Basque Country (autonomous community)


The Basque Country or Basque Autonomous Community, also officially called Euskadi, is an autonomous community in northern Spain. It includes the Basque provinces of Álava, Biscay, and Guipúzcoa. It surrounds two enclaves, Treviño and Valle de Villaverde.
The Basque Country was granted the status of nationality, attributed by the Spanish Constitution of 1978. The autonomous community is based on the Statute of Autonomy of the Basque Country, a foundational legal document providing the framework for the development of the Basque people on Southern Basque Country. Parallelly, Navarre, which narrowly rejected a joint statute of autonomy in 1932, was granted a separate chartered statute in 1982.
Currently there is no official capital in the autonomous community, but the city of Vitoria-Gasteiz, in the province of Álava, is the de facto capital as the location of the Basque Parliament, the headquarters of the Basque Government, and the residence of the President of the Basque Autonomous Community. The High Court of Justice of the Basque Country has its headquarters in the city of Bilbao. Whilst Vitoria-Gasteiz is the largest municipality in area, with 277 km2, Bilbao is the largest in population, with a population of 347,342, located in the province of Biscay within a conurbation of 875,552 people.
The term Basque Country may also refer to the larger cultural region, the home of the Basque people, which includes the autonomous community.

Geography

The following provinces make up the autonomous community:
The Basque Country borders Cantabria and the Burgos province to the west, the Bay of Biscay to the north, France and Navarre to the east and La Rioja to the south. The territory has three distinct areas, which are defined by the two parallel ranges of the Basque Mountains. The main range of mountains forms the watershed between the Atlantic and Mediterranean basins. The highest point of the range is in the Aizkorri massif. The three areas are:

Atlantic Basin

Formed by many valleys with short rivers that flow from the mountains to the Bay of Biscay, like the Nervión, Urola or Oria.
The coast is rough, with high cliffs and small inlets. The main features of the coast are the Bilbao Abra Bay and the Estuary of Bilbao, the Urdaibai estuary and the Bidasoa-Txingudi Bay that forms the border with France.

Middle section

Between the two mountain ranges, the area is occupied mainly by a high plateau called Llanada Alavesa, where the capital Vitoria-Gasteiz is located. The rivers flow south from the mountains to the Ebro River. The main rivers are the Zadorra River and Bayas River.

Ebro Valley

From the southern mountains to the Ebro is the so-called Rioja Alavesa, which shares the Mediterranean characteristics of other Ebro Valley zones. Some of Spain's production of Rioja wine takes place here.

Plaiaundi Ecology Park

The Plaiaundi Ecology Park is a 24-hectare coastal wetland lying where the Bidasoa River meets the sea in the Bay of Biscay. The nature of Plaiaundi consists of a wide variety of flora and fauna.

Climate

The Basque mountains form the watershed and also mark the distinct climatic areas of the Basque Country:
The northern valleys, in Biscay and Gipuzkoa and also the valley of Ayala in Álava, are part of Green Spain, where the oceanic climate is predominant, with its wet weather all year round and moderate temperatures. Precipitation average is about 1200 mm.
The middle section is influenced more by the continental climate, but with a varying degree of the northern oceanic climate. This gives warm, dry summers and cold, snowy winters.
The Ebro valley has a pure continental climate: winters are cold and dry and summers very warm and dry, with precipitation peaking in spring and autumn. Due to the proximity to the ocean however, the Ebro part of the Basque Country is moderate compared to areas further inland.

Demographics

Almost half of the autonomous community's 2,227,684 inhabitants live in the Bilbao metropolitan area, almost the entirety of the province of Biscay. Six of the ten most populous cities in the region form part of Bilbao's conurbation, which is widely known as Greater Bilbao.
With 28.2% of the Basque Country population born outside this region, immigration is crucial to Basque demographics. Over the 20th century most of this immigration came from other parts of Spain, typically from Galicia or Castile and León. Over recent years, sizeable numbers of this population have returned to their birthplaces and most immigration to the Basque country now comes from abroad, chiefly from South America.
As of 2024, there are 295,902 foreigners in the Basque Country, constituting 13.3% of the population.
NationalityPopulation
Morocco

