Earlier Statutes
The Basque provinces maintained a great degree of self-government under their charters (they were called the exempted provinces, that is without royal taxes, without military conscription for the royal army except in defense case,...).
After the Second Carlist War, the Fueros were abolished and substituted by the Ley Paccionada in Navarre (1841) and a diminished foral regime in the three western provinces (1876). After this abolition of the Charters, former laws and customs were largely absorbed into Spanish centralist rule with little regard for regional idiosyncrasies. As a result, attempts were made by Carlists, Basque nationalists and sometimes leftist forces in the Basque region to restore some kind of self-empowerment ("autonomy") that eventually would led to draft at the onset of the Second Spanish Republic a statute for the four Basque provinces, the Statute of Estella. However, it didn't achieve enough support following heated controversy over the validity of the votes and allegations of strong pressures on local representatives to tip the result against the unitarian option (Assembly of Pamplona, 1932).
Another proposal was approved by the Republic already in the Spanish Civil War, but only including the provinces of Gipuzkoa, Biscay and Álava. Its effectivity was limited to the Republic-controlled areas of Biscay and a fringe of Gipuzkoa.
After the surrendering of the Basque Army in 1937, the statute was abolished. However, Francisco Franco allowed the continuation of a limited self-government for Alava and Navarre, thanking their support for his uprising.
It is on the republican statute and the Alavese institutions that the current Statute of Gernika takes its legitimacy.
Read more about this topic: Statute Of Autonomy Of The Basque Country
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