overnment. For seven years, Carlists organized their own state, which spanned the Basque speaking areas of the southern territories and had the massive support of the peasants. The Carlist or Basque-Navarrese army comprised of volunteer peasants from the four Basque provinces. The Treaty of Bergara of 1839 offered to guarantee the Basque Fueros (the word Fuero, in the Basque provinces and Navarra are refers to a series of general laws that these territories laid down for themselves at a time when they enjoyed a large degree of autonomy, a sort of constitution –for lack of a better word–of the Basque provinces). When the second Carlist War broke out in 1872 it ended in 1879 with the defeat of the Carlists. As a consequence, the Fueros of Araba, Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa were abolished. However, the Spanish state upheld the Fueros of Navarre, which had been negotiated in 1841. The Basques lost their leadership and their culture and language became under attack in their own homeland. In 1893, a massive rally that gathered 80,000 Navarrese took place in Irunea, the capital of Navarre, in favor of restoring the Fueros. When Franco obtained power in 1936, he sought to homogenize the country thus, he pushed for the elimination of anything that was not Castilian. This policy affected all the different ethnic groups in Spain, but especially the Basques. Opposition to his regime came in the form of guerilla and it was mainly concentrated in the Vascogandas. In 1936, with the aid of the German Air Force, Franco leveled the Basque town of Guernica. The attack was devastating for the moral and the spirit of the Basque people. It was also the first time in history that a civilian population had been deliberately hit with such massive firepower. During Franco’s regime the ETA came into existence in response to the great injustices that the Basque people had suffered in the past. ConclusionNowadays, the Basque Country is faced with more t...
