Basque Republic - The Plan

The Plan

In this moment, Irujo promoted a Basque National Council (Consejo Nacional de Euzkadi-Euzkadi'ko Batzar Nagusia, formally established in 11 July 1940) inspired by the exile governments and committees forming among European refugees in Britain. Expecting that Francoist Spain would join the Axis in the war, Irujo bet on an Allied victory and tried to establish a provisional authority capable of negotiating a new status for the Basque Country with the British government, the Free French and the eventual Spanish government. He established an alliance with Catalan nationalists in Britain who had formed their own Catalan National Council. He planned to have the south of the Pyrenees divided between a Basque state and a Catalan one and so presented a joint declaration on 18 January 1941 before the British minister of State.

He redacted a "foreproject for a Constitution of the Basque Republic". It would be an independent state as a democratic republic. Its territory would cover that of the Kingdom of Navarre under Sancho the Greater, excluding the French Basque country to gain the support of Charles de Gaulle. Its limits would be:

...on the North the Pyrenees and the Bay of Biscay, on the Easte the Gállego river, on the South the Ebro river until Gallur and the water divisory between the Ebro and the Duero basins from Moncayo on the whole extension of both vertients, and on the West cape Ajo (Peña Cantábrica).

Title I, Article 5.

This would include areas of Burgos, Cantabria, Rioja and Aragon whose Basqueness was at most historic and where Basque nationalism was inexistent.

The Basque state would be relatively interventionist, protectionist and paternalist, following the social doctrine of the Catholic Church as assumed by the Basque Nationalist Party. Article 52 of title V marked the requirements for the President of the Republic:

...male, citizen of the state, son of parents of Basque nature and ancestry, counting at least thirty years of age and being in the full enjoyment of his civil and political rights.

An additional chapter opened a chance to join other territories:

The Cortes are authorized to stipulate with democratic state representations of the continental Basque Country and the peninsular nations, the pacted regime of a confederal character que suits the right of the Basque Nation...

Irujo would later try to negotiate with the Free French the creation of a Basque Battalion, dissolved formally in 23 May 1942.