Jose Antonio Aguirre
José Antonio Aguirre y Lecube (Bilbao, March 6, 1904 - Paris, March 22, 1960) was a Spanish politician, a member of the Basque Nationalist Party, and the first Lehendakari of the Provisional Government of the country. Vasco, as well as Defense Counselor of that first executive, a job he assumed during the Spanish Civil War. During his tenure, the Provisional Government fought on the side of the Second Republic and the Basque Army (Euzko Gudarostea) was created.
Childhood and training
Athletic Club player between 1921 and 1925, a lawyer graduated from the University of Deusto in 1925 and a member of the PNV, before becoming lehendakari he was mayor of the Biscayan town of Guecho, as well as head of the company " Cho-Bil", dedicated to the manufacture of chocolate.
On the death of his father, he takes over the family chocolate factory. At twenty-seven years of age, just after the establishment of the Second Spanish Republic, he was elected mayor of Guecho.
1936 Statute of Autonomy of the Basque Country and the Spanish Civil War
Aguirre intervened decisively in the failed attempts to draft a Basque Statute in 1931 and 1932, in which autonomy was proposed, and would include Navarre.
On November 5, 1933, two weeks before the general elections on November 19, a referendum is held in Álava, Guipúzcoa and Vizcaya, which submits a new text of the Statute for consultation, which definitively abandons the inclusion of Navarre. The text is approved by an overwhelming majority (459,000 votes in favor, 14,000 against), although in Álava the favorable votes do not reach 50% of the electoral census.
The dissolution of the Republican Cortes to hold the general elections and then the reluctance of the radical government and the opposition of the Carlist Party to the incorporation of Álava into the statutory process will contribute to blocking the Statute until October 1 of 1936, already unleashed the Civil War. On that date, the last session of the republican democratic Cortes to be held in Madrid took place, and in which the Basque Statute would be approved. Aguirre delivered an emotional speech in which, in addition to proclaiming his loyalty to the government, he condemned the recent military coup and international fascism:
I would like to point out that we are confronted with imperialism and fascism by our Christian spirit; we are confronted with this subversive movement because it impels us our principles, our honest and deeply Christian principles.
Historian Paul Johnson wrote about it:
In Spain the civil war was made possible by the absence of a Christian-Democratic party. Gil Robles's Catholic People's Action was a right-wing party that did not oppose the fascist overthrow of the Republic. The one who looked more like a Christian-Democratic leader was the Basque Aguirre; the Catholic authorities included him in the category of "Jews, Masons and Communists". See Xavier Tusell, History of Christian Democracy in Spain (Madrid, 1975).
Lendakari of the Government of the Basque Country
On the following October 7, in a vote in which the Vizcaya councilors and some of the Gipuzkoan and Álava mayors participated (in Álava, as in Navarra, the uprising had triumphed, and by that date, practically all of Guipúzcoa was already in the hands of the rebels), in which each one of them represented as many votes as they had obtained in the last municipal elections, José Antonio Aguirre y Lecube was elected Lendakari. After a religious act in the basilica of Begoña, in which he swore allegiance to the Catholic faith, to the teachings of the Church, to his country and to the party, he went to Guernica and Luno to carry out, before his symbolic tree and in Basque, the famous oath of office:
Jainkoaren aurrean apalik,Eusko Lur gainean zutunik,
Asaben gomutaz,
Gernikako Zuhaizpean,
herri ordezkarion aitzinean
nere agindua ondo betetxea zin dagit.Translation:
I swear to do my job faithfully. "
"Humilde before God,
standing on the Basque Land,
in memory of the ancestors,
under the Tree of Guernica,
representatives of the people
He formed a coalition government, in which nationalists, socialists, communists and other republican sectors were present, not without tensions between them, which only deployed its powers in Vizcaya for a few months, until the fall of Bilbao.
The first government was made up of: the Presidency and Defense, José Antonio Aguirre (Basque Nationalist Party); Government, Telesforo Monzón (PNV); Justice and Culture, Jesús María de Leizaola (PNV); Treasury, Heliodoro de la Torre (PNV); Commerce and Supplies, Juan Ramón Aldasoro Galarza (Republican Left); Work, Welfare and Communications, Juan de los Toyos (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party); Industry, Santiago Aznar (PSOE) and Social Assistance, Juan Gracia (PSOE); Public Works, Juan Astigarrabía (Communist Party of Spain); Agriculture, Gonzalo Nárdiz (Basque Nationalist Action); and Health, Alfredo Espinosa (Republican Union).
The Basque Army was made up of battalions of different ideologies, just like the government. Well armed, though poorly trained, the Euzko Gudarostea numbered 100,000 soldiers. One of the most pressing shortcomings, which ended up unbalancing the balance, was the absence of heavy artillery and aviation. Famous are Aguirre's desperate appeals to Indalecio Prieto and Manuel Azaña to send devices to the Basque Country. Historians agree that this possibility was unfeasible due to the difficulty of breaking the siege to which Vizcaya was subjected. However, in different expeditions, some 40 or 50 planes arrived, the majority flying over enemy territory, since others sent through France were retained or returned, after disassembling the weapons, to Barcelona or Valencia under the policy of & #34;non-intervention". In any case, the ratio was 10 to 1 in favor of the rebels. Another fact that contributed decisively to the defeat was the lack of a qualified General Staff.
