Preface to Proces de Burgos by Gisèle Halimi, Éditions Gallimard, 1971. Scanned from Sartre, Jean-Paul. Life/Situations: Essays Written and Spoken. New York: Pantheon Books, 1977. 136-161.

If the press is to be believed, the Burgos trial caused such a scandal only because it exposed the absurd ferocity of the Franco regime. I do not believe this is true; does fascist savagery really need to be demonstrated? Since 1936, have there not been imprisonments, tortures, and executions almost everywhere on the soil of the Iberian peninsula? The trial disturbed the consciences of people in Spain and outside Spain because it revealed to those who had not been aware of it the existence of the Basque nation. It was clearly apparent that this existence, while singular in itself, is far from being the only case of its kind, and that large nations contain colonies within their borders. At Burgos the defendants were chained and, for all practical purposes, gagged. But at the cost of an unremitting battle, they brought the idea of centralization to trial.

Thunder in Europe: to take only one example, French children are taught that French history is nothing other than the unification of all "our" provinces, begun under the kings, continued by the French Revolution, and completed in the nineteenth century. It was important, I was told in school, to be proud of this. National unity, which was accomplished by us at an early date, explained the perfection of our language and the universality of our culture. Whatever our political points of view, it was forbidden to question this. On the issue of unity, socialists and communists found themselves in agreement with the conservatives: they considered themselves to be the inheritors of Jacobin centralism and, reformists and revolutionaries alike, they wanted to bring the benefits of the new regime to France as an indivisible whole.

Today, no one is concerned about the fact that monarchical absolutism was born from the development of roads and means of communication, the appearance of the cannon, and the "mercantilist" demands of merchant capital. The Revolution and Jacobinism allowed the bourgeoisie in power to pursue the unification of the economy by destroying the last feudal and ethnic barriers and by winning foreign wars through large-scale forced conscription of all the inhabitants old enough to carry arms, regardless of their ethnic origin. The nineteenth century eliminated piecework [le job] through industrialization and its consequences -- the rural exodus, the integration of enterprises, and the new ideology of bourgeois nationalism. The present unity is, in the end, the result of a secular project on the part of the currently dominant class. This class has attempted to produce everywhere -- from Bidassoa to the Belgian border -- the same type of abstract man, defined by the same formal rights (for this is democracy!) and the same real obligations without taking into account his concrete needs. That is simply the way it is, and no one is going to interfere with it.

Hence the shock of December 1970. The trial was disgraceful and absurd, but could the charges brought against the prisoners be contested without at the same time admitting the validity of at least some of the objectives of the E.T.A. [the Independence Party]? Of course, the Spanish government is openly fascist, and that confused things a bit. What the majority of the protestors were attacking with a clear conscience was the Franco regime. But it was also necessary to support the accused, and wasn't the E.T.A. saying: "We are not only fighting against Francoism, we are fighting above all against Spain"? That was the hard pill to swallow. How could it be admitted that the Basque nation existed on the other side of the Pyrenees without recognizing the right of "our" Basques to become part of it? And then what about Brittany? And Occitania? And Alsace? Would the whole history of France have to be rewritten upside-down, as Morvan-Lebesque recently suggested, and would Du Guesclin, the hero of centralism, have to be considered simply as a traitor to the Breton cause?

The Burgos trial called attention to a new fact: the reemergence more or less everywhere of what central governments are in the habit of calling "separatist" tendencies. In the U.S.S.R. many of the republics, most notably the Ukraine, are feeling the effects of centrifugal forces. It was not so long ago that Sicily seceded. In Yugoslavia, France, Spain, Northern Ireland, Belgiurn, Canada, and many other places, social conflicts have an ethnic dimension; "provinces" discover themselves to be nations and more or less openly demand national status. One begins to understand that the present borders correspond to the interests of the dominant classes and not to popular aspirations, that behind the unity which is such a source of pride to the great powers is oppression of ethnic groups and the hidden or open use of repressive violence.

There are two clear reasons for the present strengthening of national movements. In the first place, they were given impetus by the atomic revolution. Morvan-Lebesque reports that an autonomist leader in Brittany, after learning about the Hiroshima explosion, cried out: "At last the Breton problem exists!" Indeed, before that, the idea of central unification was justified and supported by pointing to the threat of hostile neighbors. With the advent of atomic weapons this blackmail no longer holds: the centralism of the cold war emanates from Moscow and Washington and affects nations, not provinces. Now, as these nations worry about belonging to one of the two blocs, other smaller nations, which were formerly assumed to be integrated, become conscious of their own independent existence.

