties, Begoña Lasagabaster, the EA deputy, explained her own abstention as a “waiting period”. She said she had her doubts as to whether the Zapatero Government would implement “real changes”. She gave the relations between the Spanish Government and the Basque Government as an example and as a test which had to be passed. The Eusko Alkartasuna (EA) deputy abstained as an expression of hope that the next socialist Government could bring about a democratic revival.

Uxue Barkos, the Nafarroa Bai deputy, pointed out yesterday that their abstention had not been aimed at “placing obstacles in the way of the investiture”. Moreover, she was in favour of the abstention option in order “to go on highlighting what the challenges are and the way to facilitate rapprochement.”

As Josu Erkoreka of the EAJ explained in his speech on Thursday, “it is not clear whether the changes Zapatero plans to implement will affect the ways or manner of doing things or whether they will go deeper.”

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