The decision to remove Iñigo Urkullu from the Lendakari candidacy in the next Basque regional elections, revealed by El Correo de Bilbao last Friday, entails a substantial change in the strategy of nationalism for the coming years.. The same day that the news was known – which the EBB of the PNV intended to communicate today, Monday after a meeting of its executive with a friendly photograph with the still president of the Basque Government -, Andoni Ortuzar met in Sabin Extea with the general secretary of Junts, Jordi Turull, to sign a coordination agreement and thus create an alternative axis in the Congress of Deputies: compared to the 13 seats of ERC and EH Bildu, the 12 of Junts and PNV. The parliamentary spokespersons Aitor Esteban and Míriam Nogueras, among others, participated in the meeting..

The purpose of both parties is, furthermore, to accumulate their respective forces with two objectives: to demand that Pedro Sánchez fully comply with the agreements signed by both with the PSOE and to balance the social, economic and fiscal aspects of the agreement between the socialists and Sumar, members of the coalition government. The Catalan independentists and the Basque nationalists, although forming part of the majority of Sánchez's investiture, are the direct adversaries of the Republicans of Junqueras and the radical abertzales of Otegi, and, at the same time, they disagree with the progressive recipes in certain extremes. of the agreement between Díaz and Sánchez himself. The leaders of the Basque and Catalan formations are characterized by a deep distrust of Pedro Sánchez, who has come to describe himself as “invincible”, a circumstance that has facilitated the agreement signed last Friday.. Specifically, in the PNV there is the disturbing feeling that Sánchez would be willing “to deceive us again”.

Urkullu, incompatible with Junts and Puigdemont

The replacement of Iñigo Urkullu by Imanol Pradales in the candidacy for Lehendakaritza responds, mainly but not only, to the incompatibility of the president of the Basque Government with Carles Puigdemont and Junts, after they clashed in October 2017 when Urkullu tried to have the then president of the Generalitat to call elections in Catalonia, avoiding the unilateral declaration of independence and, as a consequence, the application by the Government of Mariano Rajoy of the measures protected by article 155 of the Constitution. The Lendakari's intervention failed and relations with Puigdemont and his party froze. Urkullu – a witness in the oral hearing of the trial against the leaders of the process before the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court – deposited all the documentation about his mediation in the Sabino Arana Foundation in Bilbao and in the Poblet Monastery in Tarragona.

The journey that the PNV intends to begin in the company of Junts is, therefore, not compatible with Iñigo Urkullu, who is also not judged suitable for a face-to-face confrontation with EH Bildu. The results of Basque nationalism in the last two elections – the municipal and provincial elections in May and the general elections in July – have been discouraging in their struggle with the Otegi coalition.. In the first, the PNV lost more than 85,000 votes, and in the second, more than 100,000. The strategists of Sabin Etxea, with Andoni Ortuzar at the helm, understand that nationalist radicalization is necessary to stand up to Bildu and maintain the presidency of the Basque Government and refresh Urkullu's government management burdened by the deterioration of public services – especially , health and education—, establish better relations with unions, such as ELA, prone to calling strikes that have been very frequent in recent years, reactivate the reputation of the Ertzaintza and forget about some cases of corruption.

The dismissal of the Lendakari – because it has been an abrupt departure for Urkullu, a politician with a long career in the PNV whose executives, first in Vizcaya and then the national one (EBB), he presided over – also has an explanation in the tradition of Basque nationalism: The two-headed organization does not tolerate excessive continuity in public positions.. If Urkullu had repeated his candidacy, he would have surpassed the political longevity of his predecessors Garaikoetxea, Ardanza and Ibarretxe.. On the other hand, his political weight, incomparable to that of his successor, Imanol Pradales, disappears in favor of Andoni Ortuzar, who with this movement becomes the only strong man of Basque nationalism..

The script for a Basque 'procés'

The PNV has thus given a Copernican turn to its relations with Junts – Ortuzar has visited Puigdemont in Waterloo several times, although only once with publicity – and has disdained the proposal for a Constitutional Convention to reinterpret the Constitution that the Lendakari launched in an article in opinion with which El País opened its August 31 edition to four columns (“Urkullu asks for a territorial pact to reinterpret the Constitution”). Ignoring the hesitant proposals of the president of the Basque Government, the EBB has waited for Sánchez to secure the support of the other parties to sign his own with the general secretary of the PSOE, although without knowing in detail what he has achieved with EH Bildu. And the wording of the entente tries to ensure that the socialist does not escape from his commitments as he did in the previous legislature, according to the PNV version.

