The time of truth for the PNV | Spain
The spokesperson for Congress to the presidency of the party is strange in the PNV, but not unpublished. Aitor Esteban has the precedent of Xabier Arzalluz, who did it after the Constituent Legislature (1977-79). They are joined by the assumption of a serious responsibility in difficult times and a flow of pragmatism. But if the main challenge of Arzalluz’s first mandate was to consolidate the Autonomist Pragmatism in the PNV, the goal of Esteban, the prestigious veteran headed by the renewal of your directionIt is to reverse its electoral decrease in the face of EH Bildu’s rise in the middle of the global political crisis.
The main debate between PNV and EH Bildu He will not solve in his traditional field, sovereigntywhich does not mean that the peniles leave that flag to those of Arnaldo Otegi. He will be in his rhetoric, subject to pactist pragmatism. Both know that their future is played in the right response to the social demands of the Basques in a changing world.
The explanation is that the independence claim has plummeted After the end of terrorism, the recession of 2008-2014 and the pandemic. The latter revealed the deficiencies of the public services of the Basque Government, headed by the PNV, and The 2023 and 2024 elections They confirmed their loss of hegemony, the bureaucratization of the party and the distancing of young people and the middle classes. The change in international rules with the authoritarian challenge of the US president, Donald Trump, adds even more uncertainties.
The renewal of the PNV address completes the change initiated a year ago with The replacement of Iñigo Urkullu by Imanol Pradales Like Lehendakari. It has been operational, not ideological. Nor is there with Andoni Ortuzar’s relay for Esteban. It is due to internal balances. The PNV is social -Christian, Europeanist, bordering on social democracy, consistent in its European alignment with the Democratic Party of the French Prime Minister, François Bayroudefender of the sanitary cordon to the ultra -right. An orientation, including the rejection of the PP-Vox pact, which Esteban followed as a spokesman in Madrid. The paper approved this Sunday It has a social democratic aroma.
Esteban is predictable to be understood with Pradales, which in his brief mandate has already deployed a policy of dialogue and progressive guidance pacts. He has just agreed to a tax reform with his government partner, the PSE, and Podemos. He has approached the unionsincluding ELA, overcoming a long confrontation. He has criticized the rejection of the Confebask employer to the increase in the minimum wage, to the Bank Tax and the Fiscal Reform.
The penetist inclination to the center -left has to do with competition with EH Bildu; With its partner, the PSE, and the response to the rise of the European ultra-right, translated into Spain in the PP-Vox pacts. But his background is to respond to his electorate, which is defined as a center -left with an image of the PNV scaled to the center -right.
Esteban part of an asset: most of the vote lost by the PNV is in abstention. EH Bildu, booming after having absorbed the vote of Podemos, will try to bite him. But the PNV, which does not have the bonds of EH Bildu’s past, is better to recover it if it is right in its management and Esteban mobilizes the party, to which its communicating capacity and experience will contribute. It is his time of truth, which will be tested in the municipal elections of 2027.
The proven European commitment of PNV is another asset that Esteban can exploit in the face of the history of EH Bildu at a time when Europe claims its democratic identity against totalitarianism and local outrages, the first line of current policy.