I think the second reason for the strengthening of national movements, which is related to the first, lies in the process of decolonization which began on three continents after the last World War. Imagine a young man born in the Finistère going to do his military service in Magreb around 1960. He has been told that he is to take part in a simple police action to put down the crazy and illegal agitation taking place in several overseas French departments. But now the French are defeated; they withdraw the departmental division, leave Algeria, and recognize its sovereign national status. For the demobilized soldier, what does it mean to be an inhabitant of the Finistère? In Algiers he saw that the departments were abstract divisions which concealed a history of forceful conquest and colonization. Why wouldn't it be the same on the other side of the Mediterranean, in what is called the "mother country"? The Finistère -- which really exists only for the administration -- disappears into abstraction before the eyes of the young man. He feels himself to be Breton, nothing more, nothing less, and French only by right of conquest. Will he resign himself to being colonized? If he is tempted to revolt, the example of the Algerians and the Vietnamese is there to encourage him. The victories of Vietnam, in particular, teach him that the colonists have skillfully limited the field of possibilities for him and his brothers. He has been inculcated with defeatism. As a Frenchman, he has been told, everything is open to him because be has the right to vote, just like a Beauceron. As a Breton, be could not even lift a finger, let alone rise up against the central power, which would crush him in an instant. But in Indochina, a few million peasants drove the French into the sea and are now fighting victoriously against the greatest military superpower of the capitalist world: that, too, was "Impossible." Well, evidently it is not. Suddenly the field of his possibilities is enlarged. Could it be that the colonizing powers are no more than paper tigers?

The splitting of the atom and decolonization, then, are what lead to a new feeling of patriotism among conquered ethnic groups. Actually, everyone knows this, but many people in France, Spain, and Canada believe that the desire for independence among ethnic groups is only a whim inspired by false analogies, and that such separatist movements will die out by themselves. Now the example of the Basque country shows us that this rebirth is not a passing phenomenon, but something necessary. It would not even have taken place if the so-called provinces had not had a national existence all along which for centuries others tried to take away from them and which, though suppressed and obscured by their conquerors, remained there as the fundamental and historical link among their inhabitants. It would not have taken place if the existence of this link, tacitly recognized by the central power, did not explain the inferior situation of the conquered ethnic group within the country of the conqueror and, as a consequence, the ferocious struggle for self-determination waged by the group.

The existence of the Basque nation, whose necessity was asserted at Burgos, continues to help the Catalans, the Bretons, the Galicians, and the Occitanians to deal with the question of their own destiny. Here, I would like to try to contrast the abstract universality of bourgeois humanism and the singular universality of the Basque people. I will attempt to show the circumstances which have led this people by an ineluctable dialectic to produce a revolutionary movement. And I will examine the theoretical consequences that we can reasonably infer from the present situation -- that is, the profound transformations which decentralization can help bring about in the thinking of centralized socialism.

If we refer to history without centralist prejudice, it becomes clear that the Basque ethnic group is in every way different from the neighboring ethnic groups. It has never lost the awareness of its singularity, which is marked in every case by biological characteristics that have been kept intact until today, and by the fact that Euzkara, its language, cannot be placed in the family of Indo-European languages. As long ago as the seventh century, the duchy of Vasconia comprised a population of mountain people who defeated the armies of Charlemagne at Roncevaux. This duchy was transformed around the year 1000 into the kingdom of Navarre, which began to decline at the beginning of the twelfth century and which was annexed by Spain in 1515. In spite of the conquest, and undoubtedly because of it too, Basque consciousness -- or the consciousness of being Basque -- was strengthened.

At this time the feudal era was hardly over, and Spanish centralization was still in its early stages. Spain allowed the defeated people to keep certain rights they had possessed in the Middle Ages -- the fueros, which would long remain the bastion of Basque resistance and which were defended by the entire people. The fact that the people were not satisfied with this relative autonomy, that they champed at the bit and did not lose hope of recovering their independence, is proved by the unsuccessful proposition made by a deputy from Biscay to Napoleon at the time when Napoleon was remaking Europe: to create within the empire an independent Basque state.

The rest is well known. The constitution of 1812 virtually suppressed the fueros, and the nationalist movement went astray in a blind attempt to resurrect the past. In opposition to Isabella II, who was more liberal but still a centralist in the French manner, the popular forces defended the absolutist pretender to the throne, Don Carlos (another traditionalist, but one who, out of love for the past, wanted to give Navarre back its feudal autonomy). Two wars, two defeats. In 1879 Euzkadi lost its last privileges and sank into a sanctimonious traditionalism that turned its back on history. It came to life again six years later when Sabin Mana founded the P.N.B. (the Basque Nationalist Party), whose active members were mainly bourgeois and intellectuals. There was no longer any question of agitating for absolutism in the hope of regaining the fueros. Rather, the P.N.B., which was politically progressive (because it demanded independence) and socially conservative, remained traditionalist in part, as one of its slogans proves: "Old laws and sovereignty."

At this point Basque resistance made some impression on the Spanish, several of whom -- such as the anarchist Pi y Margall -- proposed a federalist solution to the problems of the peninsula. Later, in the time of the republic, the project was taken up again, and the central government agreed to recognize the principle of regional autonomy provided that it was approved in a referendum by 70 percent of the populations concerned. Upper Navarre, which was essentially rural and therefore attached to Carlism (the Carlists would soon be fighting on Franco's side) voted against autonomy [1]. The other three provinces voted yes by an enormous majority. The republican government, which was more centralist than it seemed, showed bad faith by allowing things to drag on until 1936. Finally it was forced to recognize autonomy by the pressure of events and for essentially practical, even military, reasons. It was a question of winning over the Basque country and being assured that the population would resist Franco's putsch by armed struggle.

