The Ecologist Movement in the Basque Country

Abstract

A permanent national conflict in the Basque Country, with a violent dimension, has marked the development of its ecology movement. After a brief examination of the environmental movement in Spain as a whole, this analysis focuses on the formation and development of the Basque Ecology Movement (BEM), from the seventies to the present, highlighting its political, organizational as well as discourse-related aspects. The analytical framework that we will employ is influenced by an integrating perspective (Neidhardt and Rucht 1992; McAdam, McCarthy and Zald 1996; Diani 1996) — taking into account the mobilizing structures approach (McCarthy and Zald 1987; Diani 1997), the political opportunity structure approach (Kriesi 1995; della Porta and Rucht 1995) and finally the framing approach (Gamson 1992). This will guide our synthetic definition and analysis of the broad evolutionary tendencies of the movement.KeywordsSocial MovementPolitical InstitutionLocal GroupBasque CountryNuclear Power StationThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.