11. The National Question¶
Core Argument¶
Chapter 11: The National Question¶
This chapter argues that the national conflicts within the Spanish state are not the product of immutable geography but of a specific history of class rule and oppression. The Reconquista forged a state through religious fanaticism and violence, fusing national identity with Catholic supremacy. This ruling-class mindset, which treated Basques, Catalans and Galicians as mere regional deviations, was later reinforced by a weak bourgeoisie that, as Marx noted, failed to create national unity. Under Franco, this oppression became systematic: languages were banned, cultures suppressed, and identities humiliated. The regime’s brutal response to the 1969 Burgos Trial, intended to crush dissent, instead backfired, sparking mass protests and a general strike. The 1973 assassination of Prime Minister Carrero Blanco deepened the regime’s crisis, while the 1975 executions of ETA activists provoked international outrage.
The text traces the evolution of ETA from a petty-bourgeois student movement to an armed organisation influenced by Marxist ideas and Basque workers’ struggles. However, it argues that Marxists reject individual terrorism not on abstract moral grounds but because it is ineffective and counterproductive: it strengthens the state, replaces mass working-class struggle with the actions of small groups, and hinders class consciousness. The 1987 Hipercor bombing, which killed twenty-one civilians, is presented as a turning point; one veteran, Joxemi, described it as “unthinkable” and was later expelled from ETA for dissent. The chapter contrasts ETA’s role with the far more significant mass movement of the Basque working class, exemplified by the 1976 Vitoria general strike.
The analysis extends to Catalonia and Andalusia. In Catalonia, the underground struggle fused democratic and social demands with national rights; immigrant workers, organised through the Catalan Communist Party, led the fight for the Catalan language. The 1976 and 1977 Diada demonstrations, stewarded by car workers, showed that national-democratic struggles were a task of the workers’ movement. Yet the Catalan bourgeoisie, having sided with Franco, engineered a return to conservative rule through ‘Operation Tarradellas’ and ‘Operation Foment’, channelling millions against the left. The left’s failure to present a concrete socialist alternative to nationalism allowed the conservative CiU to govern for 23 years.
The chapter concludes that the only resolution to Spain’s national question is a complete rupture with the 1978 constitutional regime, which it characterises as reactionary. Marxists defend the right to national self-determination as an elementary democratic right, comparable to divorce or abortion. But they are internationalists, not nationalists, opposing both Catalan bourgeois nationalism and Spanish reactionary nationalism. The solution, it argues, is for the Spanish left to break with the monarchy and fight for a democratic republic and a Socialist Federation of free Iberian peoples.