In his blog, Ricardo Ibarra posted an infographic taken from El Correo that shows the breakdown of the last elections by region within the Basque Autonomous Community, an image shamelessly stolen from him and reposted here (click on the image for a bigger version).
It is interesting to see how things break down. Gipuzkoa went overwhelmingly for the new party, Bildu. Bizkaia is more traditionalist/conservative and went more for EAJ/PNV. Araba is a mix of pretty much everything, though still a majority of EAJ and Bildu.
One thing I find interesting is that Araba is strongly Bildu along its border with both Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa, which maybe makes some sense — those regions would have maybe the strongest Basque identity. But, that didn’t happen so much in Bizkaia. While there are pockets of Bildu strength, it isn’t reflected in the border with Gipuzkoa, for example. Not saying it means anything, I just find it an interesting observation.
An interesting map. I would bear in mind a couple of points though:
•This shows who ended up in control of the council which is not exactly the same as breakdown of votes. It’s also useful to look at the breakdown of votes in each municipality: for example in some places like Gernika-Lumo the ‘Españolistas’ (PSE/PP) won’t have won any seats, or very few, and the division was between Bildu and EAJ-PNV whereas in others, like Donostia or Ezkerraldia (Santurtzi, Portugalete, etc.), the votes were much more widely spread.
•Though coalitions involving Bildu/EAJ didn’t happen to my knowledge the PP/PSE did work together to keep Nationalists out elsewhere (Gasteiz for example).
•The municipalities can be misleading, some of the larger patches of colour will relate to sparsely populated areas of countryside with perhaps a thousand or so voters, whereas the geographically smaller municipalities in Greater Bilbao may correspond to tens or hundreds or thousands.
In Bizkaia I think the general trend was that Bildu did better in the more rural East and South-East (with exceptions) even if that doesn’t show up that well on the map.
I think the next two years will be very interesting in Euskadi and Iberia generally. Spain will almost certainly need a bailout before long from the EU/IMF which will require huge austerity measures, as a Londoner it seems clear to me that Europeans are already deeply unhappy with the status quo, this will only increase in the medium term. The PP are almost certain to win the Cortes elections next year and probably with a big majority. It seems quite likely that they will look for any attempt to deflect public anger from the state and it’s policies, as governments (especially conservative ones) tend to. I can see such a government trying to ratchet up the assault on Basque autonomy and political movements in a populist move (populist elsewhere in the state).
The year after will, of course, be the CAV elections where the current PP backed PSE government will almost certainly lose, the question is who will come out dominant though? EAJ-PNV seem more likely to do so right now but in the face of an ailing capitalist system the more conservative and Bourgeois PNV could lose out to leftist Bildu, though probably not with an outright majority. Where that would leave us could make for a very interesting round of negotiations.
Of course, with things in Europe (and globally) decaying the way they are economically and socially all of the above could pan out very differently indeed. Interesting times.
Thanks for the great insight, Robert. I agree that the future is certainly going to be very interesting. Isn’t there a Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times”? In any case, I really appreciate you sharing your thoughts.
Very interesting analysis. Bildu has won in many places taking advantage of the PNV-PSOE love and hate relationship. Seems like the PNV has played revenge with Psoe for taking Ibarretxe´s job in the past elections. It is very interesting but also discusting to realise how politics really work, PNV supports PSOE in Madrid but not in San Sebastian. Psoe depends on PNV in madrid but doesn´t vote for PNV for the Diputación in Guipuzcoa. What´s going on?. I think Bildu has played better than the other parties to reach power, let´s see how they manage it now.