The Basque government was immediately established. It contained three socialists, two liberals, and one communist, which shows both that the influence of the P.N.B. extended to the inost diverse levels of society and that it had somewhat modified its original conservatism. Until April 1937 the Basque troops ferociously defended Guipuzcoa and Biscay. What followed is well known: Franco sent in reinforcements, began a reign of terror, and bombed Guernica! There were 1,500 dead; by the month of August the republic of Euzkadi had come to an end. After the war, repression followed: imprisonments, tortures, executions. President Aguirra, head of the P.N.B., sought refuge in France. During the Second World War lie supported the democracies, hoping that the fall of Hitler and Mussolini would be followed by that of Franco. Today we can see the full extent of our shame and his naiveté.

The P.N.B. had played out its role: since 1945 it has been in steady decline. In 1947, however -- no doubt with the intention of forcing the Allies' hand -- it unleashed a general strike. The Allies did not make a move, and allowed Franco to crush the strike with pitiless repression. That was the end: in Euzkadi the party maintained a certain prestige because it was the "historic" party which remained at the origin of the ephemeral Basque republic. But it could no longer take action: its methods were no longer relevant to the situation. The exiles grew old; Aguirra died. It didn't matter: we will soon see how the E.T.A. came forward at the right moment to replace the old bourgeois party. This brief survey is enough to show how Euzkadi, an ethnic group only recently conquered by Spain, has always ferociously refused to be integrated. If the Basques were allowed to vote today, I leave it to the imagination to conceive how overwhelming the majority would be in favor of independence.

However, can we accept the E.T.A.'s claim that Euzkadi is a colony of Spain? This is an important question, for it is in the colonies that the class struggle and the struggle for national independence merge. Now, in the colonial system, the colonized countries furnish raw materials and food products at a good price to the industrialized mother country: this is because labor is underpaid. But we must point out that the Basque country, particularly in the provinces of Guipuzcoa and Biscay, has been fully developed industrially since the beginning of the century. In 1960 the annual consumption of electric energy per person was 2,088 kilowatts in the two provinces, compared with 650 kilowatts for Spain and Catalonia [2]. The annual steel production per person is 860 kilograms in Biscay, 450 in Euzkadi, and 45 in Spain-Catalonia. The distribution of the working population in Guipuzcoa is as follows: workers in primary activities, 9.45 percent; secondary activities, 56.80 percent; tertiary activities, 33.75 percent [3]. In Biscay the same distribution is 8.60 percent, 57.50 percent, and 33.90 percent. In Spain-Catalonia, on the other hand, it is 43.50 percent, 27.20 percent, and 29.30 percent.

The considerable size of the work force in Guipuzcoa and Biscay that is employed in secondary and tertiary activities, combined with the fact that in these provinces the rural population is in constant decline, shows the enormous effort on the part of the Basque country to develop industry. Guipuzcoa and Biscay are from this point of view the pilot regions of the entire Iberian peninsula. Thus if a colonial situation did exist, one would encounter the paradox that the colonizing country is poor and predominantly agricultural while the colonized country is rich, with a demographic profile comparable to that of industrialized societies.

On closer inspection, however, this paradox is an illusion. Euzkadi might be prosperous, but its population is only two million. In 1515 there were far fewer people and the population was rural. The conquest was possible because the two countries had a homogeneous structure, and one of them was much more densely populated than the other. On the other side of Bidassoa, lower Navarre was systematically pillaged, laid waste, and depopulated by the conquering French: the colonization is more evident. It is clear that the lethargy of Spain during the first thirty years of the century allowed southern Euzkadi to develop a flourishing regional economy centered around the economic pole of Bilbao. But who profits from this economy? That is the question. One can give a half-hearted answer by saying that there is no conquered country which does not pay tribute to its conqueror. But it is more reliable to consult the official records.

The records inform us that Spain engages in a veritable financial pillaging of the Basque country. The tax policy crushes the workers; taxes in Guipuzcoa are higher than anywhere on the whole peninsula. On top of this, in all the provinces that it considers Spanish, the government spends more than it receives in taxes: 150 percent in Toledo, 151 percent in Burgos, 164 percent in Avila, and so on. The two industrialized provinces of the Basque country [4] pay to the foreign government that exploits them 4.3384 billion pesetas, while in Euzkadi the Spanish government spends only 774 million pesetas [5]. Thus it steals more than 3 billion pesetas to maintain the Castilian desert. In addition, most of the 774 million that is "given back" goes to instruments of oppression (a Spanish or Spanish-influenced administration, an army of occupation, police, courts, etc.) or to instruments of de-Basquification (in the university, only Spanish language and culture are taught).

Now, the problem of Basque industry is above all a problem of productivity. For prices to be competitive on the world market, modern machines must be imported. The Spanish state, which is partially autarchic, is opposed to this. Credit from Madrid is discriminatory and favors Castile at the expense of Biscay. In order for Bilbao and Pasajes to adapt to maritime traffic and accommodate high-tonnage ships, they must be given new equipment. The work would be considerable, as would the work of reclaiming the fishing ports. Nothing has been done. Even the railroad network, previously installed by the Spanish, is a great handicap: to go by train from Bilbao to Vitoria one must travel 137 kilometers; on the highway the distance is 66. But the administration and the I.N.I. (the National Institute of Industry), an organ of the oppressor state, are run by ignorant and fussy bureaucrats who know nothing of the needs of the country (in part because they consider it a Spanish province, at least theoretically) and block indispensable improvements.

