Basque History of the World (23 page)

This new and different kind of invasion was one that history had not prepared Basques to face. From 1857 to 1900, the population of Alava grew by only 2.5 percent, which was about the same growth as Navarra. But during the same period, Guipúzcoa’s population grew by 25 percent and Vizcaya’s by almost 94 percent. For the first time in history, more people were moving to Vizcaya than leaving it.

This immigration to industrial areas tended to further exacerbate the differences between rural and urban life. The countryside was remaining Basque, while the cities were becoming cosmopolitan. In 1850, the population of Bilbao was 20,000. By the end of the century, the population had grown to almost 100,000, more than half of the residents born outside Vizcaya. Some of these outsiders—British, Germans, and other northern Europeans— were entrepreneurs, managers, and supervisors who came with foreign capital. They had a huge impact on the cultural life of Bilbao, especially the British. The Athletic Club of Bilbao, Vizcaya’s now-much-loved soccer team, was founded and trained by the British in 1898. Even Arana’s ikurriña was modeled on the British Union Jack.

But the great majority of the new residents were workers from Andalusia and other poor regions of Spain. The new wealthy Basque industries were creating jobs that drew desperately poor people. They lived near the mills in dark, crowded housing, often provided by the companies, worked long hours, earned little money, and spent it at company stores. They had no better choice, coming from places that had no work and nothing to eat. Working twelve hour days, breathing black smog, they died young of lung disease or alcoholism.

An underclass was being created in Basqueland, and Basques sneered at it the way societies usually do at poor immigrants. Basques emphasized the foreignness of these workers by referring to them as Chinese, Manchurians, or Koreans. Another popular expression was
maqueto
, later translated into Euskera as
maketo
. This was one of Sabino Arana’s favorite words, and, having a Basque explanation for most everything and a creative approach to linguistics, he theorized that it came from
makutuak
, which he said was an Euskera word meaning “those with bundles on their back.” However,
magüeto
is a pre-Roman word from northern Spain meaning “outsider,” and the Greeks used the word
meteco
to mean “outsider.” In 1904, Unamuno wrote, “With mines and industry facilitating the accumulation of great wealth, now is when a change in spirit can be noted. Enterprising and active, yes, but it has made the Bilbaíno unbearable, with his wealth convincing him that he is of a special superior race. He gazes with a certain petulance at other Spaniards, those who are not Basque, if they are poor, calling them contemptuously,
maquetos
.”

If racism is not clear by the use of this word, another Basque term for foreign workers,
belarri motx
, stumpy ear, leaves little doubt. One of the peculiar characteristic of Basques is their long earlobes. But
stumpy ear
was not a term of endearment. In the 1870s there had even been a soldier’s song among the Basque Carlists that included the line:

eta tiro, eta tiro/belarrimotxari
And shoot, and shoot/at the stumpy-eared ones

Arana had several objections to the Stumpy Ears. Until they came, the great majority of the population had spoken Euskera; now, these Spanish workers and their families were turning it into a minority language. This was only the most obvious example of how the Basque culture was being diluted. The Stumpy Ears were also less religious than the Basques, and they were increasingly involved in that anathema antireligious movement—socialism.

Arana’s attempts to define who is a Basque make apparent the racist nature of his vision. He declared that for people to be considered Basque, their four grandparents must all have been born in Euskadi and have Euskera names. If married, true Basques must have spouses of similar purity.

This view was not entirely removed from Basque tradition. Normally, to be eligible for a Spanish title of nobility, a family was required to obtain a certificate of “blood purity,” which proved that the family had no Jewish or Moorish blood. But since Vizcaya had never been controlled by the Moors, the Spanish waived the requirement for Vizcayans. To preserve this status, the Basques had established rules to bar outsiders from settling in Vizcaya. Of course, as with many Basque laws, there was also a commercial angle: It kept outside competitors from setting up shop in the province.

Arana and his Basque nationalism, like Carlism, idealized peasants, though the ideologues themselves were rarely of peasant background. Basque culture is, in many ways, rural. The etxea, facing the sunrise with the Basque solar cross over the doorway, is a rural concept. And so traditional Basques, even if they live in a city, make reference to a rural origin when they introduce themselves by the name of their ancestral house.

In 1900, Arana married a peasant, Nicole Atxika Iturri, who had little education and little chance of understanding her husband. But Sabino pointed out that his bride fulfilled his definition of Basque with her two Euskera family names. To him, this marriage was a perfect symbolic act, and Sabino cared far more about symbolism than reality. Instead of applauding his uncompromising beliefs, some in the movement feared the cause of Basque nationalism would be harmed by this mismatch. But while everyone else saw an uneducated impoverished girl from a farm, Sabino saw that great institution, the Basque peasant. He protested to a friend, “She is an original Vizcayan—all of the original Vizcayans descend from nobility, all Basques descend from villagers, farmhouses.”

Marriage to Sabino, however, was not to be a peasant’s fantasy of marrying into the upper class. He ordered his original Vizcayan to cloister herself in religious contemplation to prepare for the marriage. For a honeymoon, he took her to Lourdes, the Catholic shrine near French Basqueland where thousands of infirm peasants flocked for faith healing.

Soon came an event in the life of Spain and the Basques, of Unamuno and Arana, of singular importance. Americans call it the Spanish-American War, but in Spain it has always been known as El Desastre, the Disaster.

