The counter-attack

In most of Spain the political spectrum has been, broadly speaking, bi-polar: right-wing forces have confronted left-wing forces. In the Basque country since the 1890s, the alignment has been triangular. Basque nationalism has had two traditional adversaries: the liberal/conservatives, supported by the Basque oligarchy, and the socialists, supported mainly by immigrant workers.

While Basque nationalism has reserved its most bitter diatribes for the socialists, the reverse has also been true. Vizcayan exclusiveness was held to be the direct opposite of the socialist ideal of universal humanitarianism. Basque socialist propaganda was almost obsessed with the theme. The socialist leader, Carretero, declared, ‘We socialists have always fought against the nationalism of Arana because we consider it inhuman, insular, poor in conception and spirit, founded in an unjust hatred toward the rest of Spaniards and because it is entirely uncivilized and reactionary’ (cited in Solozabal, 1975: 188).

Although Spanish socialists were frequently ambivalent and contradictory in their view of nationalist movements, their usual judgements – shaped by Marxist orthodoxy – were negative. Nationalism was ‘an aggressive isolation’, ‘a form of collective egotism, an agglomeration of the worst individual instincts’ (La Lucha de Clases, 16 July 1898).