In June 1937, Franco's troops broke the well-known Iron Belt of Bilbao and entered the Biscayan capital, thanks to the betrayal of Alejandro Goicoechea. Aguirre transferred his government to Trucíos before heading to Santander and, later, to Catalonia, where he was willing to continue fighting with his men. Meanwhile, the Basque nationalist leader Juan de Ajuriaguerra agrees to a surrender in Santoña with the Italians (Santoña Pact), which will not be accepted by Franco.
The new mayor of Bilbao appointed by the insurgents, the Falangist José María de Areilza, after affirming that "that horrible sinister and atrocious nightmare, which was called Euskadi, has fallen defeated, annihilated forever", dedicates these insults to José Antonio Aguirre:
Forever you have fallen, rastacueros of Basque nationalism, petty, grim, crooked, and ruin that you played a character during the eleven months of crime and theft in which you fell into power, while the poor gudaris hunted to the loop as quadruped in the villages were left skin in the mountains of Vizcaya.
Exile
The first Lendakari in history flees to France after the war with the help of Venezuelan diplomats. Until 1940, he would support the Basque Government in exile in Paris. After the German invasion of France, he manages to flee to Belgium, where, with the English Channel blocked, he will begin an odyssey to escape the Gestapo, which will take him from Dunkirk to Brussels, passing through Berlin, under Panamanian identity, and from there to Sweden, where he will finally embark for America, arriving in Rio de Janeiro on August 27, 1941. Still under a false identity, he will remain for several months in Brazil, Uruguay and Venezuela, until the United States Government authorizes him to legally reside in his country. Thus, he moved to New York, presiding over the headquarters of the Basque Government in exile; Aguirre remained there until 1946, at the same time working as a professor at Columbia University.
In 1946, he returned to France, where the Basque Government was reconstituted. Aguirre participated in the creation of the International League of Friends of the Basques, which managed to attract 50,000 adherents, among them religious personalities such as Cardinals Verdier and Griffin, politicians, intellectuals, artists and writers.
He participated in the Congress of The Hague, where European leaders discussed the idea of a united and federated Europe, and there he promoted his idea of a union of the peoples of Europe. The Government in exile will promote the massive strikes that shook the Basque Country in 1947 and 1951. After these incidents, in June 1951 the French Government confiscated the offices of the Basque Government, on avenue Marceau in Paris, and handed them over to the representatives of the Franco dictatorship. In 1954, the Minister of the Interior, François Mitterrand, prohibited the broadcasts of Radio Euzkadi.
The Basque Government in exile was far from achieving its objectives. His policies to win the support of Western democracies against the Franco regime led him to collaborate with the US FBI during the war and even to expel communist members of the government so as not to irritate the Americans. The US government saw Franco as much more useful for its purposes during the Cold War, and Franco's Spain's entry into the United Nations in 1955 will be a heavy blow to the government-in-exile. The only Spanish representative in the United Nations had been the delegate of the Basque Government, Jesús de Galíndez, until his assassination.
However, today the influence that the struggle of the various autonomous governments in exile has had on the negotiations, after 1977, of the Statutes of Autonomy of Catalonia, the Basque Country and Galicia is recognized. This struggle reflected the historical and legal legitimacy that these statutes had acquired during the Republic, which was preserved during the Franco regime by the governments in exile of those regions.
The Lendakari died of a heart attack on March 22, 1960. His remains were transferred to the Basque-French town of Saint-Jean-de-Luz, in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, where they were buried.
Toponymy and acknowledgments
There are many town halls that have wanted to honor the memory of the Lendakari by dedicating streets or squares to him. Thus, today José Antonio Aguirre is one of the most common street names in the Basque Country, mainly among the municipalities of the province of Vizcaya.[citation required]
- Axpe Achondo: street.
- Joy: Square.
- Andoáin: square.
- Apatamonasterio: street.
- Arcentales: avenue.
- Arceniega: walk.
- Arrigorriaga: park.
- Valmaseda: park.
- Bacchio: square.
- Basauri: Avenue.
- Bedia: square.
- Berango: street.
- Bérriz: promenade.
- Bilbao: avenue between the neighborhoods of San Ignacio and Deusto, statue in the square Federico Moyúa and plaque in the house where he was born.
- San Sebastián: bridge over the Urumea river after discarding a small street in the area of Gurutze, in the neighborhood of the Old.
- Durango: street.
- Erandio: square.
- Galadácano: square.
- Getafe: street.
- Górliz: square.
- Guecho: square.
- Guetaria: square.
- Lanestosa: street.
- Larrabezúa: street.
- Leganés: street.
- Lejona: Avenue.
- Lemona: square.
- Montevideo: street.
- Morga: square.
- Mundaca: square.
- Motric: Avenue.
- Mundaca: square.
- Nanclares de la Oca: park.
- Orozco: square.
- Revenue: square
- Santurce: bust in the harbour area.
- Sestao: it has the name of a great way.
- Sondica: Avenue.
- Truce: Avenue.
- Valle de Trápaga: group of housing buildings.
- Vitoria: street in the center and memorial plaque.
- Yurre: Avenue.
- Zaldívar: park.
- Zalla: Avenue.
In 2010 he was posthumously awarded the Grand Cross of the Tree of Guernica, the highest decoration awarded by the Basque Government.