Bilbao, (EFE).- Several dozen mayors of the PNV and EH Bildu have gathered this Wednesday in front of the Superior Court of Justice of the Basque Country (TSJPV) to defend the right to the preferential use of Basque in their relations with the residents of the Basque consistories.
The mayors of 71 of the 251 municipalities in the Basque Country, including those of Bilbao and San Sebastián, Juan Mari Aburto and Eneko Goia (PNV), and of several of the towns with the largest population in the Basque Country such as Barakaldo, Getxo , Errentería or Pasajes, have gathered before the headquarters of the Superior Court of Justice of the Basque Country (TSJPV) in Bilbao.
There they have also denounced the ruling of the Constitutional Court that on July 6 annulled, as unconstitutional, an article of the Basque Municipal Law in which priority was established in the requirement of the use of Euskera in the municipalities of the Basque Country and having to demonstrate “validly” the lack of knowledge of Basque to be attended in Spanish.
THE CONSTITUTIONAL, OBSTACLE FOR THE BASQUE LANGUAGE
At the rally, promoted by Kontseiluak, an organization that brings together the main organizations that work in favor of the Basque language, its president, Alizia Iribarren, read a statement in which the Constitutional Constitution was described as an “obstacle” to the process of normalization and revitalization from Basque.
The manifesto affirms that the ruling of the Spanish Court of Constitutional Guarantees “contempts both the Basque language and Basque-speaking people”, questions “the decision-making capacity of the citizenry and the town councils” and goes “against the broad social consensus” in favor of the Basque language existing in Euskadi.
Finally, the promoters of the declaration believe that the Constitutional ruling “is part of a broader judicial offensive that is part of the reactionary wave against minority languages.”
MAKILAS ON HIGH
At the end of the reading of the manifesto, the mayors present at the rally have raised the command rods that symbolize their position (makilas) with which they have attended the act, as a sign of protest against the aforementioned court ruling.
The mayor of Bilbao, Juan Maria Aburto, of the PNV, on behalf of the heads of his party’s corporations, has stated that the ruling of the Constitutional Court entails “a serious attack on our self-government” and that “it denies the organizational autonomy that they have Basque local entities”.
He has affirmed that the Basque Municipal Law, the subject of the appeal that has given rise to the Constitutional Court to rule on its content, “respects the linguistic rights of citizens, both Spanish and Basque speakers”.
Lastly, Aburto recalled that “Basque is a co-official language and is a treasure for all, for this reason Basque does not deserve either the ideologization that is being made of it, or the contempt that this ruling entails”.
In the last 28M municipal elections, the PNV took control of the government of 122 of the 251 Basque municipalities, while EH Bildu did so in another 83, with which between the two nationalist formations they govern 205 of the 251 consistories, leaving the the rest in the hands of independent neighborhood groups and the PSE-EE (10) and the PP (two).