The Spanish Supreme Court has only needed one day to publish the first sentence of the trial against ANV and EHAK. This morning, the 61st Room of the SC has announced that ANV is being banned and dissolved according to the Spanish Law of Political Parties, which allows the banning of the political parties who don’t publicly condemn ETA’s activity; that’s why Batasuna was banned, and also ANV, as “continuator of Batasuna”, though it was already created since 1930.
ANV-EAE (Acción Nacionalista Vasca – Eusko Abertzale Ekintza – Basque Nationalist Action) was created in 1930, as a reaction to the PNV’s attitude, who was going to join a conservative party: Comunión Nacionalista Vasca (Basque Nationalist Communion). So it was born in the early 1930s as the first Basque patriotic, social-democratic and republican political party. It worked in the 1936’s first Basque Government and in the Spanish Republican Government as a member of the Popular Front and during the Spanish Civil War it played a little but important role in the anti-fascist front in Euskal Herria (still fighting in some Spanish provinces when Basque front was defeated).
During 40 years of Franco’s dictatorship, EAE-ANV was in hiding. The hiding and exile made ANV take more radical politics, and in the 1960s it was already an indepentist and socialist party. Later, when Franco died and the transition to democracy began, ANV played a role in the creation of Basque patriotic and socialist coalition Herri Batasuna (People’s Union) in 1978. After HB left its activities, Euskal Herritarrok (Basque Citizens) was created; when this coalition decided to become a unique political party (Batasuna) in 2000, ANV decided not to continue working on this.
However, in 2003 Batasuna was banned, and many different and legal political parties were created or decided to work with Batasuna’s political programme (Sozialista Abertzaleak, HZ, Aukera Guztiak,…) and all of them were also banned. In 2005, EHAK (Communist Party of the Basque Homelands) got 9 seats (12′5 %) in the Basque autonomic election. In 2007, ANV appeared as the Basque Patiotic Left Wing’s representation for the municipal elections, but the half of its circunscriptions were banned.
This year, on the 8th of February, Balatasar Garzón, the judge of the National Audience, began a trial against ANV and EHAK, banning their activities for 3 years, provissionally. But today, in the morning of September 16th, ANV has been banned and dissolved, because of its “relationship with Batasuna and its -supposed- colaboration with ETA”. Its material and economic properties belong now to Spanish state.
It’s shameful. Those parties which worked and fought defending the Republic in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) are being banned while the fascist and racist parties that supported a dictatorship for 40 years (Falange) or its continuators (Alianza Nacional, Democracia Nacional, E-2000) are still legal.
FREEDOM FOR THE BASQUE COUNTRY!!
STOP THIS STATE OF EMERGENCY!!!!
