José Antonio Aguirre (politician)

José Antonio Aguirre
1st President of the Basque Country
In office 7 October 1936 – 22 March 1960
Preceded by	Office established
Succeeded by	Jesús María de Leizaola
Personal details
Born	José Antonio Aguirre Lecube (1904-03-06)6 March 1904 Bilbao, Spain
Died	22 March 1960(1960-03-22) (aged 56) Paris, France
Political party	Basque Nationalist Party
Occupation	Lawyer

José Antonio Aguirre y Lecube (6 March 1904 – 22 March 1960) was an important Spanish politician and activist in the Basque Nationalist Party and the first President of the Provisional Government of the Basque Country, as well as the first Executive's Defence Adviser, a role which he throughout the Spanish Civil War. Under his mandate the Provisional Government fought for the Second Spanish Republic and formed the Basque Army.

Life

José Antonio Aguirre Lecube, 1933

José Antonio Aguirre was born in Bilbao, in Biscay. He studied in the Basque Country's first ikastola, a school where all lessons were given in the Basque language. He later studied law at the University of Deusto.

After his father's death in 1920, Aguirre moved with his family to Algorta, close to Bilbao. At 16 years of age, he had to become a father to his 10 younger brothers and sisters.

After finishing his law studies, he began working in the family business Chocolates Aguirre. He later took responsibility of the business and introduced several reforms to improve workers' conditions in the factory, such as free health care and paid holidays. He also donated a part of business revenues to the poor and advocated for social housing. He created a new way of managing the business, consistent with his ideals. Until 1937, “Chocolates Bilbaínos S.A.” was the second biggest business in its sector in Spain.

Aguirre was a football player, and he played for Athletic Bilbao. During the Spanish Civil War, he was one of the main promoters of the Basque Country national football team. This regional team played in Europe and America to raise funds for the Basque refugee children whose parents had to escape into exile.

In 1926, he finished his law studies and did his military service. After this period, he began to work as an attorney at Esteban Bilbao's office. Soon he founded his own law firm to work on political issues and workers' conditions. At this time Spain was ruled by the dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera.

A Basque nationalist, Aguirre joined the young political party Basque Nationalist Party (or Partido Nacionalista Vasco (PNV)). The party was then divided into two political streams, but he never liked this division. He thought that the Basque Country was above any differences. He worked to unify the two parts, succeeding in 1930. Aguirre increased his involvement in politics, and he published articles in the newspapers Euzko Gaztedia and Euzkadi. As an example of his integrationist views and new ideals, in 1932, he proposed that the party should accept people who were not born in the Basque Country.

After the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera ended in 1930, a new political era began in Spain. At the same time, a new and important period began in Aguirre's political life.

Devolution & Civil War

Document signed by Aguirre in 1937

Aguirre intervened decisively in the failed attempts to draft Basque Devolution in 1931 and 1932, and which raised self-government, including Navarre.

On 5th November 1933, two weeks before the general election on 19th November, a referéndum was held in Álava, Guipúzcoa and Vizcaya, which submitted new wording for the Statute of Devolution for approval, which abandoned the inclusion of Navarre. The wording was approved by an overwhelming majority (459,000 votes in favour, 14,000 against), although in Álava the votes in favour didn't reach 50% of the electoral role.

La disolución de las Cortes para celebrar las elecciones generales y luego las reticencias del gobierno radical y la posición contraria del Partido Carlista a la incorporación de Álava al proceso estatutario van a contribuir a bloquear el Estatuto hasta el 1 de octubre de 1936, desatada ya la Guerra Civil. Aguirre was loyal to the Second Spanish Republic, knowing that the future of Euzkadi depended on a Republican victory. In Euzkadi, he formed a government and an army comprising nationalists, republicans, Socialists, Communists and others.

The first Basque government was made up of four members of the Partido Nacionalista Vasco (Jose Antonio Aguirre, President and Defense, Jesús María Leizaola, Justice and Culture; Eliodoro de la Torre, Finance, and Telesforo Monzón, Interior), three of the PSOE (Santiago Aznar, Industry, Juan Gracia Colás, Welfare, and Juan de los Toyos, Labor), one of Acción Nacionalista Vasca (Gonzalo Nárdiz, Agriculture), one of the Republican Left (Ramón María Aldasoro Galarza, Trade), one of Republican Union (Alfredo Espinosa, Health), and one of the Spanish Communist Party (Juan Astigarrabía, Public Works).

Badly armed and barely trained, the Basque Army, the Euzko Gudarostea, managed to mobilize 100,000 soldiers to support the Republicans against the Nationalists. The Basque Army was ill-equipped against the heavy artillery and aviation of the professional army. Famous are the desperate calls of Aguirre to his allies Prieto and Azaña to send equipment to Euzkadi. However, the siege of Biscay prevented them from delivering support.

