The Spanish patriotism of the Ertzaintza

Ertzaintza is the name given to the current Basque autonomous police force in Basque.

It is one of the jewels in the crown of Basque autonomy. On it, the PNV wanted to print its original seal. It’s as if he considers her his.

The PNV has this tendency to consider everything that has to do with Basque autonomy as its own thing. This has been demonstrated with the appropriation of the Paris mansion, which was the headquarters of the first Basque Government abroad.

The Ertzaintza was created during the nine months in which Vizcaya was under harassment by rebel troops in the Civil War and was placed under the orders of the security advisor of the first Basque Government, Telesforo Monzónthe same one who later became, in the Transition, a kind of historical patriarch of Herri Batasuna, the civilian arm of ETA.

When the Ertzaintza emerged, its original name was “Ertzaña”. Invented name, as was usual in everything related to nationalism.

But in this case not because Sabino Aranabut by one of his most passionate followers, Esteban Urkiagaalias ‘Lauaxeta’, a Basque poet who was a gudari in the Civil War, whom the current president of the PNV, Admit Estebanconsiders its reference as authentic the warriorinstead of the ETA terrorists who also call themselves, warriors.

Ertzaña was a compound and shortened form of two terms: town o town (town in Basque) and take carewhich is caring. Something like the caretakers of the Basque people.

Then, the letter Ñ disappeared from the name and the collective suffix -tza was added, giving rise to the current name, Ertzaintza, while each Basque autonomous police force individually considered is called the policeman.

The fact is that the Ertzaintza has turned out to be the first police force in all of Spain that has decided to publish crime data in the Basque Country, accompanied by the ethnic origin of the criminals.

The statistics, available for a few days on its website, are made up of a series of columns.

First is the one titled Reasonsin which the different types of crimes considered appear.

But the most striking columns are those related to the origin of the offenders, which can be grouped into two sections.

The first brings together criminals born in the Autonomous Community of Euskadi plus those born in the other autonomous communities.

They do not call it Spain or the Spanish State, but it is not necessary since, by calling the rest as Foreign (and since what is not foreign, according to the RAE dictionary, is the country itself), it is perfectly inferred that for the Ertzaintza, in this statistic, the country itself is Spain.

The column Foreign it is decomposed into those of Europa (subdivided between the European Union and the rest), Africa (with the Maghreb on one side and the rest on the other), America (divided between Latin Americans on the one hand and the United States plus Canada on the other) and Asia, Oceania, Unspecified foreigners y Unknown.

If we look at the totals, we see that, with the population of foreign origin in the Basque Country being 15%, in round figures, they commit significantly more crimes than the rest of the Basque population, made up of people born both in the Basque Country and in the rest of Spain.

In the only type of crime that Spanish Basques surpass foreigners is in drug trafficking.

In the rest, and with very striking differences in terms of, for example, homicides, sexual crimes and robberies with violence, There are many more foreign criminals than Spanish ones.

A statistic like this demonstrates a contradiction between the need recognized by the Basque Government for foreign labor and what appears to be an obvious prevention against the effects that this entry is causing.

Because by publishing something like this, rather than promoting transparency to avoid hoaxes, which is the argument with which the Basque Government defends itself, what happens is quite the opposite. That reaffirms the general perception that It is immigrants who bring the rise in crime that we are seeing in recent times.

Those who have criticized this statistic have compared it to certain attitudes of Basque nationalism, from the very origin of its ideology.

Sabino Arana’s quotes are famous highlighting the fact that most of the crimes in the Basque Country at that time were committed by immigrants from other parts of Spain, what served the founder of nationalism to shore up his anti-Spanish supremacism.

But that comparison doesn’t make sense now, since what Sabino Arana did was against compatriots, and here the focus is on foreigners.

And current Basque nationalism is governed by people with roots in deep Spain (Pradalesfrom Burgos; Esteban, from Soria), which completely deactivates discrimination between Basques for being born in the Basque Country or in the rest of Spain.

The Ertzaintza statistics, on the other hand, make, in my opinion, two major errors by trying to highlight the foreign groups that commit crimes in the Basque Country, particularly North Africans and Latin Americans.

One, because, from now on, if a single innocent foreigner were, solely because of his ethnic origin, treated as a criminal, he would have already caused an unbearable injustice.

But even more striking is the second big error, in the case of the Ertzaintza, institution created in the image and likeness of the PNV.

And it is the mistake that, with this statistic, the Ertzaintza and with it the Basque Government are denying nothing more and nothing less than the main political pillar of Basque nationalism. That is, the very existence of Euskal Herria, with part in Spain and part in France. Since, when calling Foreigners to the rest of the non-Spanish Europeans, it is also treating the Basques on the other side of the Bidasoa as foreigners, that is, the Basques of France, those of Iparralde, always included on the weather map and in the news on Basque public television as the northern part of Euskal Herria.

So this statistic of the origin of criminals in the Basque Country becomes, on the rebound, a perfectly patriotic artifact. But for Spanish.

*** Pedro Chacón is a professor of History of political thought at the UPV/EHU.