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Jose Antonio Aguirre y Lekube A Basque Professor at Columbia University by Prof. Gorka Aulestia, University of Deusto It is not an easy task to describe perhaps the most charismatic of all the Basque nationalist politicians born in this century. I am speaking of Jose Antonio Agirre, standard-bearer and implementer of the political plans of his teacher and guide, Sabino Arana. Both were born in Bilbao (Bizkaia), both studied in the same school in Orduña, and both made a great effort to learn Basque. They were both in Larriñaga prison and in exile, and they both filled glorious pages in the history and culture of Euskal Herria. This article is about Agirre, who had so much in common with his hero. His Childhood Agirre was born, on March 6, 1904, in Bilbao one hundred days after Arana, the founder of the Basque Nationalist Party, died in Sukarrieta (Bizkaia). He was the oldest of ten children. His parents, Teodoro and Bernardina, were Gipuzkoan. His father, a lawyer, was born in Bergara and his mother in Mutriku. Jose Antonio was baptized in Santos Juanes (Bilbao). From earliest childhood he attended the first Bilbao ikastola located in the Plaza Nueva. He spent a great deal of time in Bergara where he improved his Basque and was a soprano in the acolyte choir of the parish church of San Pedro. Later he studied music and the violin. His love of music would last all his life. His Studies Agirre attended high school with the Jesuit Fathers in Orduña where he forgot almost all of his Basque, but with perseverance he recovered it later. His father died in 1920 when Jose Antonio was finishing high school, and he promised his pregnant mother that he would be a father to his ten siblings, a promise he kept throughout his life. In 1925 he earned his degree in Law at the University of Deusto, and in 1926 he fulfilled his military service in the Garellano Regiment. Jose Antonio was not a brilliant student, but he did well enough in the subjects that interested him. However he stood out because of his human qualities and his love of sports, especially soccer. He played inside right for Athletic of Bilbao and helped the team become the champions of Spain. When his studies ended he had to give up his sports activities and went to work as an attorney for the family-owned factory, Chocolates Bilbainos, where he made a name for himself because of his concern for the workers. He introduced a series of social and salary reforms in the workplace. A Man of Commitment Working for a factory was not what Agirre wanted to do with his life, however, and he opened a law office in Bilbao where he dealt with labor problems, union matters, and political questions. A devout Christian, he combined this work with responsibilities as president of the Catholic Action Group of Bizkaia and director of a study group in Las Arenas. He was one of the founders of AVASC (Agrupación Vasca de Acción Social Cristiana: Basque Group for Christian Social Action). Through this group he met men who were important to Basque culture and nationalism, such as “Aitzol” and Alberto Onaindia. He also took part in the creation of the Basque cultural societies Elai-Alai, Saski-Naski, Euskerea, and Txistulari. Along with Jesús María Leizaola who would later become his right hand man, he entered politics, affiliating himself with the PNV (Basque Nationalist Party). He soon had a reputation as a likeable man of integrity, simplicity and responsibility and as a convincing orator. Those were difficult years for democracy in Europe. The Nazi movement was advancing in Hitler’s Germany, and Benito Mussolini ruled as a tyrant after 1922. In Euskal Herria life was hard under the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera (1923-1930) who rejected Basque nationalism and the statutory dreams of the Basque people. Mayor and Parliamentarian Jose Antonio followed those events with concern but with optimism for the future. He was at the time mayor of Getxo. He missed no occasion to speak publicly. He wanted young Basques to be studious. He spoke to workers of their rights. He tried to make women see their role in the future of Euskadi. Primo de Rivera’s Spanish dictatorship finally fell in January of 1930. On the morning of April 14, 1931, Eibar proclaimed the Spanish Republic and our young mayor of Getxo did the same hours later in the name of his party. Agirre was a born organizer. Within the PNV, almost continually in conflict, he stanched wounds and united personal wills. On July 14, 1931, the Cortes Constituyentes (Constituent Courts) were formed and Agirre took part as a parliamentarian within the small Basque minority group. Those were convulsive years during which religion was offended even in the Cortes. The Basques were insulted and jeered, their language euskara was mocked, and little by little what started out as a breath of liberating air became a disappointment for Agirre and many Basques. Faced with parliamentarians of more advanced years armed with science, like Unamuno, Ortega y Gasset, Besteiro, Alcala Zamora, Azaña, Prieto, and Gil Robles, 27-year-old Agirre broke the mold of the two irreconcilable Spains by speaking of a New Spain of autonomous nations. He declared