In June 1937, the Nationalists broke through the Iron Belt of Bilbao and entered the Basque capital, a result of the defection of the engineer Alejandro Goicoechea, who had designed the fortifications. Aguirre transferred his Government to Trucíos then proceeded to Santander and Catalonia, where he arranged to continue fighting with his men for the Republic.

In the meantime, the nationalist leader Juan de Ajuriaguerra agreed to a surrender in Santoña (province of Cantabria) to the Italians. The Santoña Agreement was executed behind the back of Aguirre, who favored continuing the fight.

Aguirre fled the country after the war, pursued for years by pro-Franco agents, leading to an incredible exile that took him to Paris, Berlin, and New York. In June 1940, the Breton Yann Fouéré gave him documents that allowed him to escape France, which was invaded by the Nazis, allies of Franco.

In Exile during World War II

Aguirre fled first to France, where he organized the camps and services for Basque refugees and the government-in-exile. Caught behind enemy lines, he was in Belgium when Hitler occupied that country. Aguirre fled to Berlin, where he lived underground until a false identity was arranged.

Under the protection of a Panamanian ambassador (Germán Guardia, who provided Aguirre with a Panamanian passport), he reached Sweden. Dodging SS German intelligence, he arrived in Rio de Janeiro on the ship Vasaholm on 27 August 1941. The Brazilian customs authorities registered a Panamanian, Dr. José Álvarez Lastra, and a Venezuelan, María de Arrigorriaga, the last accompanied by their children, José and Gloria.

They didn't suspect that they were José Antonio Aguirre, his wife María Zabala, and their sons Aintzane and Joseba, escaping the long arms of the Nazis. But in spite of the intense efforts made by Manuel de Ynchausti in the United States, thanks to the objections of the British consul Ralph Stevenson to the situation of entering with one name and leaving with another, it seemed far from being solved. While after a month his true identity was in danger of being discovered.

He wrote then to Ramón María de Aldasoro, former Trade and Business secretary of the Basque government, who led the Euzkadi Delegation in Buenos Aires. This representation, established by Isaac López Mendizabal, Santiago Cunchillos, and Pablo Artzanko, had arrived in America in November 1938. But the efforts made by Aldasoro did not succeed because Argentine authorities sympathized with the European "New Order."

In light of this, Aguirre went to Uruguay and there asked a small group of Basque patriots for what Argentina had denied him. The Uruguayan president general Alfredo Baldomir not only was willing to do it but also to receive him with the honours in accordance with his elevated status. Six men mobilized the political personalities there, not only to get to safety but also to awaken the consciences of the diaspora, dormant because of Francoist propaganda.

Once the arrangements were complete, the public announcement of the arrival of the president would be made on 8 October, when the Montevidean newspapers informed widely of his arrival and his whereabouts. A small delegation composed of congressional representatives Julio Iturbide and Juan Domingo Uriarte went to the Brazilian state of Río Grande do Sul accompanied by its Uruguayan consul, to accompany him in the last stage of his journey.

In Exile after World War II

His identity was reinstated, and he was given a visa to travel to New York, where he was established under the protection of resident Basques leading the movements in Mexico and New York. There the exiled president took up a post as a lecturer at Columbia University. When the United States decided to back Franco in 1952, he went to France anew where the Basque Government in exile was established. Also there, he encountered that the pro-Nazi French government of Vichy had sequestrated the Basque Government building, and De Gaulle as maintaining it on behalf of the Franco government; the building is now the Instituto Cervantes premises.

The president of the government-in-exile was always a PNV member and even the Spanish sole representative in the United Nations was the Basque appointee, Jesús de Galíndez, until his murder in an obscure episode at the time of Spain's entry to the United Nations. He also decided to place the large Basque exiles' network at the service of the Allied side and collaborated with the US Secretary of State and the CIA throughout the Cold War in its fight against Communism in Latin America.

Aguirre died in Paris on 22 March 1960 from a heart attack, aged 56. His body was shipped from Paris to Saint-Jean-de-Luz in the French Basque Country, where it spent a night in the Monzón house. He was buried on 28 March after a funeral mass at the Saint Jean parish church.

Influence

His life was the subject of a Soule folk play (pastoral), Aguirre presidenta ("The president Aguirre"). He wrote a book about his experiences, Escape Via Berlin: Eluding Franco in Hitler's Europe (New York, 1942).

Sources

• Arrieta Alberdi, Leyre (2007). "Años de esperanza ante la nueva Europa: la estrategia europeísta del PNV tras la Segunda Guerra Mundial". Ayer (in Spanish) (67, Las relaciones de España con Europa centro-oriental (1939-1975)). Asociacion de Historia Contemporanea and Marcial Pons Ediciones de Historia. Retrieved 29 September 2015. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

External links

• Basque Nationalist Party.
• Tribute to Aguirre website