Dictionary Thesaurus Word Dynamo Quotes Reference Translator Spanish

Sabino Arana

Sabino Arana Goiri, self-styled as Arana ta Goiri'taŕ Sabin (January 26, 1865 – November 25, 1903), was a Basque writer and politician from Spain. He was the founder of the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) and the creator of Basque nationalism. Author of several books and numerous articles arguing in favour of Basque nationalism based on the idea of the Basques as a special race with a land of their own, the "purity" of which must be preserved.

He died in Sukarrieta at the age of 38 after falling ill with Addison's disease during time spent in prison. He had been charged with treason for attempting to send a telegram to President Theodore Roosevelt, in which he praised America for helping Cuba gain independence from Spain.

Background

One of the consequences of the Second Carlist War was the substitution of the Ancien Régime system of Basque Fueros by a limited autonomy, due to the support in Navarra and part of the Basque country to the defeated Carlist cause. The Basque Country and Navarre were integrated into the Spanish customs system. Basque industrialists profitted from the Spanish captive market with the iron ore and the Bessemer converter and Biscay became "the iron California". Workers from all of Spain were attracted to the area as labourers for the burgeoning industry.

Arana was born in Abando, a neighbourhood that had been recently incorporated into the city of Bilbao as the new extension for the growth of the industrial era. He claimed that he had a quasi-religious revelation on Easter, 1882, that he communicated to his brother Luis Arana. From then he devoted himself to the nationalist cause of Biscay, later extended to the Basque Country.

Ideology

He was an early defender of the use of the Basque language in all areas of society, to avoid its increasing marginalization in the face of the dominant Spanish. He learnt the language as a young man, but was ready to contest for a professor in Basque position at the Instituto de Bilbao, competing against Miguel de Unamuno and the winner, Resurrección María de Azkue who became an erudite scholar of the language. He made a strong effort to establish a codified orthography and grammar for the Basque language, and proposed several neologisms to replace words of Spanish origin. Some of this innovations like the characters ĺ and ŕ were finally not accepted in the standardization efforts for the Basque language of the 1970s that eventually came with the now standard Basque Batua.

His first published work was Bizkaya por su independencia ("Biscay for its independence"), composed of a mix of historical, pseudo mythical stories and fabrications of earlier battles of the ancient people of Biscay.

In 1894 he founded the first center for the new nationalist party (Partido Nacionalista Vasco), the second oldest party in Spain, to provide a place for gathering and proselitizing.

Sabino Arana, like many Europeans of his time, believed that the essence of a country was defined by its blood or ethnic composition. He was disturbed by the immigration into Biscay of many workers from central and Western Spain during the industrial revolution, into a small territory with little political power, believing that their influence would result in the disappearance of the pure Basque race.

He contrasted the Basque and the maketo (people from the rest of Spain, Maketania)

Basque Race:

"The Vizcayan walks confidently and in a manly fashion; the Spaniard does not know how to walk, or if he does, he is of feminine type."

Bizkaitarra, no. 29.

"It is necessary to isolate ourselves from the maketos. Otherwise, in this land we walk on, it is not possible to work toward the Glory of God."

Bizkaitarra, no. 19.

"We, the Basques, must avoid the mortal contagion, maintain firm our faith in our ancestors and the serious religiosity that distinguishes us, and purify our customs, before so healthy and exemplary, now so infected and at the point of corruption by the influence of those who have come from outside."

La Patria, no. 39.

"It is known that of course, from this cross of the maketo with the Vizcayan, all that blooms in our country is irreligiousity and immorality. The facts prove this and explain it perfectly."

Bizkaitarra, no. 6 bis.

"We have already indicated, on our part, that favoring the irruption of the maketos is fomenting immorality in our country, because if it is true that the customs of our People have degenerated notably in these times, it is without doubt due to the frightening invasion of the maketos, who bring with them blasphemy and immorality."

Bizkaitarra, no. 10.

"It terrifies them to hear that maketos should be driven out of towns with stones. Ah, those people who love peace! They are those who are worthy of the hate of patriots."

Bizkaitarra, no. 21

"A great number of them seem to be undeniable testimony of Darwin's theory, since rather than men they resemble apes, rather less beastly than gorillas: do not search in their faces for the expression of human intelligence nor of any virtue; their eyes only reveal idiocy and brutishness."

Bizcaitarra, no. 27.

"Every Viscayan should be antiliberal and anti-Spanish."

Bizkaitarra, no. 1

Another essential part of his ideology was a devout Catholicism; he considered this to be an essential part of the Basque identity. However his Basque nationalism kept him away from Carlism that was the dominant ultra-Catholic and conservative movement in the area and the ideology of his father.

Despite his religious integrism and his extreme xenophobic and racist views, he is considered by many Basques to be the gadfly that sparked the movement for the cultural revival of the Basques, and for the freedom of his people. The PNV, the party in power in the Basque country since the end of Francoism, he created has moved away from his most controversial ideas but not from his figure.

He was a prolific writer, with over 600 journalism articles, most of them with a propaganda purpose. He liked to shock and provoke, in order to get attention from a society that he deemed unaware of its fate. Overall he was in favour of an ethnic cleansing that would eliminate any trace of Spanish blood in order to restore the imaginary pureness of the Basque race.

There are three key aspects of Sabino Arana's political figure:

He was an innovator, being the first to proclaim that the Basques are a separate race.
He was not a conventional conservative; he strongly opposed slavery (legal in Spanish-held Cuba until ten years before its independence) and defended the right of South African Zulus to their land.
He was an infatigable worker, taking action in many areas; he learned the Basque language as an adult, undertook a number of activities to promote the Basque language and culture, created a political movement, and inventing the symbols (flag, anthem, country name) used to this day by Basque nationalists.

During his time in prison he proposed the foundation of a "League of pro-Spain Basques", which would have been in favor of Basque autonomy within Spain. It is still unclear whether he had sincerely changed his views or he was trying to improve the conditions of his imprisonment. His death left the question unanswered and neither his brother Luis nor the party followed through with his proposal.

These articles were made in his first ideology as latter he joined several non Basque politicians as Ramon de la Sota, who became a former member of his party.

The mixed influence of Sabino Arana in the Basque society

Sabino Arana's ideas are considered to have spawned the nationalist movement. Today, he is viewed as a controversial figure, due to his xenophobia and ethnocentrism and his ideas of a pure race.

The Partido Nacionalista Vasco, holders of the intellectual property of his works, has chosen not to reprint them since 1976, keeping only the more "moderate" part of his message in their charter. On the other hand, some Basques still revere him as the father of the nationalist movement, who managed to start the turnaround of the decay of the Basque language and culture. Many Basque cities have streets named after him.

The estate of his Abando home is now Sabin-Etxea ("Sabino-House"), the EAJ-PNV headquarters.

Jon Juaristi has remarked that perhaps the most influential part of his heritage is the neologistic list of Basque versions of names in his Deun-Ixendegi Euzkotarra ("Basque saint-name collection", published in 1910). Instead of the traditional adaptations of Romance names, he proposed others he made up and that in his opinion were truer to the originals and adapted to the Basque phonology. For example, his brother Luis became Koldobika, from Frankish Hlodwig. The traditional Peru, Pello or Piarres ("Peter") became Kepa from Aramaic כיפא (Kepha). He believed that the suffix -[n]e was inherently feminine, and new names like Nekane ("pain"+ne,"Dolores") or Garbine ("clean"+ne, "Immaculate [Conception]") are frequent among Basque females. Even the name of the son-in-law of the king of Spain is Iñaki Urdangarin, Iñaki being an Arana alternative for Ignatius instead of the Basque traditional Inazio.