thers and it has come to typify, the essence of being French, or Spanish for that matter. The values on which a country, any country is based upon, serve as an equalizing factor that embraces all the ethnic groups living within its borders. Connor noted about that “the French Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizens proclaim that the source of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation; not a group…Though the drafter of the declaration may not have been aware, the nation to which they referred contained Alsatians, Basques, Bretons Catalans, Corsicans, Flemings, and Occitanians, as well as Frenchmen” Hence, the French nation is composed by different ethnic groups united under a common set of values. All these different groups have a particular identity that set one apart from the other, but in the end the French identity has prevailed over all the others. Thus they are, above all, Frenchmen and subsequently, they may be Bretons, Flemings, etc. The case is no different in Spain, where the main, the dominant ethnic group is the Castilian, but within the Spanish nation also live Galicians, Catalans, Andalucians, and Basques. All of these ethnics groups display characteristics particular only to the group but, as in the French case, there is one, the Castilians, who have risen over time above all others to impose their particular identity as the national identity. In both cases we have a case of lateral movement of an ethnic group to extent their influence over others. Smith explains that “the lateral ethnic state is provided by Spain…(and) it was the Castilian Kingdom that formed the fulcrum of resistance to Muslin power…(and) it utilized religious community as an instrument of homogenization”. Relations between the Basque Nation and the Spanish and French StatesThe relations between the people of France and Spain towards the Basques have not always been under amiable terms. While the lingui...