Spain reserves the right to absorb noncompetitive products. She plays the political game of taxes, but in reverse: by preventing certain costs from being lowered, she gives herself the right to consume Basque products without increasing the producer's benefits. The consequences are inevitable: the per capita revenue is one of the highest on the peninsula, which doesn't mean anything; and the revenue of salaried workers (who form 85 percent of the active population) is much lower than that of the inhabitants of Madrid, Burgos, Valencia, and the rest. It should also be pointed out that the rate of salary increases from 1955 to 1967 was 6.3 percent for Spain and 4.15 percent for Euzkadi.

Thus in spite of the extensive industrialization of the region, we find two essential components of classic colonization: pillage -- financial or other -- of the colonized country, and overexploitation of the workers. To that is added a third, which is merely a consequence of the first two: the rhythm of emigration and immigration. The Spanish government has profited from the needs of industrialization by sending the unemployed from poorer regions to Euzkadi. They have been promised advantages (for example, they have priority for housing) but, overexploited like the Basques and without a developed class consciousness, they constitute for management a mass of unskilled laborers. There are 300,000 to 351,000 immigrants among a population of 1,800,000 to 2,000,000. Conversely, the Basques from the poor regions emigrate. Especially those from Navarre: there are 150,000 to 200,000 Basques in Madrid, of which around 100,000 are Navarrese. The extent of this emigration causes a drain, and the arrival of Spanish workers in industrial regions can be considered as the beginning of colonial deconstruction.

Such a consistent political tactic on the part of the Franco regime obviously implies the complicity of the most powerful management groups in Biscay and Guipuzcoa. In fact, the latter have been centralists and liberals since the time of the Carlist wars, when the haute bourgeoisie appeared in Bilboa. In the last few years the bead offices of large enterprises have begun emigrating to Madrid. The most powerful elements among the bourgeoisie see nothing but advantages to be gained from putting a halt to modernization through Spain's incompetence and autarchy. The vast Spanish market absorbs products that are noncompetitive at the international level, and the owner is assured of a high percentage of profit without being obliged to make large investments. Working against the true interests of the nation, these "collaborators," whose centralism will end by ruining the Basque economy, voluntarily remain apart from the community and play the role (classic in itself) of those who are called compradores. In the final analysis, within the structure of a centralizing system, they profit by a kind of Malthusianism.

The conclusion is clear: in spite of appearances, the situation of a Basque wage earner is very similar to that of a colonized worker. He is not simply exploited -- as a Castilian is, for example, who is engaged in a "pure" class struggle -- but deliberately overexploited, since his salary is lower than that of a Spaniard doing the same work. There is an overexploitation of the country by the central government with the complicity of the compradores, who exploit the workers by means of this system of overexploitation. Overexploitation does not benefit the Basque capitalists, who are simple exploiters, overburdened by taxes and protected by a foreign army. It benefits only Spain, that is, a fascist society supported by American imperialism.

Nevertheless, the working classes are not always conscious of the overexploitation. Many wage earners thought even recently of associating themselves with the demands and actions of the Madrid and Burgos workers, which would have led them to a negative centralism. It was necessary to make them understand that in the case of Euzkadi, the economic and social question bad to be stated in national terms. When the country no longer paid financial tribute to the occupier, when its true problems were formulated and solved in Bilbao and Pamplona rather than in Madrid, it could freely transform its economic structures at the same time.

For, it must be repeated, the Spanish overexploit the Basques because they are Basques. Without ever admitting it officially, they are convinced that the Basques are other, both ethnically and culturally. Does anyone think they have forgotten the Carlist wars, the 1936 Republic, the 1947 strikes? If they hadn't remembered, would they make such violent efforts to destroy the Basque language? Clearly it is a question of colonial practices. For a hundred years the French struggled to destroy the Arab language in Algeria; if they were not completely successful, they at least turned literary Arabic into a dead language that is no longer taught. They did the same thing, with varying success, to Euzkara in lower Navarre and to Breton in Brittany.

Thus attempts are made on both sides of the border to convince an entire ethnic group that its language is nothing more than a dialect in the process of disappearing. In southern Euzkadi its use is practically forbidden. The establishment of iskatolas [primary schools taught in Basque] is prohibited, Euzkara publications have begun to be eliminated, the schools and the university teach the language and culture of the oppressor. Radio, motion pictures, television, and the newspapers explain the problems of Spain in Spanish and propagandize for the Madrid government. The administrative personnel is Spanish or Spanish-oriented, recruited through competitive examinations given in Spanish by Madrid functionaries. Because the foreigners wanted it so, in Bilbao it is said with bitterness: "Basque language and culture are not good for anything." And the inspired press willingly repeats an unfortunate statement by Miguel de Unanumo: "The Basque language will soon be dead." That is not all: In the schools boys are punished if they speak Basque. In the villages the peasants are allowed to speak Euzkara, but they must not attempt to do so in the city. One of the Burgos defendants had authorization to receive visits from his father in prison. This authorization was withdrawn when it was learned that the father spoke to him only in Basque -- not, of course, in order to provoke an incident, but because he did not know any other language.