himself Catholic and nationalist, and developed a reputation as an able parliamentary negotiator. But in response to his political demands, the Republic sent the Guardia Civil to break up the meeting between parliamentarians and Basques beneath the Tree of Gernika. In 1932 the Jesuits were expelled from Spain, as were the Jews and the Moors centuries before, thereby incurring more disfavor. Jose Antonio opposed Madrid in this matter. On the personal level, Agirre married on July 8, 1933 in the Basilica of Begoña. With his wife María Zabala, he had three children, Aintzane, Joseba, and Iñaki, born in Bilbao, Paris, and New York respectively. Agirre’s health deteriorated greatly during 1932 and 1933, so much so that on July 4, 1933 he stepped down as mayor of Getxo. In 1934, in spite of his parliamentary immunity, he was imprisoned at Larriñaga, but he was not cowed by the experience. His people beaten, slandered, persecuted, and imprisoned, the young representative began to demand the Statute [of Autonomy] and to speak of Euskadi’s aspirations for sovereignty. In 1935 he spoke in euskara before an international forum at a Conference on Nationalities in Geneva. That same year he published his book Entre la libertad y la revolución in which he told of his political experiences during the five years of the Spanish Republic. The Civil War The Spanish Civil War broke out on July 18, 1936. Agirre acquitted himself well during the conflict. On October 1, 1936 the Spanish Cortes approved the Basque Country’s Statute of Autonomy. On October 7 Agirre offered his life to the service of Euskadi in the Basilica of Begoña, and in Gernika he was elected President of the Basque Autonomous Government, with three-quarters of his territory in the hands of Franco’s troops. The new lehendakari and his government, composed of a group of young politicians, were obliged to take on three dangerous and nearly impossible tasks: maintaining resistance in an unevenly matched war; being the leaders of all Basques with a multicolor government that did not skimp in its efforts or sacrifices to unite all the Basque political forces; and organizing a small nation with its own army, passports, and money. The war was lost, and thus began the exile and exodus of more than 150,000 Basques. The lehendakari was forced to flee Euskadi in July of 1937, only one year into the war. He would never set foot on his native soil again. From Trucios, the last little village in Bizkaia, Agirre wrote these heartfelt lines full of confidence and hope: “The territory may have been conquered; but the soul of the Basque People has not; nor will it ever be.” In Exile An enormous task awaited Agirre in France. He had to organize the Basques in exile, regroup families, create children’s colonies, maintain contact with the Basque diaspora, escape the Gestapo and assure his own survival. The Gestapo had arrested his friend Companys, president of the Generalitat de Catalunya, in France, to send him to Spain to be executed in Barcelona. On May 8, 1940, Agirre moved from France to Belgium. There he found his mother who had been fined 3 million pesetas by the Franco authorities. Two days later Hitler’s troops invaded the Low Countries and surprised the lehendakari in Belgium. Misfortune piled upon misfortune, and his sister Encarna was killed in the Nazi bombing of La Panne. The Falangists of the Spanish consulate rubbed their hands in anticipation of capturing a big fish, the president of the Basques. Thus began the great odyssey described by Agirre in his book Escape Via Berlin, a chronicle of his fight for freedom. In it he says, “Our entire history is nothing but our people's most constant, persistent struggle for freedom.” From the beginning of the Second World War (October 1939) Agirre urged free Basques to support the Allied cause. “We are fighters in this war.” He was the best symbol of a man fighting for freedom. He crossed the German front lines and hid in the Jesuit school St. Francis Xavier in Brussels. When the Gestapo began to register the convents in Brussels, he fled to Antwerp. Thanks to a false passport provided by the Panamanian consul, Agirre became “Dr. Alvarez Lastra,” citizen of Panama, completing his transformation with eyeglasses and a beautiful moustache. Later, he decided the best way to throw the Gestapo off his track was to hide in the wolf’s den, so he traveled to Berlin on January 7, 1941, and lived close by the Chancellery of the Reich for more than four months. After being reunited with his family, he managed to travel to Sweden on April 30. New problems awaited “Alvarez” in the Swedish port of Göteborg because there were not enough ships leaving for America to accommodate all the people fleeing the war and the Nazi concentration camps. At last, after revealing his true identity to the Swedish customs officer, he obtained four tickets for passage on the Brazilian cargo ship Vasaholm that sailed on July 31, 1941. It arrived in Río de Janeiro on August 27. In America The Basques owe a great debt to that blessed continent! Venezuela accepted Agirre’s family, a Panamanian consul saved his life, and a North American consul waited for him in the port to offer him a permanent resident visa in New York, plus a position