This volume develops a novel interdisciplinary theoretical approach to interpret the Basque -Spanish nationalist conflict. It incorporates into sociological analysis the understanding of law put forward by legal realism and legal pluralism in order to answer some of the most pressing problems encountered in historical research on the topic. The study takes the form of a comparative historical analysis that focuses on the historical puzzle produced by the political trajectories of Navarra (from now on Navarre ) and Vascongadas (precursor of todayās Basque Country , formed by the historical territories of Biscay , Gipuzkoa , and Araba-Ćlava ) between 1841 and 1936. Throughout history, the jurisdictional authorities of both territories defended their legitimacy to exercise types and degrees of social power regardless of the social system adopted by the stateās government. During most of the nineteenth century, this defense translated into key influential majorities in both territories defending together a similar concept of the state, the one associated with Carlism , and each territory was thought of as being both Basque and Spanish. In the 1936 military coup, however, the jurisdictional authorities of Navarre and Vascongadas defended different concepts of the state. Navarreās supported the military coup, whereas Vascongadasās stayed loyal to the republican government, with a more ambivalent position in Araba-Ćlava. By that time, the meanings of both āBasqueā and āSpanishā had been reinterpreted, and important differences had emerged between Basque nationalists and Navarreās Carlists, such as Victor Pradera. This split has continued to this day and has reemerged in the contrasting national identities defended by the political parties that have dominated governance in these territories since the reestablishment of democracy in 1978. Basque national identity has been dominant in Euskadi , and a regionalist Spanish nationalism called navarrismo (navarrism ) has been dominant in Navarre (Izu Belloso 2001: 436). Contrasting with these departing trajectories, the traditional interpretations of law have remained similarly influential in both territories. A discussion of those factors that produced the split in the concepts of state associated with these political paths forms the subject of this investigation.
Explaining this historical puzzle is important not only for interpreting the emergence of nationalism but also for analyzing of the history of the state of Spain . Clarifying why large parts of the populations of Vascongadas and Navarre supported Carlism in particular is key for construing the meanings of the social and political conflicts that shaped the formation of the modern state (PĆ©rez-Agote 2006: 57). The diverging paths of Navarre and Vascongadas seem to support modernist interpretations of nationalism, which typically distinguish between two epochs in which the meanings of political action are interpreted differently (Smith 2009: 16). On the one hand, the political choices defended by large parts of the populations of Navarre and Vascongadas up to 1836 are normally associated with pre-modern religious and conservative positions, which clashed with a progressive liberalism attempting to reform the Ancient Regime. On the other, the fact that two rather new and different ideologies became increasingly dominant in each territory between 1876 and 1936, is thought to support the idea that the social changes produced by the industrilization of society led to the development of new political ideologies, such as nationalism. Therefore, the diverging trails of Vascongadas and Navarre support the modernist conviction regarding the modernity of nationalism while simultaneously backing the historical break hypothesized from theories of modernization. Generally, however, historical research on Basque and/or Spanish nationalism , although acknowledging the idiosyncrasies and trajectory of Navarre, tends to focus on the subjects of Spain/Spanish nationalism or Basque Country /Basque nationalism. The origins of these national identities are usually associated with two rather different processes and theoretical or ideological influences. The emergence of the first Spanish nationalism as a form of popular identity is normally linked to the creation of a constitutional state in Spain during the Peninsular War (1808ā1814) (Ćlvarez-Junco 2001: 64ā74). It has been argued that ā1808 is for Spain what 1789 was for Franceā (Moreno Alonso 2010: 12; my translation 1 . I provide the original language of the material that I translate in notes). In contrast, Basque nationalism tends to be associated with the creation of the political party Euzko Alderdi Jeltzalea-Partido Nacionalista Vasco (Basque Nationalist Party. From now on EAJ-PNV) in the 1890s in Biscay in a context of rapid industrialization. It is often presented as a racial, religious, or conservative reaction to the social changes produced by modern industrial society together with the abolition of the fueros (The term fuero comes from the Latin term forum, and among the different meanings attributed to it, there is that of jurisdiction and law (OāCallaghan 2001: xxx; GalĆ”n Lorda 2009: 19); in this context, it refers to the traditional laws of the Basque Country) and the influence of romantic ideas (De la Granja et al. 2011: 143ā144).
A consequence of endorsing such perspectives is that the focus slips away from the political and jurisdictional structures that have been central to the histories of Navarre and Vascongadas and moves toward the terms and concepts used by nationalists themselves. This change generally implies approaching the study of society following concepts and ideas perceived to grant legitimacy to one or another nationalist projectālegitimacy that is implicit or explicitly articulated in legal theory. Hence, law tends to be taken for granted, and the influence that legal thought exercises in sociological analysis tends to be overlooked.
Modern legal scholarship has been significantly dominated by two main perspectives, natural law and legal positivism . They differ in their definitions of law . According to natural law, law tends to be defined in relation to a normative claim. There are good and there are bad legal orders. Legal contexts have been evaluated in relation to different preferences, including religious ideas and rational thought. In contrast, legal positivists define law in relation to sets of institutional relations in which law exists. Positive law, or law per se, is only the law occurring in sovereign and politically independent states in which the sovereign authority legislates and the bulk of society obeys. There are no good or bad laws; there is proper positive law, and there are other kinds of somehow inferior or improper types of laws. These dominant approaches to conceive of law have together, for different reasons, dismissed and/or denied the validity and meanings of some recurrent legal and jurisdictional conflicts in premodern European states, including the interpretations of law traditionally made from Vascongadas and Navarre . These meanings are invalidated for two different reasons. Because they were largely justified in history, custom, or religion rather than rationality and utilitarianism, or because some of these claims questioned the sovereignty of the authority of the state. Thus, political action during the studied processes is rarely thought to include a justified legal dispute about legitimacy and sovereignty of one or another jurisdictional authority to legislate and exercise types and degrees of social powers. Thus, jurisdictional conflict is stripped away from its meanings. Meaning is supposed to derive not from legal theory but from social and political theory. This usually leads to the sovereignty and legitimacy of state authorities being taken for granted. In social science, this tendency to equate society and the state has been referred to as methodological nationalism (Chernilo 2006), and alternative approaches to understand modernity, such as the theory of multiple modernities (Eisenstadt 2000), have been proposed to account for the more complex social realities making up modern industrial societies.
This book endorses a different interpretation of law , one put forward from the alternative legal perspectives of legal realism and legal pluralism . They propose an empirical and critical understanding of law. Law is defined neither in relation to state authority nor in relation to the establishment of a qualitatively distinct kind of law. Instead, law is understood as a method utilized by people to order social interactions, from granting recognition, to establishing relationships or resolving conflicts (Berman 1983). The correspondence between state and law that modern legal thought has promoted is questioned in light of the histories of legal relations of European states. The history of law is not to be understood as the study of the development of different types of law in the modern state. The history of law needs to describe what kinds of legal relationships have existed and explain their social effects (Benton 2002). Incorporating a critical and empirical understanding of law into sociological theory produces a broader and richer analytical framework from which the meanings of jurisdictional action during processes of modernization can be interpreted in relation to processes of state formation. The taken-for-granted and unquestioned tendency to locate sovereignty and legitimacy with the entity of the state is understood to be a product of modern legal thought.
The theory chapters (three and four), explore some of the ways in which modern legal thought influences modernist interpretations of nationalism . This influence of modern legal thought especially affects the meanings of political action during the nineteenth century. Reactions to state constitutionalism are not to be uniquely read in relation to dichotomies, such as progressive versus conservative, scientific versus religious, or urban vers...