The Basque Country

Abstract

The Basque Country has two of the most studied sites in modern Spain: Mondragon and Renteria. Yet they are usually studied with very different purposes in mind: in the case of the Mondragon Corporation Cooperativa (MCC), the object of study is a world-famous industrial and banking cooperative, anxiously scrutinized by business experts from north America and Japan, much as Spaniards once admired the Altos Hornos de Vizcaya foundries, now being dismantled. In the case of Renteria, a radical town on the outskirts of San Sebastian - the provincial capital of Gipuzkoa - with putrid river and matching atmosphere caused by a Spanish government paper factory, the story bodes well for no one. Here harried political scientists and sociologists, Spanish and foreign, still labor, often at the behest of the Spanish government, to discover why Gipuzkoan towns like Renteria, Hernani, and Oyarzun are still unmanageable at the end of Spain's long post-Franco Transition to democracy. Indeed, not much sense can be made of the Basque Country or its extraordinarily vibrant present-day politics and cultural ferment unless equal weight is given to the economic success of the Mondragon Cooperative - as opposed to Basque heavy industry and fisheries - and to the incoherence of Basque nationalist politics as reflected in Renteria, Hernani, Bilbao and San Sebastian. For in the Basque Country, that is, the provinces of Alava, Vizcaya, and Gipuzkoa, which make up the Basque Autonomous Community (or CAV), there is both an unusual concentration of old money and high-tech business acumen and of radical Marxist-Leninist Basque nationalism, spearheaded by Herri Batasuna (or HB).