Euskadi students analyze the 'Basque problem' in the 70s and the "asshole Cayetanos" in the new selectivity
The Basque students who are facing the university entrance exams (Evau) this week have had to analyze a homily by the Bishop of Bilbao García Añoveros from 1974 on the 'Basque problem' in the History exam. In addition, in the Spanish language test, the proposed text analyzes a journalistic column written after the case of the commissions paid by the Community of Madrid for the purchase of masks in which the “Cayetanos asshole” is attacked.
The texts included in the History and Spanish Language exams have fueled the controversy on social networks. The texts are selected by teachers of both subjects with a criterion in which the Department of Education directed by the nationalist Jokin Bildarratz does not intervene.
In the case of the History exam, two texts have been included for analysis that complemented the two topics (choose one) that Basque students had to complete.. The theme to develop consisted of choosing between 'Fueros and Liberalism: The Carlist Wars and the Foral Question' or 'The creation of the Francoist State (1939-1959).
The second block was made up of an excerpt from the essay 'Oligarchy and Caciquismo' by Joaquín Costa and a homily by the Bishop of Bilbao García Añoveros as a text commentary.. In the homily read in the churches of Biscay in February 1974, the 'Basque problem' is addressed as one of those that “most seriously damage coexistence in the Basque Country” and also the “diocesan Church”.
Bishop Añoveros defends the “own characteristics” of this “Basque problem” based on cultural singularities and especially its “millennial language”. The pastor of the Biscayan Church underlines the “right” of the “Basque people” to defend this singularity but also recognizes it in “the other towns of the Spanish State”.
The homily read in the last years of the Franco regime denounces the “serious obstacles” for the Basque people to exercise this right to “preserve their own identity” due to the “notorious restrictions” to which the use of Basque in education and the media is subjected Communication. The choice of the homily coincides with the political debate in the Basque Parliament on the new Education Law backed by the PNV and EH Bildu that eliminates the linguistic models and determines that Basque is the axis of training with the aim that all schoolchildren Basques accredit a B2 level of this language at the end of compulsory education.
The Basque selectivity, in addition, has incorporated an opinion column published in El Periódico de Aragón -a media outlet without a presence in the Basque Country- on April 12, 2022 and signed by Miguel Miranda. The text was published in the midst of controversy over the payment of 6.6 million dollars to commission agents Alberto Luceño and Luis Medina for facilitating the purchase of masks from the Community of Madrid in the first months of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In the text to be analyzed by the Basque students, it is defended that the “pijos” -a concept included in the dictionary of the RAE- have disappeared from the language of youth, which has replaced them with the “Cayetanos”. On two occasions, he describes this alleged group as “assholes”. The author warns that this group only interacts among its members in spaces such as “inaccessible clubs, private colleges and universities, and private clinics.”. In addition, he points them out because “they only want to live from the story, from politics and from the sucking up”. The author presents himself as a “proud son of a bricklayer” and acknowledges that he has “always” had “disgust, phobia and a little bit of disgust” for the so-called “Cayetanos.”