Abstract
The Basque conflict was one of the last ethnonationalist violent struggles in Western Europe, until the self-dissolution in 2018 of ETA (Euskadi ta Askatasuna, Basque Country and Freedom). The role played by some sectors of the Roman Catholic Church in the mediation efforts leading to this positive outcome has long been underestimated, as has the internal pluralism of the Church in this regard. This article specifically examines the transnational dimension of this mediation, including its symbolic aspect. The call to involve the Catholic institution transnationally was not limited to the tangible outcomes of mediation. The mere fact of involving transnational religious and non-religious actors represented a symbolic gain for the parties in the conflict struggling to impose their definitions of peace. Transnational mediation conveyed in itself explicit or implicit comparisons with other ethnonationalist conflicts, a comparison that constituted political resources for or, conversely, unacceptable constraints upon the actors involved.
Highlights
The Basque conflict was one of the last ethnonationalist violent struggles in Western Europe, until the definitive ceasefire (2011), decommissioning (2017), and self-dissolution (2018) of the armed organization ETA (Euskadi ta Askatasuna, Basque Country and Freedom)
Even if it remains hazardous to measure the contribution of mediation to the end of violence, one can be more confident about the political uses of transnational mediation by Basque nationalism in general and by the independentist left in particular
This article has sought to demonstrate that the involvement of transnational Catholic institutions in peacemaking in the Basque case should not be assessed only through its tangible outcomes
Summary
The Basque conflict was one of the last ethnonationalist violent struggles in Western Europe, until the definitive ceasefire (2011), decommissioning (2017), and self-dissolution (2018) of the armed organization ETA (Euskadi ta Askatasuna, Basque Country and Freedom). Paul II did in his address to the United Nations General Assembly in 1995, the Catholic reference to human rights is interpreted as going together with a reference to peoples’ and nations’ rights Such a perception, has been put to the test with the ambivalent transnational political role of the Church. As we will see with the Basque case, if in some circumstances the Church may act as a transnational actor fostering the values of solidarity, social justice, and peace in its interpretation of globalization, in other cases the Holy See can play a more conventional diplomatic role by acting as a “peer in a society of states” In this paper, I examine the political work undertaken by the political institutions, parties, elites, and civil society organizations of the Basque Country since the mid-1990s in order to involve the transnational Church in conflict resolution and post-conflict rehabilitation. Renewing) in San Sebastián, and the Fedea eta Kultura (Faith and Culture) Association in Bayonne
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