On the occasion of the last Aberri Eguna, Andoni Ortuzar made it very clear what – according to him – the Basque Country wants today: “To be a powerful and recognized European nation” and not just “an unknown neighborhood on the outskirts of I don’t know where “. The “place” is obviously Spain, “la que no tiene number, la que a nadie le interesa, la perdición de los hombres, la que miente cuando besa”, using the verses of Rafael de León and Antonio Quintero, set to music by Manuel Quiroga and that Juanita Reina sang in the couplet Yo soy esa, later revisited by Isabel Pantoja. So that, today, Euskadi is a “neighbourhood” on the “outskirts” of I don’t know what “place”. And I like this “neighborhood”, these “outskirts” and this “place”! Maybe it’s that I see them with a good eye, while Ortuzar looks at them with a bias, fed up with mythologies and full of historical urgency.
But this fact is not a singular anecdote, but has a general value, since it very well defines the attitude of the separatists towards Spain: disdain, rejection and chatter. Three ingredients that, mixed and stirred, are a high-grade cocktail, capable of causing severe drunkenness in those who drink it. So much so that it can deprive them of a correct perception of reality and an adjusted assessment of the forces present.
Perhaps it is this cocktail that prevents him from recognizing that the Basque “neighborhood” is, luckily for him, on the “outskirts” of a Spanish “place”, which pays for the services provided. Thus, recently, the PNB pledged the support of its five deputies in Congress to the investiture of Pedro Sánchez as President of the Government, in exchange for the transfer of the management of the economic regime of the Social Security, one of the great demands of the Basque government, of great symbolic and operational significance, and which will require a new compensatory transfer to the Basque Country, which will be negotiated bilaterally and which will involve complex technical adjustments. This means that it will be the Basque government that will be in charge of paying the pensions, and it will be its officials that will decide whether a person is entitled to a pension or not, so with all this it will put its stamp on the service
In other words, the Basque “neighbourhood” has paid the Spanish “place” for the service provided to the PSOE. And it has been a good operation for the “neighborhood”, because the transfer is permanent, while Sánchez’s presidency is subject to term, despite his Homeric resilience. It would not have been the same if the “outskirts” where the Basque “neighborhood” was located were those of a “place” that is further north, that has the shape of a hexagon and that boasts of having natural borders.
There is a division of opinion on whether, with this venal advance, the single box of Social Security has been broken or not. I don’t know, what I do know are two things:
1) That Basque pensions are the highest in Spain: 1,351.1 euros on average in 2022, compared to 908.7 in Extremadura, due to higher salaries; and that, with this transfer, the bases are established for the creation of differences in contributory pensions.
2) There has been no attempt to establish an independent Basque Social Security, for the simple reason that, as of now, it would not be acceptable, since the Basque pensions have a deficit of 4,300 million, an amount that has doubled in the last decade, since the Basque Country is one of the oldest regions with fewer workers per pensioner.
In short: the Basque “neighborhood” is not doing so badly in the Spanish “place”. It is true that we do not know if it would reach higher levels of well-being by being a “powerful European nation”. Maybe yes or maybe not. Those in the “neighborhood” will decide whether to try when the time comes, which, at the rate we’re going, will come sooner or later with the invaluable progressive support. I do not venture to anticipate a prognosis. I only know that, before deciding, those in the “neighborhood” will do the math. It couldn’t be any other way: Deusto prints character. And I also don’t dare to imagine with what mood the show will be viewed from the “place”, although perhaps there will be those who will say that they aspire to stop being cuckolded and pay for the drink.