The forcible suppression of the Basque language is an act of true cultural genocide. Basque is one of the oldest languages in Europe. To be sure, it appeared at a time when the economy of the whole continent was rural, and if it did not later adapt easily to the evolution of society, it was because the conquering Spanish forbade its use. To become a twentieth-century language (which it already is to some extent), all that is needed is for people to speak it. Hebrew in Israel and Breton in Quimper encountered the same difficulties, and these difficulties were resolved. Today, Israelis who discuss data processing or atomic fission can read the manuscripts of the Dead Sea scrolls as we would read Racine or Corneille. And Morvan-Lebesque observes that Breton has more regularly formed words to designate modern realities than French, the "national" language. The resources of an old language that has remained young because it has not been allowed to develop are considerable. If Basque were reinstated as the national idiom of Euzkadi, it would carry with it, through its own structures, all the richness of the past and a specific way of thinking and feeling that would open itself fully to the present and the future. But what the Spaniard wants to do away with is the Basque personality. In Biscay, to make oneself Basque is in effect to speak Euzkara. Not only does a person thereby recapture a past that belongs only to him, but even when he is alone he is addressing the community of people who speak Basque.

At Burgos the last statements of the "accused" were made in Euzkara. As they challenged the Spanish court that claimed to be judging them without even understanding them, they summoned their entire people into the room. At that moment they were all there, invisible. The official transcript notes at this point that the defendants made unintelligible remarks in a language "that seemed to be Basque." A wonderful euphemism: the judges understood nothing, but they knew perfectly well what it was all about. To avoid seeming to recognize that the nation of Vasconia bad invaded the Tribunal, they reduced Basque only to a probable language, so perfectly obscure that one never knew if the speaker was really speaking or if he was simply uttering sounds without meaning. This, then, is the core of Euzkadi culture and the greatest worry of the oppressors. If they manage to destroy this language, the Basque will become the abstract man they want him to be and will speak Spanish, which is not and never has been his language. But as this will not put an end to his overexploitation, be has only to become aware of colonization for Euzkara to be revived. Naturally, the reverse is also true: for a colonized man, to speak his own language is already a revolutionary act.

The Basques of developed consciousness today go even farther in defining the culture they are given and the one they want to give themselves. Culture, they say, is the creation of man by man. But they quickly add that there will not be a universal culture as long as universal oppression has not been destroyed. Official culture in Euzkadi today is universalist in that it wants to make of the Basque a universal man, devoid of all national idiosyncrasy, an abstract citizen in every way similar to a Spaniard, except that he is overexploited and does not know it. In this sense, there is no universality except that of oppression. But men, no matter how oppressed they may be, do not become things. They become, on the contrary, the negation of the contradictions that are imposed on them. Not primarily by force of will, but because they naturally contain within themselves a surpassing of themselves and a project [dépassement et projet]. Thus we have the Basques -- who at first cannot help being the negation of the Spanish man that has been put into each one of them. It is not an abstract negation but a living negation, embodied in all that they find to be singular in themselves and their environment.

In this sense, Basque culture today must be first of all a counterculture. It is created by destroying Spanish culture, by rejecting the universalist humanism of the central powers, by making a constant and mighty effort to reclaim Basque reality. This reality is right before their eyes -- for it is the landscape, the ecology, and the ethnic traits as well as Euzkara literature -- at the same time that it is travestied by the oppressor in an innocent and outdated folklore for foreign tourists. That is why they add this third element: Basque culture is the praxis which emerges from the oppression of man by man in the Basque country. The praxis is not immediately self-conscious and willed. It is the daily effort, directly provoked by the intake of official culture, to rediscover the concrete -- that is to say, not man in general, but the Basque man. And this work, conversely, must result in a political praxis, because the Basque man cannot affirm himself in his fullness except in his own country that has once again become sovereign.

Thus by an inexorable dialectic, conquest, centralization, and overexploitation have bad the result of both keeping alive and frustrating the Euzkadi demand for independence by the very efforts Spain has made to suppress it. At the present time we can attempt to determine the precise need of this concrete situation, that is, the nature of the struggle it requires from the Basque people today. There exist two types of Basque response to Spanish oppression, and both are inadequate. To give these substance and form, we will say that one is the response of the Euzkadi Communist Party and the other that of the P.N.B.

