Friday, October 26, 2012

Is it still a holiday if it only occurs for one year?

So yesterday was a holiday and to make a nice neat weekend, I have today off from school too. Apparently it's a brand new holiday but its not going to exist next year. Why, you ask? Politics of course.

So as I've previously mentioned, the Basque Country has a complex relationship with the rest of Spain. It's an autonomous region within Spain, but there are some who would like it to be its own country. They're called the Basque Nationalists. Their major party (there are many Basque nationalist parties on both sides of the political spectrum) is the somewhat right wing party PNV/EAJ, which translates to Basque Nationalist Party. The left wing Basque Nationalists usually get accused of collaborating with ETA and get banned. They're not banned right now and their current name (or coalition as I believe it is) is EH Bildu, or just Bildu.

The current Basque president is Patxi Lopez, who is a member of PSOE, which is a Spanish Socialist party. He is the first president not from the PNV right wing Basque nationalist party. He is obviously more pro-Spain than the PNV. We have this holiday because of him. It's the anniversary of the Basque constitution. Now you're wonder why didn't we celebrate this before, given that it grants us autonomy. Well, it says the Basque Country belongs to Spain. Basque Nationalists obviously don't think so.

Well, The Basque Country had elections on Sunday.  PSOE will no longer hold the presidency. That means the Basque Country will no long observe its constitution day as a holiday.

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