T
HE
S
PANISH
-A
MERICAN
W
AR
, the Disaster, the Cuban War of Independence—it was a different war for different people. But only the United States won. Though the war’s boosters in America had promoted it as the war to rescue poor Cuba in its noble struggle against Spanish tyranny, once the new territories of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines were taken by military force, the United States had little interest in setting any of them free. In fact, the United States granted Puerto Rico and Cuba less self-government than the Spanish had offered. The new territories were, to the Americans, delicious war booty. Books with titles such as
Our New Possesions
excitedly introduced these prizes to the American public. Meanwhile, the Spanish public had to adapt to suddenly being without these places, the last of the empire that they had known for four centuries. Spain had lost the lands won by Columbus, Magellan, Elcano, and all the other great men reproduced in stone and bronze. The places with which they traded, the places to which a Spaniard went to seek a fortune or adventure, the places to go when things went wrong in Spain, the places that were Spain’s claim to being a world power, were gone.

This disaster produced the greatest flow of literature Spain had seen since the period from the mid-fifteenth century to the late sixteenth century known in Spanish literature as the golden age. The new turn-of-the-century writers and artists were called “the generation of ‘98,” a group who responded to El Desastre by seeking to analyze and redefine the newly diminished Spain. Through paintings, novels, poems, and essays, they searched for the essence of Spain in Castilian landscape, in the history of the golden age, in critical examinations of classic literature such as Cervantes’s
Don Quixote de la Mancha
. The pivotal question was: How can Spain undergo a regeneration?

Miguel de Unamuno by Ignacio Zuloaga (1870-1945). Born in Eibar, Zuloaga, with his dark vision of Spain, was one of the leading painters in the generation of ‘98. (The Hispanic Society of America, New York)

Curiously, this search for the soul of Spain was led by Basques. Experiencing the Spanish simultaneously as both “us” and “them” is essential to discovering the soul of Spain. Castilians, for whom Spain is only “us,” are the exception. Unamuno was a central figure in the generation of ‘98, as was San Sebastián-born Pío Baroja, the doctor-turned-novelist. Lesser-known members of the group, such as Ramiro de Maeztu, were also Basque. A number of the central figures were non-Basque, notably philosopher José Ortega y Gasset and poet Antonio Machado. But even most of these non-Basque writers were not from the Castilian heart of Iberia. Yet Spain, even Castile, was their focus.

It was not the focus of Sabino Arana, who referred to Spain as
Maketania
and said, “It doesn’t matter to us if Spain is big or small, strong or weak, rich or poor. They have enslaved our country and this is enough for us to hate them with all our soul, whether we find them at the height of greatness or the edge of ruin.” Arana’s followers sometimes shouted, even on the streets of Madrid, “Down with the army! Die Spain!”

In truth, the defeat of Spain, perhaps the sight of it shedding territory, inflamed both Basque and Catalan nationalism. It was at this moment in history that both the Basque and Catalan yearnings for nationhood, which had been romantic dreams, developed into serious political movements.

To those other nationalists, the Spanish nationalists, this was an affront never to be forgiven. Spain, the great nation, had gone down in humiliating defeat, and in this dark hour, the Basques and Catalans were attacking, hoping to further amputate the already truncated nation.

The defeated military developed a festering resentment of Catalans and Basques. At their urging, in 1900, the penal code was revised to categorize claims of separatism as acts of rebellion against the state. In 1906, such statements became “a crime against the army” and military justice was given jurisdiction over these cases.

Sabino Arana came to an end, absurdly testing this new and furious rift. In May 1902, he attempted to send a telegraph to Washington:

Roosevelt. President of the United States. Washington.
    
In the name of the Basque Nationalist Party, I congratulate Cuba, which you have liberated from slavery, most noble federation, on its independence. You have shown in your great nation, exemplary generosity, learned justice and liberty, hitherto unknown in history and inimitable by European powers, especially the Latin ones. If Europe were to imitate this, then the Basque nation, the oldest people, who, for the most centuries, enjoyed the kind of liberty under constitutional law for which the United States merits praise, would be free.

Arana y Goiri

The telegraph office, rather than send it, delivered the telegram to the appropriate authorities, who arrested Arana. Never a healthy man, he had often been arrested and survived short prison terms. But now, at thirty-eight, his health seemed to be finally failing. Arana’s supporters circulated a petition asking for his release and got 900 signatures. The response of a government official, Segismundo Moret, was “It would be more gallant to leave him die in prison. The peace of Spain outweighs the life of one man.” After almost a half year, his frail health ruined, he was released. Fearing further legal action, he fled through the Roncesvalles pass to St.-Jean-de-Luz. Finishing the writing of a play titled
Libe
, he went to Vichy in the hope that the waters would restore his health.

Arana believed that theater was second only to the press as the best vehicle for propaganda.
Libe
is the story of a woman who chooses to die, rather than be married to a Spaniard.

Only weeks after his release, Arana returned to his home in Vizcaya to die, which he did on November 25, 1903, at the age of thirty-eight. According to legend, his last word was “
Jaungoikua
,” God. On a rainy day he was buried in Sukarrieta, leaving no descendants. His wife remarried a Spanish policeman.

W
HILE
B
ASQUE
N
ATIONALISM
has grown, its detractors always find Sabino Arana the easiest of targets. Even most nationalists have few illusions about their founding father. Ramón Labayen, like his father and many other family members, a lifelong activist of the Basque Nationalist Party, said, “Sabino Arana was an unpleasant man with no sense of humor. A wealthy man who never worked a day for money.”

But Sabino gave the Basques their colors, a flag, a vocabulary, the name of their country, and the political party that would produce many of their future leaders. Though he himself remained a seemingly preposterous figure, he gave credibility to his movement by attracting significant numbers of followers. Ramiro de Maeztu, one of the Basque generation of ‘98, said of Arana’s success, “Unfortunately we can no longer say—and here I am on the side of the Madrid press—that separatism is just four nuts.”