Joy has its own rules, it’s not subject to agendas, it is not a slave to its own desires or of others, it has an intrinsic component of spontaneity, it’s there or it’s not. Anger follows a similar pattern. It can’t be said that this week in the Basque Country there has been an explosion of joy, but it is evident that the last few days have been very positive, almost excellent, for this country and for its people. And that has happened, without making a great fuss, serenely, but being conscious of the transcendence of what happened and that it isn’t the fruit of flower of a single day. On the opposing side, the anger on the part of an important sector of the establishment and of Spanish public opinion has also been patent and in some cases even ridiculous. Paradoxically, the majority of these positive news items have come from Spanish judicial authorities, habitual sources of suffering and discomfort for the Basques.

The first big news of the week was the general acquittal on the part of the Spanish National Court of the accused in D3M and Askatasuna. Perhaps the first reaction of these people and their close friends and family wasn’t of jubilation, but rather of relief; and there is no doubt that, being conscious that this same court had recently arbitrarily condemned other Basques, they even made an effort to contain their joy. But the not-guilty verdict, even though it firstly and directly affected all of them, goes far beyond their particular situation. It is an explicit recognition of an injustice that damaged their basic rights. The verdict is emphatic in this sense. It also had a grave repercussion in an electoral result. As a consequence of the judicial actuation against these Basque political formations the results of the last elections in the Basque Autonomous Community were completely altered, which allowed the unionist front to take over the government in Gasteiz. A very serious political consequence, unacceptable in a state of law, but a sign of a political cycle that this week might have closed.

What doesn’t have a positive interpretation is the political vaudeville organized around the figure of the president of the General Council of Judicial Power and of the Supreme Court, Carlos Divar, who finally had to resign once his defense became unsustainable even for his most staunch supporters. This episode represents the decadence in which Spain is immersed, from the economic to the institutional spheres. The bases of the model designed in the Spanish transition are cracking and their crackle is a sign of alert for the exhaustion of a political cycle with too much of a burden from the past.

In the same sense, the runaway crisis in the government of Navarre, which at the bottom is nothing more than evidence of the unviable project of a Navarre isolated from the rest of the Basque Country. A model thought up to counter it is dissipating, and although this doesn’t guarantee that the new scenario will respond to the aspirations of the Basque social majority, in spite of containing an evident danger of recentralization and the loss of freedoms, it opens options of movement and a margin of political maneuver, at the time that it raises the level of demand and responsibility for those who must lead the change.

Sortu means create

Without a doubt the most important news of all was the legalization of Sortu on the part of the Spanish Constitutional Court. Now a process is open in which, just as the very name of the new party of the Abertzale Left says, it is time to create. But not just one party, but a new political culture, different structures, proposals for a distinct time and opportunities where up till now have been were only seen as dangers. They have to be capable of building bridges, not only channels between parties, but avenues in which the people can travel. Because their project must be based on the people. It has been when they have spoken to the citizens instead of to the states or the parties when they have gained the most, when they have grown politically. As has been said before, this is a great responsibility.

All of that in a generally convulsive context, with a systematic crisis that means nothing can be taken for granted. One of the few “advantages” of the banning was that, in their attempt to expel them from the system, they have positioned them as being the only movement that doesn’t have any responsibility for what has happened in the institutions for the last decade of waste and megalomania. They are not an alternation, they are an alternative or they won’t be. And that is what they must create, an alternative for the popular classes, for the industrial framework, for the different sectors, for the people who live and work here.

Creation, just like joy and anger, has its own rules. It is difficult to provoke artificially, but in the appropriate context, it usually rises with force. And, in its dimensions, this is a country given to create. Nothing is left of the “let them invent!” of Unamuno. If they want to make a revolution this must come not only in politics, but in culture, economics and socially. It won’t be easy to get there, but what is in front is, if anything, much more complicated. This is the challenge, this is the change. That is what creating consists of.