Friday, 26 May 2023

On the eve of local elections to be held in all municipalities in Spain on 28^th May 2023, we extend solidarity greetings to you, as both Euskal Herria Bildu (EH Bildu) (Basque Country Unite) and the progressive forces of the Basque Country.

We commend your commitment as the left to the peace process over the past decade in the face of reactionary provocation and the courage of your members in resisting this. In the current election campaign, extreme right-wing forces in Spain are seeking to discredit EH Bildu and even to attempt to deny its candidates’ participation in the democratic process. This is not legitimate electoral contestation but a fundamental assault on the democratic rights of the people of the Basque Country to choose their representatives and determine their own future.

The right-wing campaign is an attempt to take the Basque Country backwards, at a time when EH Bildu and the progressive forces, with the growing support of many popular sectors, are aspiring to secure peace, pursue transformation and build the future.

In this period of crisis internationally, one of the instruments of resistance against progress is the mobilisation of reactionary nationalism to limit the democratic space and even reverse past democratic achievements. Reactionary nationalism, in whichever country or region it arises, consistently seeks to resurrect, more often than not, an imaginary past, either as a stick to beat and de-legitimise progressive forces or as an ideal to which society should aspire. In either case, reactionary nationalism, as with narrow nationalism, is seeking to prevent the transformation of society in a progressive direction, in which peace can triumph and people’s needs can be realised.

In our over hundred years of existence, as the oldest Communist Party on the African Continent, the South African Communist Party founded as the Communist Party of South Africa in 1921, have with our allies in the broad liberation movement grappled with the national question. We readily recognise, based on our own experience, the commitment of EH Bildu to chart a future for the Basque Country which meets the needs of its people.

The right-wing forces that EH Bildu resists today—and their many parallels in reactionary and chauvinist nationalisms around the globe that are trampling on democratic rights and freedoms to create divisions, that perpetuate inequalities and discriminations and that defend minority privilege and power—call for progressive peoples and their organisations internationally to rally together in the spirit of progressive internationalism.

It is in that spirit that we today extend our solidarity with you in your progressive resistance to the right-wing forces.