The president of the PNV, Andoni Ortuzar, telephoned the leader of the Popular Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, last night to erase the idea that they will support his investiture, an arithmetically possible hypothesis, but completely unrealistic. The five Basque nationalist seats, added to the 136 for the PP, 33 for Vox, one for UPN and another for the Canary Islands Coalition, would suffice for the long-awaited absolute majority: 176. But the PNV —like the Canarian regionalists— yesterday reiterated its frontal rejection of Feijóo. “It is impossible. We have fixed our position 5,000 times. Feijóo has crossed a red line by having included the ultra-right in the institutions ”, settle sources from the nationalist leadership. It's a resounding no. They will not even sit down to negotiate with the PP.
The loud slam was communicated to Feijóo by Ortuzar yesterday after meeting his political leadership in Sabin Etxea, where they analyzed the disappointing electoral results of this 23-J. It is the second fiasco after 28-M for the PNV, which has set off alarm signals because Bildu eats the land and challenges its hegemony in the 2024 regional elections. On Sunday they were barely separated by 1,000 votes.
The truth is that the PNV was a victim of the sokatira game between Sánchez and Feijóo. PSOE and PP pulled hard on the rope of their voters and the Socialists took advantage of a large nationalist vote to clearly impose themselves. First Basque force 15 years later in generals, in the time of Zapatero. The PNV, which came from its best result in Congress in 2019, left 100,000 votes. Bildu continues to escalate rapidly: a technical draw in the Basque Country and one more seat in Navarra that confirms his triumph in Congress. Six deputies against five. More focus and power of influence after being the great protagonist of the pacts with Sánchez.
There is an unquestionable fact that explains the PNV's contempt for Feijóo. The ghost of Vox mobilized the Basque electorate on Sunday, which reacted against a turn to the right in the central government. The mere presence of Santiago Abascal's party in the equation scares the nationalist party. But the truth is that, although Vox was not necessary for the investiture, those from Ortuzar would have also given themselves 'mus'. Management sources have been warning for weeks that the signing of agreements in the town halls and communities after 28-M disqualifies Feijóo, who they see devastated by Vox.
Incompatible with Ayuso's “hard right”
In his opinion, the Galician leader of the PP has made “a trip to the hard right as an electoral tool”. Although they admit that “they probably had no other option” and share the blame with the PSOE, for their refusal to facilitate PP governments where they won, such as in Castilla y León. Feijóo is also accused of having been “the best head of advertising and propaganda for Bildu”. And there also emerges the figure of Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who closed the candidacy of the PP in Bilbao in the municipal elections, and who came to brand the PNV as a racist party. All this, they insist, makes them incompatible.
The PNV shares an economic creed with the PP, and surely its approach for the coming months, with Europe cutting spending, will be more similar to that of Feijóo than that of Sánchez in Moncloa. But an abyss separates them in the ideological question with the Spanish right, beginning with the conception of the State, closer to the federal model advocated by the PSOE.. And they will once again take out before Sánchez their demand for a revision of the constitutional model.
Also in social issues a large gap has opened with respect to the PP. The PNV claims to be a “Christian-Democratic base party that knows how to evolve and has adapted to the times”. This explains why they were one of the unconditional supporters of the law of only yes is yes, which they defend as “correct as a whole, beyond the criminal mess”. Or Trans law. In fact, the fact that Feijóo promised to repeal the latter distanced them even more.
In recent months, from Genoa they have insisted a lot that Urkullu and Feijóo maintain a good relationship, thus fueling the hypothesis that an understanding with the PNV would be much easier. And it is true that they are united by years of shared management in two regions of the Atlantic corridor punished by the demographic winter and the abandonment of the State (France has just given up connectivity with the high-speed train). But that “cordial” relationship, as stressed from Vitoria, is far from political complicity. Since Feijóo led the PP, they have hardly exchanged any “courtesy calls” and an institutional meeting in Ermua a year ago on the occasion of the XXV anniversary of the murder of Miguel Ángel Blanco. From there came a meeting with Ortuzar, last October, in which both leaders “confirmed notable ideological and programmatic differences”, although “also institutional respect between two parties accustomed to having government responsibilities”.. pure formalism.
And then, why was the PNV's support for Rajoy possible? In Sabin Etxea they remember that that move was possible “from a rebound, to the second”, after the institutional blockade of the PSOE and the electoral repetition of 2016. And although it also seemed impossible at the time due to its incompatibility with Ciudadanos, both ended up being preferred allies of the PP. The PNV took advantage of its decisive votes in Madrid to extract succulent agreements from Montoro, such as the renewal of the Basque quota, or an increase in pensions in extremis. They signed Budgets and a week later they supported Sánchez's motion of no confidence. In spite of everything, the relationship with Rajoy was, according to what the leadership of the nationalist party confess, the most profitable of all those they have had with the presidents of the Government of Spain. Better than with Zapatero, who they used to ignore the then socialist lehendakari, Patxi López. Arzalluz also congratulated himself on his day for having advanced in his interests more with Aznar than with Felipe González.