To the Communist Party, Euzkadi is simply a geographical name. The party receives its orders from Madrid, from the Spanish Communist Party, and does not take the local situation into account. Thus it remains centralist, meaning that it is socially progressive and politically conservative; it hopes to lead the Basque workers toward a "pure" class struggle. To do this is to forget the problems of a colonized, that is to say, overexploited, country. In spite of several opportunistic declarations in favor of the E.T.A. during the Burgos trial, the party does not understand that the actions it is proposing have inadequate objectives and are therefore without real weight. If the Basques began to struggle against exploitation pure and simple, they would be abandoning their own problems in order to help the Spanish workers in overthrowing the Francoist bourgeoisie. They would be renouncing what is Basque in themselves and limiting themselves to demanding a socialist society for the abstract and universal man, who is a product of centralizing capitalism. And when this man takes power in Madrid, when he controls the instruments of work, will the Basques be able to count on his gratitude to grant them autonomy? Nothing is more doubtful. The republic, it was seen, needed considerable coaxing, and the socialist countries today do not hesitate to engage in colonialism.

The Basques can only fight alone against overexploitation and the denial of Basque culture. This does not mean that they will not have tactical alliances with other revolutionary movements when it is a question of weakening Franco's dictatorship. But strategically, it is impossible for them to accept a common direction. Their struggle will take place in isolation because they are waging it against Spain (not against the Spanish people); a colonized nation cannot put an end to overexploitation except by rising up independently against the colonizer.

On the other hand, the P.N.B. is wrong to consider independence as an end in itself. "First of all let us form a Basque republic," they say. "Then we will see if we have to improve our society." If by any remote chance they did manage to create a Basque state on the bourgeois model, it is true that overexploitation would come to an end. But it would not take very long for this state to fall under the influence of American capitalism. As long as the society retained a capitalistic structure, it is safe to assume that the compradores would sell themselves to the highest bidder. Foreign capital would submerge the country, the United States would govern through the intermediary of the local bourgeoisie, neocolonialism would succeed colonialism, and overexploitation, all the more efficiently masked, would continue as before. Only a socialist society, because it rigorously controls its own economy, can establish economic relations with both capitalist and socialist nations, and it cannot do so without great risks [6].

The inadequacy of these responses by the Communist Party and the P.N.B. shows that independence and socialism are two sides of the same coin. The struggle for independence and the struggle for socialism must be one and the same. If this is so, logically it is the working class -- which, as we have seen, is far and away the largest class -- that must lead the fight. As he becomes conscious of his overexploitation, and thus of his nationality, the manual worker at the same time understands his socialist vocation. Has the Basque worker already done so? That is a completely different question, and we will speak about it later. On the other hand, large portions of the middle classes in a colonized country refuse cultural depersonalization, although they do not always realize the social consequences of this refusal. For in principle, they are the allies of the proletariat. A revolutionary movement conscious of its task in a colony must not be moved by the principle of "class against class," which has meaning only in the mother country. The colonial movement must accept the inclusion of the petite bourgeoisie and the intellectuals, on the condition that the revolutionaries from the middle classes place themselves under the authority of the working class. We can see that the first work to be done consists of bringing about a twofold and steadily growing awareness: the proletariat must become conscious of its colonized condition, and the other classes, which are more naturally nationalistic, must understand that for a colonized nation, socialism is the only possible path to sovereignty.

These are the reasons that the E.T.A., or Independence Party, has been able to evolve over the past one hundred and fifty years. It has changed its membership and transformed its backward-looking desire for a return to the fueros within the structure of an absolutist state into the forward-looking call for the construction of a sovereign and socialist state. And there is another reason for its evolution which is peculiar to the Iberian peninsula, and which gives a special character to the Basque struggle. In Spain as in Italy and Germany, central unification was not really completed until the twentieth century. As a consequence it took the form of fascist dictatorship, which led to naked and senseless violence in response to the "separatists." In two of these three countries fascism is no longer in power, but Franco has remained the caudillo of Spain. A Basque once said in my company: "We have the horrible luck to have Francoism." Horrible, yes; but why "luck"? If the Spanish regime were a bourgeois democracy, the situation would be more ambiguous: the government would stall, and with false promises and delays it would postpone "reforms" indefinitely. That would undoubtedly be enough to create among Basques a large reformist faction which would be the ally of the oppressor government and would expect nothing more than to be granted federal status. But since 1937, the blind brutality of Francoism has proved the foolishness of the reformist illusion. To each demand expressed today, there is only one response: violent repression. How can anyone be surprised by it, since the regime was created in order to act in just this way? But it must be added that a repressive regime is the truth of colonizing Spain. Whatever the form of Spanish government, we know that centralized Spain deeply rejects Basque "separatism" and that it is ready, when necessary, to drown any Euzkadi revolt in blood.

The Spanish, to the extent that they themselves are the products of centralizing idealism, are abstract men. They believe that except for a handful of agitators, the people in the rest of the Peninsula are too. Do they believe this in good faith? Of course not; they know that Euzkadi exists, but want to hide it from themselves. They become outraged when the Basques assert themselves, and they go so far as to hate them because they are Basques, that is to say, because they are concrete men. On a more serious level, the men in power are not unaware of the fact that the end of the colonial regime in Euzkadi would quickly lead to increased misery in Castile and Andalusia. So that as a last recourse, even a republic would continue to carry out what Francoism started. The "luck" that the Franco government represents for the Basques lies in the fact that it shows most candidly the true nature of colonialism. The government does not argue; it either oppresses or kills. Since repressive violence is inevitable, there is no other solution for the colonized country but to oppose violence with violence. The reformist temptation being out of the question, the Basque people can only radicalize themselves. They know that at present, independence can be obtained only by armed struggle.

