Politics
While there is no independent Basque state, Spain's autonomous community of the Basque Country, made up of the provinces of Álava (Araba), Vizcaya (Bizkaia) and Guipúzcoa (Gipuzkoa), is primarily a historical consequence and an answer to the wide autonomy claim of the residents.
Navarre has a separate statute of autonomy, also based on the historical medieval charters. Until recently, Basque only survived in the Northern part of Navarre in the areas designated as Basque speaking or mixed in Navarrese law. Questions of political, linguistic and ethnic allegiance and identity are highly complex in Navarre. Politically some Basque nationalists would like to integrate with the Autonomous Basque Community but this currently is not the view of the majority of the people of Navarre.
The Northern Basque Country today does not exist as a formal political entity and is officially simply part of the French department of Pyrénées Atlantiques, centered in Béarn. In recent years the number of mayors of the region supporting the creation of a separate Basque department has grown to 63,87%. So far, their attempts have been unsuccessful.
Read more about this topic: Basque People
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“Of course politics is an interesting and engrossing thing. It offers no immutable laws, nearly always prevaricates, but as far as blather and sharpening the mind go, it provides inexhaustible material.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“While you’re playing cards with a regular guy or having a bite to eat with him, he seems a peaceable, good-humoured and not entirely dense person. But just begin a conversation with him about something inedible, politics or science, for instance, and he ends up in a deadend or starts in on such an obtuse and base philosophy that you can only wave your hand and leave.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“Beware the politically obsessed. They are often bright and interesting, but they have something missing in their natures; there is a hole, an empty place, and they use politics to fill it up. It leaves them somehow misshapen.”
—Peggy Noonan (b. 1950)