at Columbia University as a professor of contemporary history. The lehendakari continued his journey, and when he arrived in Uruguay he could at last declare his true identity (on October 9, 1941) and leave “Alvarez Lastra” behind forever. Professor and Lecturer in the USA In December of 1941, the Agirre-Zabala family left Uruguay and headed for New York where they were received as honored guests by huge crowds of people. This simple man, symbol of a small defeated nation, spoke next to the Statue of Liberty, head held high, “in the name of man whom God created to be free and not a slave.” The Basques of New York congregated at the mythical Valentín Agirre’s restaurant Jai-Alai, and later 1,500 Americans gathered by the American Committee of the Nobel Prize in the Astoria Hotel listened with feeling to the words of the Basque fighter: “We do not want to die. We do not have to die. A people does not die except by its own ignominy.” In New York Agirre gave classes at Columbia and prepared his book Escape Via Berlin, published in May 1942. He also wrote an unfinished History of the Basque Country, 520 typewritten pages with 120 more in longhand. In his courses he spoke of democracy, freedom, justice, peace and tolerance. He focused especially on a new European political order based on freedom, a precursor of the Common Market and the idea of Christian democracy. He energetically unmasked the European mega-nations that trod upon the rights of the smaller nations. Agirre was a man of peace, a fervent admirer of Ghandi, who was forced by circumstances beyond his control to take up arms in an unjust and unequal war. The Basque Diaspora The Basque diaspora was one of Agirre’s main priorities. From his New York apartment or his exiled government base in Paris, he was like a shepherd tending his flock. He made repeated visits to the most important Basque communities throughout the American continent, trying to mobilize and organize the scattered community. He was well received everywhere and could always count on the support of democratic circles in South America. His hope and optimism were summed up in his famous phrase: “Next year, at home.” At the Centro Vasco in Buenos Aires the old Basque liberties echoed. “We will not quit until the Tree of Gernika casts a shadow on free land.” In the Laurak Bat society of Montevideo he inaugurated the Día del Euskera, or Day of the Basque Language, while demanding that Basques unite. In Chile he presided over the First International Conference on Christian Democracy in Latin America and took part in the Día del Euskera, speaking Basque, of course. The Return to Europe In 1946 Agirre returned to Europe for good. In Paris he participated in the creation of the International League of Friends of the Basques. It attracted more than 50,000 members including churchmen (Cardinals Verdìer and Griffin), politicians (E. Herriot, M. Shumann, G. Bidault), and writers (F. Mauriac, J. Maritain). In 1949 he took part in the European Congress in Brussels in the capacity of honorary Vice-President along with his friend A. de Gasperi and Winston Churchill, honorary presidents of that meeting. The year 1959 was one of the worst for Agirre, for the French forced the Basque government to relinquish its space on Marceau Avenue, accusing them of buying it with money taken from Spain. Once more the lehendakari turned to the American communities with whose help he was able to buy a house to live in. He expressed his sadness: “How few understand us!” But he continued the fight with the same hope and enthusiasm. The First Worldwide Basque Conference The first Worldwide Basque Conference began in September, 1956. Agirre opened the conference with a memorable speech that examined his twenty years in the Basque Government (one year in power and nineteen in exile). He humbly recognized his mistakes and his failures, one of which he felt was not being able to stop Franco from entering international organizations. The following year he could no longer contain his sadness, and he exclaimed, “The strongest reason supporting the regime that oppresses the people of the peninsula is the bayonet, and the dollars that the North Americans give him [Franco].” His Death From that time on Agirre continued to live with dignity, but he felt deceived and politically abandoned by the treason of the Allies. Once more, force proved superior to reason. Jose Antonio Agirre y Lekube, first lehendakaria of Euskadi, died on March 22, 1960 of a heart attack. The news of his death was a great blow to Basques and democratic friends around the world. His body was shipped from Paris to Donibane Lohitzun where it spent a night in the Monzón house. He was buried on March 28 after a funeral mass at the Donibane parish church. In spite of warnings and prohibitions by Franco’s government, all levels of Basque society gathered there to bid farewell to a great ambassador of Basque values, a great fighter who was dignified in the face of defeat, a loyal friend whose only adversaries were enemies of liberty. More than 30 years have passed and yet Agirre’s absence is still felt within the Basque nationalist family. Lehendakari, Joseba Andoni, Goian Bego! |
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