Basque Country Autonomy Statute of 1979
The Autonomy Statute of the Basque Country
This text is one of the articles of the Basque Statutes of 1979. It is a legal text, and the target readers are citizens, especially those of the Basque Country. The initial authors of the text were the Basque institutions. Once they elaborated it, they submitted it to Madrid to be analyzed to see if it complied with the constitution, and if so, to be approved. The courts approved it. It is a first-level text.
After Franco’s death, Arias Navarro continued as the head of the government, and the King wanted to break with the previous regime. Initially, the King didn’t dismiss Arias Navarro but asked him to introduce some reforms. However, the reforms were rejected by the courts. In that complicated situation, Arias Navarro resigned, and the King was free to appoint as the head of the government the person he wanted. The person he chose was Adolfo Suarez. Suarez elaborated the political reform. A referendum was held to approve it; it was massively approved, so there was a call for elections. For these elections, it was essential to legalize political parties, so he legalized all parties except PCE, but he eventually legalized it. The result of the elections was the victory of UCD, followed by the Socialists, PMP, Communists, and later the right-wingers. In the Basque Country, PMP got the majority of the votes. After the elections, they started with the elaboration of a constitution. Suarez could elaborate the constitution alone, but he decided to do it with the members of the rest of the parties, according to the result of the elections.
The constitution defines Spain as a place with freedoms, where the government is a representative monarchy, powers are divided, there is no relation between church and state, and it is quite an advanced constitution. The constitution commented positively on the creation of autonomies, but territories need to have in common a history, language, culture, and economic reasons, and they need to be adjacent. After the approval of the constitution, Catalans were the first for the constitution to be accepted. The Basque Country also started elaborating a law, the one presented here. In this law, it is said that the Basques had the right to create autonomy states; territories that can be part of the Basque Country are Alava, Biscay, Gipuzcoa, and Navarre. At the beginning, Navarre did not enter, but it could do it when wanted. *Diputations* and *Juntas* were going to continue. Basque acquires the level of official language, and there is a public order with the creation of the Basque police, the Ertzaintza, and in the future, other branches of the government would be transferred.
To conclude, the statute came into force, was approved by the Basque citizens, and it is the one that continues in force nowadays. With time, more transfers were made to the Basque Government: education, health service, tax-collection… and during this time, the party that has governed the Basque Country the majority of the time was PMP.