But those were other times. Now the PNV has a great electoral competitor, Bildu, who has been whitewashed for his political agreements with Sánchez, giving him an inconceivable role for Sabin Etxea. With the enthusiasm of Pablo Iglesias. And that is what reduces the margin for them to come to an understanding with the PP, a party that is still in low hours in the Basque Country —this Sunday it recovered its second seat, for Álava—, and to which the cadres and bases of the PNV attribute a certain heritage from Francoism. That is to say, neither sociologically it would explain itself well nor electorally would it rent a pact with the PP, with whom it would not join the Basque Government or the provincial councils.
Because internally, betting on a Feijóo government to the detriment of the PSOE would mean “suicide” for the nationalists, because it would break all their Basque institutional scaffolding. The PNV governs in coalition with the PSE all the important institutions: the Basque Government, the three provincial councils and the three capitals. And agreeing now with Feijóo would be a factor of enormous instability just at a time when Bildu is on his heels. In other words, the alternative to the PSE cannot be the PP by pure arithmetic, since they would not manage to govern any important institution together. The PNV, it must be remembered, governs the Guipúzcoa Provincial Council and the Vitoria City Council (with a PSE mayor) after the “free” support of the PP, to the detriment of Bildu.
The PNV suffers, in short, an electoral decline, while Bildu continues to rise, driven by the notoriety that Sánchez gives him by pivoting on them important laws such as Housing. It is true that already in 2011, the coalition prior to Bildu with which Batasuna returned to Congress, named Amaiur, surpassed the PNV in seats. But then he had a borrowed vote from many Basques who rewarded them for the long-awaited end of ETA. Now there is a paradigm shift, for many Basques, especially the youngest, Bildu is no longer contaminated by the terrorist past, it does not have Podemos as a real competitor in the Basque Country and it is wrapped in the social flag that brings thousands of supports beyond the independence movement.
The only respite for the PNV is that at this time there is no possible alternation of a pact to the left between the PSE and Bildu. Of course there will not be as long as Arnaldo Otegi continues to be the leader of the radical coalition, remembering his dark past of total collusion with ETA. A few more generations will have to pass before we see a PSE-Bildu government. Although the radical coalition was the first force in the autonomic ones, they will not govern. The understanding of the PNV and the socialists is solid. It goes back to 1986 until the Lizarra pact was signed between nationalists and ETA and dynamited everything. After the hiatus of the Government of Patxi López (2009-2012) with foreign support from the PP —Batasuna outlawed—, this stability agreement was resumed in 2016. and is in good health.
As if that were not enough, the PNV is also losing the myth of good management: erosion of public services, aggravated by the pandemic, waiting lists in health, educational strikes; In short, a growing social pressure that calls into question the image of a Basque oasis.
Faced with such signs of strong wear, Andoni Ortuzar's executive is now facing a process of internal renewal in search of the “generational change”. Nor is Iñigo Urkullu assured of his continuity after 12 years in office, the “longest-lived” lehendakari behind José Antonio Ardanza (1985-1999), they emphasize from the executive, where they do not hide the need for renewal. Ortuzar himself, architect together with Urkullu of the party's transition from the exalted sovereignty of the Ibarretxe Plan to the possibility that led them to be Rajoy's preferred partners, has internally transmitted his intention to withdraw.
And it is not that the PNV has many incentives to renew their vows with Sánchez, whom they have always mistrusted.. “It is not by word, it is not to be trusted”, they have been repeating these years from the Basque leadership. The PSOE has not fulfilled its investiture commitments. And he has left hair on the cat flap, which hurt the nationalist spokesman the most, such as the official secrets law or the gag law. But he continues to trust that he will be able to make profitable, vote by vote, his support for Sánchez, who will sell very dearly in another devilish legislature in Congress. “Strategic decisions” on the State model is what they will demand, said yesterday the nationalist leader Itxaso Atutxa.
Those of Arnaldo Otegi will try the same, who are already setting a course towards the Basque regional elections, scheduled for the spring of 2024. Otegi wants to be a candidate for lehendakari after overcoming his disqualification for belonging to ETA. Perhaps Bildu would do much better if he imitated Gerry Adams: the leader of the Irish party Sinn Féin, once the political arm of the IRA, retired in 2018 to make way for Mary Lou McDonald and in May 2022 they won a historic victory in the Northern Ireland elections. But his candidacy is, above all, glue for the complex world of radical Abertzale. The presence of those convicted of terrorism on the 28-M lists attests to this. And his inability to break with the past and condemn political violence, also.