Major cities

Languages

Spanish and Basque are co-official in all territories of the autonomous community. The Basque-speaking areas in the modern-day autonomous community are set against the wider context of the Basque language, spoken to the east in Navarre and the French Basque Country. The whole Basque-speaking territory has experienced both decline and expansion in its history. The Basque language experienced a gradual territorial contraction throughout the last nine centuries, and very severe deterioration of its sociolinguistic status for much of the 20th century due to heavy immigration from other parts of Spain, the virtual nonexistence of Basque-language schooling, and national policies implemented by the different Spanish régimes. After the advent of the Statute of Autonomy of the Basque Country in 1982 following Franco's death, this reductive trend was gradually reversed thanks to the Basque-language schools and the new education system. Basque has always had a strong presence in most of Gipuzkoa, central and eastern Biscay and the northern edge of Álava, while most Basque speakers in western Biscay and the rest of Álava are second-language speakers.
The 2006 sociolinguistic survey of all Basque provinces showed that in 2006 of all people aged 16 and above in the Basque Autonomous Community, 30.1% were fluent Basque speakers, 18.3% passive speakers and 51.5% did not speak Basque. The percentage of Basque speakers was highest in Gipuzkoa and lowest in Álava. These results represent an increase on previous years. The highest percentage of speakers was now found in the 16–24 age range, while only 25.0% of those 65 and older reported speaking Basque.
Ten years later, the sociolinguistic survey showed that in 2016 of all people aged 16 and above in the Basque Autonomous Community, 33.9% were fluent Basque speakers, 19.1% passive speakers and 47% did not speak Basque. The proportion of Basque speakers was again highest in Gipuzkoa and lowest in Álava.
The 2021 sociolinguistic survey found that 36.2% of the population above age 16 spoke Basque, 18.6% were passive speakers and 45.3% did not speak Basque. In Gipuzkoa 51.8% spoke the language, in Biscay 30.6%, and in Álava 22.4% did.

History

The forerunner of the Gernika Statute was the short-lived Statute of Autonomy for Álava, Gipuzkoa and Biscay, which came to be enforced in October 1936 just in Biscay, with the Spanish Civil War already raging, and which was automatically abolished when the Spanish Nationalist troops occupied the territory.
Before the Spanish Constitution of 1978 and its system of autonomous communities, these three provinces were known in Spanish as the Provincias Vascongadas since 1833. The political structure of the new autonomous community is defined in the Gernika Statute, which was approved by a majority in a referendum held on 25 October 1979. Nowadays it is one of the most decentralised regions in the world; in this regard it has been described as having "more autonomy than just about any other in Europe" by The Economist.
File:Churruca death.jpg|thumb|Churruca's death at the Battle of Trafalgar. Basque navigators were key for the navy of Castile and later the Spanish Navy.
As regards the bounds to the Spanish Constitution, Basque nationalists cite the fact that in the 1978 Spanish Constitution referendum, which was passed with a majority of votes and a poor turnout in this area, the Basque Country had the highest abstention. To this, the "NO" vote in this referendum was also higher in the Basque Country than in the rest of the state. All in all, many Basques believe that they are not bound to a constitution that they never endorsed.
The Statute of Autonomy of the Basque Country is an organic law but powers have been devolved gradually during decades according to re-negotiations between the Spanish and the consecutive Basque regional governments to reach an effective implementation, while the transfer of many powers are still due and has always been a matter of heated political discussion. Basque nationalists often put down this limitation in the devolution of powers to concessions made to appease the military involved in the 23-F coup d'état attempt.
In 2003, the governing Basque Nationalist Party proposed to alter this statute through the Ibarretxe Plan. The Ibarretxe bill was approved by absolute majority in the Basque Parliament after much discussion, as it was subject to lengthy legal objections—on the grounds that it contradicts the Spanish Constitution—that were ultimately overcome. Despite its mandate of the majority of the autonomous Parliament, the main two parties in Spain imposed a blockade on a discussion of the Plan in the Spanish Parliament, resulting in its rejection for debate by a large majority of that Parliament in January 2005.
Since the first autonomic cabinet, the Basque Nationalist Party has held office in the Basque Autonomous Community except for a 2009–2012 term, led by Patxi López. The current Basque prime minister is Iñigo Urkullu, also a member of the Basque Nationalist Party. Despite ETA's ceasefire in 2011, this autonomous community shows the highest rate of police per 100 inhabitants in Western Europe by 2018. As agreed with the Spanish premier Zapatero in 2004, Urkullu intends to increase the figure of ertzainas, while the Spanish PP's Ministry of Interior rejects a pullback of Spanish police bodies, as demanded by the large majority of the political forces in the autonomous parliament, even pointing to an increase of the Guardia Civil in the future.