The Ortuzar-Sánchez pact, signed on November 10, constitutes, according to the sources consulted in the PNV, the “script of a sovereignty process” in the Basque style, without “ruptures”, because Basque society “is not Catalan , nor has she gone through the Basque woman's traumatic experience.”. The agreement provides for counterparts such as the national recognition of Euskadi, complete bilaterality between Vitoria and Madrid, with the establishment of a table that will meet semi-annually with the obligatory presence of the Lendakari and Pedro Sánchez, a guarantee of forality in all laws. that may affect the Basque Autonomous Community to preserve its powers, the right to previously examine the decree-laws of the Council of Ministers, which are of a restrictive nature, the protection of the Organic Law of the General Electoral Regime, which must maintain its current wording (if modified, it must be with the prior approval of the PNV), the reform of certain legal texts (Workers' Statute, Law of Bases of Local Regime, Law of Ports of General Interest), participation in the negotiation of international treaties, Basque presence in international organizations and the European Union, commitments related to Navarra, thus making the PNV a valid interlocutor of the interests of the regional community, and several transfers, including that of Security management Social, despite the fact that the Basque Country has a deficit of more than 4,000 million. The professor of Administrative Law at the University of Zaragoza, Juan Pemán, has published on the Giménez Abad Foundation website a legal analysis of this exorbitant agreement that he considers “a broadside to our democratic institutional system and the general interests of the country.”.

Pradales for Urkullu and Otegi for a new candidate

The agreement between the PNV and the PSOE forms a confederal Euskadi because, in addition to the provisions listed, it also provides for an extension of the economic agreement and its execution is intended at the same pace as that signed by Jordi Turull and Santos Cerdán, including a consultation that in Catalonia would be articulated through the activation of article 92 of the Constitution, but in the Basque Country it could be materialized through the endorsement of a new Statute that the PNV has not managed to succeed in the Parliament of Vitoria in the current legislature and that, according to everyone the indications, it would conclude immediately with an electoral call in the month of March 2024.

Events have been precipitated: the EBB of the PNV, after the information reported on Friday by El Correo about Urkullu, called last Saturday the meeting scheduled for Monday and proposed the candidacy of Imanol Pradales Gil. The current Biscayan provincial deputy for Territory and Infrastructure, doctor in Political Science and Sociology from the University of Deusto, has been a member of the PNV since he was very young, a native of Santurtzi (1975), resident in Portugalete, the left bank of the Nervión, a territory of strong leftist implantation, and belongs to a generation of PNV managers who did not live through the most intense periods of Basque politics. Imanol Pradales, a Basque speaker and with a very good personal relationship with Iñigo Urkullu, lacks a public profile and is only known in the internal circles of the party, where he is valued for his intervention in reflection and debate initiatives.. It also has a good image in business sectors. Now he must be supported by the party assemblies without it being likely that his candidacy will be rejected..

At the event held yesterday in Sukarrieta (Vizcaya), commemorating the 120th anniversary of the death of Sabino Arana, founder of the PNV, both the lendakari and the president of the EBB showed apparent harmony and supported Imanol Pradales. Iñigo Urkullu offered all his help to his possible successor, while Andoni Ortuzar took care of defusing the situation created. “Our only president is the Lendakari, not Sánchez,” he stated..

In certain areas of the organization, however, the way in which the EBB has gotten rid of the lendakari has not been liked at all, although it is traditional for the farewells of the presidents of the Basque Government to be unfriendly.. Urkullu, however, will adhere to the party's strict discipline. He will call the elections when the EBB considers it appropriate and will refrain from any statement that may express discomfort or displeasure.. Andoni Ortuzar has the challenge of convincing the militancy of the success of the replacement in the electoral lists. The success of this operation is decisive for his continuity at the head of EBB.

With the departure of Urkullu the chapter that opened after the farewell of Josu Jon Imaz from the presidency of the EBB (2007) closes.. The current CEO of Repsol – also from the Lendakari generation, of whom he is a friend, and Ortuzar – marked in a letter (Bet on the future) the course of a more contemporary and inclusive nationalism, overcoming the stage strongly marked by Xabier Arzalluz, and in conflict with the radicalism of the Guipuzcoan Joseba Egibar. It seems that the moderate Imaz's roadmap has expired.

Bildu's candidacy

Although the replacement of the president of the Basque Government has not caught EH Bildu on the back foot, it does force it to make a move. It is expected that today its general coordinator, Arnaldo Otegi, will announce that he will not be the candidate in the next Basque elections, in which the coalition has the possibility of surpassing the PNV. To achieve this, Otegi is not the most suitable leader. The radical abertzales will opt for a woman from Pradales' generation. The names of Nerea Kortajarena and Oihana Etxebarrieta, the two Basque parliamentarians, without connections with the period of activity and immediately after the terrorist organization ETA, are being considered..

Bildu still has a pending account with Pedro Sánchez and the PSOE. He hopes that with his votes and those of the PSN, a motion of censure against the mayor of Pamplona, Cristina Ibarrola, of the Unión del Pueblo Navarro, will prosper, and the mayor will be, once again, as between 2015 and 2019, his councilor, Joseba Asiron.. For the Abertzale coalition “it would be very important” for the “PSOE's commitment to Bildu” to be reflected in this “gesture” precisely at this moment, when Euskadi has already entered a clearly pre-electoral phase and activates the PNV's agreement with Sánchez, in company and coordination with Puigdemont and Junts, to achieve, in fact, a confederal relationship with Madrid. It is, according to the description of an exburukide, a process, but “Basque style” and “more effective, less eccentric, because it is the historical moment. We will not have another one like this.”.