Autonomy Statute 79: The Basque Country's Path to Self-Governance

24: Autonomy Statute 79

Series of articles of the BAS 79 (still in use). Legal text signed by Adolfo Suarez. Author: the autonomous government of the region. First level.

Back to the end of Francoism and transition. After Franco’s death, people in the government changed. Suarez was introduced as a co-operator, and he started making some reforms. The first one was the Political Reform Bill that was submitted to a referendum. Once it was approved, that was the opening to democracy. Moreover, elections were held. In the central government, UCD was the winner. In the case of the Basque Country, PNV began writing the 1978 Constitution. Democratic. It recognized national sovereignty. Nation: constitutional monarchy with two chambers: congress/senate, three powers were divided. It also accepted the creation of autonomous entities inside Spain. These autonomies could be of three different types. The historical autonomies (the ones that had autonomy in the past), case of Catalonia and the Basque Country. Due to the antecedents, they were the first ones obtaining the autonomy statute. The second type was of those that had an economic interest. Apart from these other reasons. In this context, the BAS elaborated and approved.

According to the text, the Basque Country had autonomy inside the Spanish State (not independence). In addition, the territories that formed the Basque Country’s autonomous region were Alava, Gipuzcoa, and Biscay. In the text, Navarre was referred to as a possible member in case they decided to join. With that, they wanted to answer the controversial beliefs about Navarre’s condition. Furthermore, the provincial institutions were also mentioned because of the tradition Basque Provinces had of having their own institutions. The most important institutions were, for example, the Diputaciones, which were in charge of all the economic activity such as collecting taxes. The political policy was also mentioned in the statute, recognizing that Basque was going to be the official language together with the Spanish language. So, it can be said that co-officiality was the characteristic of the Basque language. The text also recognized the possibility of recovering some things they had previously, such as the economic concert. It is also mentioned one of the first things that was transferred from the Central government to the Basque Country: the control of public order with a local police called Ertzaintza.

The statute came into force in 79 and it continues in use nowadays. The transferences were enlarged with time, and some important fields such as education, health service, tax collection were given to the Basque institutions. The party that has been leading in the Basque government since it was approved is PNV, except during a short period (the socialism obtained the majority and the Lehendakari was Patxi Lopez. In the rest of the time PNV.