Sunday, January 9, 2022

There are news and interviews that do not deserve to go unnoticed. I will speak of two, which appeared the last week of December. One is that of Fernando García Cortazar who has just published "Landscapes of the History of Spain" where he claims the urgency of cultural patriotism, Spanish of course. An active member of "Basta Ya" and of the "Ermua Forum", he equates Bildu and the PNV in his work in an attempt to forget what happened with ETA while attacking nationalism, saying that it is "an ideology that produces supremacists like Dr. Robert in Catalonia or true neurasthenic and atrabiliary like Sabino Arana in the Basque Country. Separatism has not gone through the court of history." He does not speak, logically, of the other courts. He says more things from his supremacism, he is a Spanish supremacist, being also a Jesuit and Bilbao. The Jesuit thing should force him to be more respectful and perhaps more charitable and less of a liar, and the Bilbao thing should not gratuitously attack the history of the Basque people that he manipulates. If Sabino Arana had been half of what he says and had not created a party of values ​​that connects with society and history, the PNV would not have lasted 126 years, nor would it govern today in all institutions, something that his beloved Spanish right , with Cánovas at the helm, has never succeeded. Out of a certain respect, I do not reproduce the opinions that colleagues and friends of Deustoeste Cid Campeador deserve, from Pancorbo on down, because in Euzkadi he never shows his face or submits to any debate. His last appearance on Trece Televisión, I don't know how the Episcopal Conference maintains such unchristian television, was to sell his book and he ended up talking about the year-end grapes.

Another such dancer is Antonio Elorza who, with a striking headline, told us that "The PNV cannot be understood without San Ignacio." At first glance, it could even be a compliment, but nothing could be further from the truth, since he defends in his new book “The Invention of Basque Nationalism” that Jeltzale pragmatism is rooted in the Society of Jesus.” The PNV cannot be understood without Saint Ignatius of Loyola. Sabino is not understood, nor Arzalluz, nor José Antonio Aguirre. I would say that even Otegi cannot be understood without Saint Ignatius. He would be scandalized and say: Jesuit me?. But the flexibility to say yes and no at the same time is there, in the background”. For this Complutense professor of Azkoitia origin, the key to everything is that there are invented myths that work, such as fuerism. ”In the same way that ETA's violence was not invented in 1959 but has a common thread. In my opinion, dispensing with the dose of political hatred that underpins Sabino Arana's nationalism to explain what later became ETA is like trying to say that jihadism has nothing to do with the Koran or Nazism with Hitler."

Reading this and seeing the books of these people in all the strategic places enlightens us about an offensive that continues and that we do not take into consideration as it was done before. ”Birds that litter their own nest” Xabier Arzalluz described them like this, but birds that do immense damage in the face of an astonishing passivity of the nationalist world that is also frightening. It would seem that there is more and more fear of the printed word, of refuting lies, of dismantling word by word all this immense garbage that is not sustained from any point of view but that remains there, like COVID, waiting to infect the staff, since These attacks put on a platter by means extraordinarily hostile to Basque nationalism are undervalued.

And since García Cortazar is a Jesuit and Elorza speaks to us about Saint Ignatius, I cannot help echoing what was said by another Jesuit, Pope Francis, and look where I agree with him. It doesn't surprise me that Yolanda Diez wanted to be with him as we were as the Basque Group in the Vatican. In the Hall of Blessings, on Christmas Eve, he told the blessings of God is Christ to his own, to the Curia. On this occasion, the Pope stressed that this time seems to have forgotten humility, or to have relegated it to a form of moralism, emptying it of the overwhelming force it possesses "and indicated to the Curia that the word humility is the one that could help them the most". He was telling them that they are a bunch of arrogant and vain people. Francis gave them the example of Naaman, the general suffering from leprosy who appears in the Old Testament, to indicate that "each one must have the courage to take off their own armor, to get rid of the clothes of their own role, of social recognition, of shine, of the glory of this world and assume its very humility. “We are all lepers. Lepers waiting to be healed" the Pope pointed out to the prelates whom he reminded that "arrogance is the opposite of humility" and that "without humility we cannot find God or experience salvation" and that "without humility we cannot find our neighbor ”.

