VITORIA-GASTEIZ, Spain, April 22 (RIA Novosti) – The head of a local branch of the Basque section of Spain’s opposition socialist party has advised both Catalan and Basque nationalists to get on board with his party's proposals to reform the federal constitution of Spain.
José Antonio Pastor advised Catalan and Basque nationalists to follow the federalist path because, in his opinion it is “probably the only solution and way out” of the current situation regarding the regions' relationships with the state.
Pastor insists that constitutional reform is the “only solution” and the “way out” is a better fit within the state's current structures.
The politician said he considered the message conveyed by the Basque Nationalist Party's Aberri Eguna in recent declarations to be “confusing, wrong, and misleading,” saying it was difficult to comprehend what Eguna proposed.
Pastor lamented their narrow interpretation of Basque nationalism as divisive, and that they were serving to create an "absolute division" between the Basque nationalists and other parties of the left, when they should be seeking common ground.
The socialist party boss felt that “while the talk is of the essence of identity and a new nation in Europe,” the real problems being faced both in Catalonia and the Basque Country are not being addressed. In this way, he claimed that the regional governments were not backing the opposition socialist party’s course against the governing conservative Popular Party's “paralyzation of social payments, retention of regional taxes and failures to adhere to their commitments to create jobs.”
The Basque Country or Basque Autonomous Community was granted the status of nationality within Spain by the Spanish Constitution of 1978.
Over two thousand eligible residents of the Basque city of Etxarri Aranatz in Navarre voted in an unofficial referendum on April 13 over whether they wished to be citizens of a separate Basque country and secede from Spain.
