The lehendakari, Iñigo Urkullu, and his party, the PNV, are facing a decisive political course, which will culminate in Basque elections next spring, with the need to offer their best version on two battlefields. In Euskadi, the jeltzales will try to reconnect with Basque society, and their performance in areas such as the management of public services will be essential, especially in relation to the Basque Health Service-Osakidetza. In addition, the PNV is already preparing the negotiation that will take place 400 kilometers from there, around the investiture of Pedro Sánchez. The Basque nationalists will seek that this path serves to reformulate “the State model”, proposing a constitutional convention that assesses a revision of the Magna Carta.
Lehendakari Urkullu used these terms in his first appearance at the political course, which, as every August, took place in the Miramar palace in San Sebastián. The references are expressive of what point the PNV is at, which is looking at the window of opportunity that the reissue of a progressive government can open for it. Although the hypothesis of a possible understanding with the PP has followed the PNV since before the elections on July 23, the Basque nationalists are already on another screen. In the electoral campaign they remarked that support for an investiture by Feijóo would be impossible with Vox in the equation, and this scenario is evident even before the scrutiny concluded. Andoni Ortuzar himself, president of the party, transmitted to the popular leader, on the same day 24, the “refusal of the PNV to start talks in order to facilitate his investiture.”
Nothing has changed since then, even though certain political, media and economic actors have searched, throughout the month of August, for the cracks around a decision that is firm. Urkullu stuck to his institutional role yesterday as president of a PNV-PSE coalition executive, although he remarked that his party has already expressed itself clearly and stressed that “the PP needs Vox at the investiture and will need it at every vote”. The Lehendakari also ruled out meeting with Feijóo before the investiture on the 26th and 27th. He did it taking care of the tone, although stressing that “it is not appropriate”. The PNV does not want to offend the PP and will try to keep the bridges rebuilt since the arrival of the Galician leader, but it only considers supporting the reissue of a progressive executive. There’s no turning back.
The PNV, therefore, thinks about the scenario that will take place after the month of September. The jeltzales are clear about the parameters to which they want to take the negotiation. Iñigo Urkullu offered some clues yesterday. “The political situation of the State raises a question that must be resolved in the coming months. Facing the conformation of majorities in Congress, the support of the nationalist parties of Catalonia, Galicia and Euskadi will be essential. This situation may open up a new opportunity to resolve, through political and institutional dialogue, what the transition did not fully resolve regarding the territorial issue. I am talking about promoting a new state model, which would give a more adequate and fair response to the current reality, ”he indicated.
The lehendakari stressed that “in the Basque Country there is a broad majority that demands greater and better self-government”: “An answer must be given, seeking the greatest possible consensus, as it is included in our government program. We demand a model that provides more entity and capacity to Basque institutions, that allows decisions to be made from a closer environment”.
The PNV considers that the complex parliamentary arithmetic left by 23-J should serve to open the debate on the territorial model and the plurinationality of the State. The jeltzales raise a deep debate, beyond the possible update of the Basque self-government, and Urkullu referred yesterday to the need to convene a constitutional convention, a “body to debate politically around the current Constitution” and whose creation he already proposed in in 2018. “It would allow a debate on its validity, its future, the need or not for changes or the degree of satisfaction it generates,” he said.
In this way, the lehendakari yesterday repositioned the terms around which the political news surrounding the PNV revolves, settled the debate on the hypothetical support for Feijóo and positioned his party in a framework that can benefit him. The jelzale formation, which is experiencing its greatest electoral difficulties in 12 years, aspires to regain prominence in a possible debate on the territorial model, hoisting a possible, although demanding discourse, in which the Basque and Catalan agendas would converge on some points. The PNV thinks about full compliance with the Statute of Gernika, its shielding or the renewal of the self-government framework, but also about “the recognition of the Basque and Catalan national reality” and the “dejudicialization” of the Catalan question.
In a crucial political course for the PNV, with EH Bildu hot on its heels, the party attaches the utmost importance to the political battle that will be waged in Madrid. There, he will seek to accentuate his political identity, somewhat blurred in the eyes of his supporters, and will mark his own profile against a left-wing bloc with which he has many differences.