On this point the Burgos trial is clear, for in confronting the Spanish, the "accused" were aware of the risks: imprisonment, torture, capital punishment. They were not fighting in the hope of quickly throwing the oppressors out, but in order to contribute to the formation of a clandestine army. If the P.N.B. is now in decline, it is because the organization understood that in the face of fascist troops the Basques had no other solution but a people's war. Independence or death: these words, which were recently spoken in Cuba and Algeria, are now being repeated in Euzkadi. Armed struggle for an independent and socialist Euzkadi is what the present situation demands. It is either that or submission -- which is impossible.

From 1947 to 1959 this need remained empty and formless: to all appearances nothing was being done about it. In fact, however, it bad affected the entire Basque population, especially the young people, and by 1953 everything had begun. E.K.I.N., which was founded that year, was a group of intellectuals who were still hardly conscious of the real Basque problem in all its tragic simplicity, but who understood the necessity of initiating new and radical action. This group was soon obliged to enter the P.N.B. which, though paralyzed, was still powerful. Nevertheless, the E.K.I.N. distinguished itself from the P.N.B. by its extremist positions. Soon one of its members was excluded from the P.N.B. for "communism," which led the entire group to stand behind him and leave the nationalist party. This experience convinced them that the struggle undertaken by the old party, which had achieved results in 1936, had become pure rhetoric by the end of the war, with the betrayal of the bourgeois democracies.

In 1959 the group which had founded the E.K.I.N. became the core of a new party, the present E.T.A. In the beginning, even before it bad taken a theoretical position, the E.T.A. examined the two tendencies that were dividing the country: the demand for independence and the workers' revolt. Since 1960 it has understood that in daily practice these two struggles must be interconnected, each clarified by the other, and jointly led by the same organizations. It was a question of identifying the needs of the present situation slowly but surely, and in a practical way. That it has proceeded correctly is proved by the violent crises of the sixties: its "humanist" right wing quit; the "universalist" left was excluded after attempting to abandon the anticolonialist struggle and lead a "pure" class struggle with the Spanish workers. The resignations and departures define its position better than a hundred theoretical writings could have done. After these purges, the E.T.A. in 1968 began to try, in spite of everything, to define itself theoretically. At this level its principles are already fixed. They were developed in the internal struggle of the group against its right wing and a certain centralist left, and in fact they are nothing more than the gradually discovered necessities of the situation.

The E.T.A. has thus organized four fronts: the workers' front, the cultural front, the political front, and the military front -- which all function together under a common leadership but remain distinct from one another. In 1969 on the workers' front, the struggle consisted of approaching manual workers, who are often reticent, and of organizing an avant-garde core within the working class. On the cultural front, the E.T.A. led an attack against "the weakest link," which was the dehumanizing universalism of the government of oppression. It has already created iskatolas -- nursery and primary schools, in which the instruction is exclusively in Basque and which 15,000 children attended in 1968-1969. It has launched a literacy campaign for adults. It has created student committees that arc actively demanding (through demonstrations, strikes, and sit-ins) the creation of a Basque university. These committees have also sent Basque artists (writers, singers, painters, and sculptors) right into the villages to give exhibitions and to stage performances of popular songs and street theater. Since 1966 it has organized social schools in which Marxism-Leninism is taught to workers. On the political front, which is closely tied to the military front, the E.T.A. is politicizing the entire Basque people by showing them the scandal of repression.

The program of politicization explains the current direction of the armed struggle, which does not yet propose to drive out the oppressor, but to mobilize the Basques little by little to form a clandestine army of liberation [7]. The present tactic can be described as a spiral containing successive stages: action, repression, action. Each action brings on a more savage repression, which exposes the centralizing fascism, which in turn opens the eyes of larger and larger areas of the population and thus makes wider action possible the next time. One can find no better example of this kind of struggle than the dialectical process that has come to a temporary conclusion at the Burgos trial. From the beginning to the end of the process, the E.T.A. imposed its methods and came out ahead. This is what demonstrates the value of its tactics.

At the very beginning, however, these tactics had not been developed. After the massacres of 1936 and the repression of 1937, the heavy peace of the Franco regime fell on the Basque country and crushed it. Against this repressive oppression, the P.N.B. organized an action -- the 1947 strike. The strike, which led to no real gains, brought about a terrible repression that resulted in discrediting the P.N.B. But it is precisely because of this failure that the new generation took over, understanding the need to move on to armed struggle. In 1961 the E.T.A. marked its existence with its first action of a military type: home-made bombs went off nearly everywhere, and there was an attempt to sabotage a rail convoy. The second enterprise failed owing to lack of experience, but it brought about a brutal repression: the arrest of 130 militants. Thus the infernal cycle of action, repression, action was inaugurated. For several years, however, the "forces of order" were frustrated; the E.T.A. was too elusive, and bombing attempts continued all over the region. It was not until the spring of 1968 that the chief of police could publish a communiqué in the Bilbao press stating, "War has been declared against the E.T.A."