I don't know what the stupefied monsignors of the Curia thought when he so graphically called them lepers or what García Cortazar would think of such a good description, which fits him like a glove, but the fact is that the current lack of values ​​in this society means that politics is lost if it is justified only in the organization, order, theories, discussions, skills, empty marketing, and ignores the affective, spiritual ties that makes human beings love a country or an idea and for that it is Politics must be subordinated to an ideal.

a bronze rock

"My dad wants to be cremated and he wants me to throw his ashes in the ocean but what if he doesn't know how to swim???" 🤣🤣🤣

— b 🤍 Sun Apr 18 16:07:52 +0000 2021

Last Sunday, December 26, at the EBB he deposited a floral offering before the tomb of Joseba Rezola in Ordizia. It has been 50 years since his death in Donibane Lohizune. Buried in a borrowed tomb, as soon as the Basque government recovered in 1980 he returned to his town escorted by the Ertzaintza in an emotional ceremony. In 1989 Lehendakari Ardanza, Uzturre and Arzalluz, together with his widow Aurora, placed a plaque on the façade of the house where he was born. Berroci's first class was named after him. But time passes and memories fade.

Rezola was a giant. Right arm of Lehendakari Agirre during the war, being the highest authority in Defense, he stayed with his gudaris in Santoña. While in prison he lost his Maiteder's daughter in Kanbo when she was two months old, a tragedy that was always an open wound. His cellmates used to say that he remained undaunted when they sentenced him to death, but when he lost his daughter, his tears were disconsolate. But he went on and on. He leaves prison in 1943 and is exiled more than 300 km from his native Ordizia and in Madrid with Uzturre, Koldo Mitxelena, Pello Mari Irujo, Andima Ibiñagabeitia and several others, he creates an information network to provide information to the allies, they arrest him, he escapes and is appointed President of the Junta de Resistencia and the Delegate Council, bodies where all the parties that were fighting against the dictatorship were. Promoter of Radio Euzkadi of Bayonne and Venezuela, his obsession was information, President of Sabindiar Batza, compiles the Complete Works of Sabino Arana, president of the DC Team of the Spanish state, Vice President of the Basque Government at the death of Landaburu and the union man of the entire PNV from his little house on Rue Sopite in Saint Jean de Luz, a house he borrowed and rented in the summer so he could live modestly with his extraordinary Aurora.

I had the immense honor of meeting him and I admired his dedication, his respect for others, his overall criteria, his kindness, his abertzalism exemplified in his life, his Christian courage, his treatment of young people and his determination to answer all the letters, receiving everyone, giving a word of encouragement to those who suffered, because Rezola was a true jelkide, a man of many values ​​and the PNV would do well to remember him each year with a publication, an award, a symbolic act. People like Rezola are the ones who have given character and style to a party that, despite the García Cortázar and Elorza, survives because they always have extraordinary people like Rezola who deny the stupid milongas of these lepers of the pen, as the Pope would say.

And if we believe it, we have to listen to it. He left us saying:

“We must write the history of that generation of anonymous heroes who fought and died for Euzkadi. We cannot leave them in oblivion. They are an example and symbol. Our young people do not have to look outside for heroes for posters, they have them at home, in your family maybe. So brave, so non-conformist, so rebellious, so self-sacrificing, so idealistic, so disciplined as to die in the trenches of our mountains or before the execution squad”. Joseba Rezola”.

The García Cortazars and Antonio Elorza do their destructive work and enjoy a wide base for their disclosure. The problem is that we do not make ours in the dimension that is required. That is why they will continue to dirty their own nest and that is why the memory of Rezola will fade into the mist.