The manhunt began, but it did not prevent a bomb explosion a few days later on the highway, causing damage which blocked the route of the cyclists competing in the Tour of Spain. ("Let them pass somewhere else; they have nothing to do with us.") In June a member of the Guardia Civil was found dead on the road. Several hours later, other members of the Guardia Civil fired without cause on a "suspect" and killed him. It was Javier Ecbebarrieta, one of the leaders of the E.T.A. Repression quickly spread from the clandestine organization to the population at large. By outlawing the celebration of masses in memory of Echebarrieta, the administration in one fell swoop aroused the indignation of the village priests and antagonized the people of the countryside. Since then the increased repression has called forth reactions that have animated the people in the deepest sense. Three months later, Manzanas of the police, a sinister figure well known to the Basques, a man who had tortured people in Euzkadi for thirty years, was executed in front of his apartment door. As predicted, this action loosed a savage repression.

It had come to the point where the government of oppression was now opposed to the entire Basque people. The government could not accept the liquidation of its representatives; it would be forced to find the guilty parties, bring them to trial, and demand several executions. But since the "victim" had been an executioner himself, the majority of the people of the country could not resent his liquidation, which was nothing more than a just punishment. The powers fell into a contradiction from which they have still found no escape. From their point of view, which cannot be changed, intimidation must take the form of retribution. But the publicity of the trial showed everyone that this retribution was no more than a parody of justice; the defendants were chosen either at random from prisoners in the jails or, in an effort to undermine the strength of the E.T.A., from those who were thought to be E.T.A. leaders.

Under these conditions the proceedings could only be a farce. There was absolutely no proof against Izco, who was nevertheless sentenced to death. The court was military, even though several of the "accused" had already been sentenced for the same or similar acts in a civil court. The judges were army officers totally ignorant of the law, except for one, who was there to give legal advice to the military men. The lawyers, constantly threatened with prison by the presiding judge, could hardly make themselves heard. The "accused" were chained to one another and, calm and contemptuous, fought without pause, not to defend themselves against the accusations of their oppressors, but to reveal before the journalists the tortures they had been subjected to. The presiding judge, when he was able to quiet them, inevitably answered with a "No interesa." It became obvious to the press that these military men had come together not to judge but to kill, after following an absurd ritual that they were not even familiar with. The "charged" finally exposed the repressive violence of Spain by forbidding their lawyers to defend them.

They had won: their admirable courage and the obtuse stupidity of their "judges" had, in the end, turned their trial into a national affair for all Basques. When the workers went on strike in large enterprises at Bilbao, the E.T.A. had concrete proof that it had reached wide areas of the working class. And indignation was so great in the rest of the world that for the first time the Basque question was brought before international public opinion. The Basques of Euzkadi became known everywhere as a martyred people struggling for national independence. A final action, born from repression: the general wrath made Spain back down; the death sentences were commuted. The E.T.A., through a success that was both unhoped-for and necessary to its tactics, had asserted itself as the wheeling flank of the working class in its country. It had gained prestige throughout the mobilized country, prestige as great as that of the P.N.B. twenty-five years before. Its militants are fully aware that the struggle will be long, that it will take, according to them, "twenty or thirty years to put together the popular army." No matter how long it might take, the first shot had been fired at Burgos between December 1970 and January 1971.

This is how things stand: we, the French, who are still in some sense the descendants of the Jacobins even if we do not want to be, have been given a glimpse of another kind of socialism by a heroic people led by a revolutionary party. The socialism of the E.T.A. is decentralistic in concept; such is the singular universality that the Basques and the E.T.A. justly oppose to the abstract centralism of the oppressors. Can this socialism be useful to us? Is it not a temporary solution for colonized countries? Stated in other terms, can we see it as an ultimate end, or as a step toward the moment when universal exploitation has come to a close and all men will participate on equal terms in a true universality, through a common overcoming of all singularity? That is the problem for the colonists. One can be sure that colonized people, struggling for their independence, are not worried about this. What is certain in the eyes of the Basque militants is that the right of peoples to self-determination, asserted in its most radical necessity, implies a general revision of present borders. These borders are left over from bourgeois expansion and no longer correspond at all to popular needs. Such a revision can come about only through a cultural revolution which creates the socialist man on the basis of his land, his language, and even his re-emergent customs. It is only in this way that man will little by little cease to be the product of his product and become at last the son of man.

Should we call these conceptions Marxist? We can note some hesitation on that point by the leaders of the E.T.A., since some of them call themselves neo-marxists and others -- the majority, it seems -- Marxist-Leninists. It is the day-by-day experience of the struggle that will decide. Guevara said to me once: "Are we Marxists? I don't know at all." And then he added, with a smile: "It's not our fault if reality is Marxist." What the E.T.A. reveals to us is the need of all men, even centralists, to reaffirm their particularities against abstract universality. To listen to the voices of the Basques, the Bretons, the Occitanians, and to struggle beside them so that they may affirm their concrete singularity, is to fight for ourselves as well -- to fight as Frenchmen and for the true independence of France, which was the first victim of its own centralism. For there is a Basque people and a Breton people, but Jacobinism and industrialization have liquidated our people. Today there is nothing left but the French masses.