The PSOE of Navarra will appoint EH Bildu spokesperson Joseba Asiron to the Mayor’s Office of Pamplona. Its five councilors will vote in favor for the first time in the history of the PSOE of a candidate from the coalition led by Arnaldo Otegi, an agreement that includes the “recognition of the victims of ETA” but not the condemnation of the attacks that cost the lives of 850 victims, 27 of them in the Navarrese capital. “They are miserable,” warned the still mayor Cristina Ibarrola, the candidate of the Navarro People’s Union (UPN), whom Bildu placed in its political target since June 17 while reinforcing its role as an ally of Pedro Sánchez.
“There is no cause and effect between the investiture of Pedro Sánchez and the motion of censure in Pamplona,” said this Thursday Miren Zabaleta, the already veteran leader of the nationalist left and leader of EH Bildu in Navarra. “It is radically false that this is a consequence of Sánchez’s investiture,” the Secretary of Organization of the Socialist Party of Navarra (PSN) Ramón Alzórriz repeated an hour later. Zabaleta and Alzórriz were in charge of trying to distance this transcendental pact from the policy of alliances between the PSOE and EH Bildu promoted by Pedro Sánchez.
“It is a historic moment,” Zabaleta, former leader of Herri Batasuna, acknowledged with satisfaction, while the spokesperson and imminent mayor of Pamplona Joseba Asiron smiled attentively at her side. The agreement signed between Otegi’s coalition and Sánchez’s PSOE guarantees the appointment of Asiron as mayor until 2027. The socialists will not join the EH Bildu government in Pamplona but will guarantee governability based on an agreement that includes a dozen projects municipal agreements and five surprising agreements for “a city in coexistence.”
Ramón Alzórriz, the parliamentary spokesperson and trusted man of Santos Cerdán and María Chivite, highlighted yesterday the respect of both parties for the Navarra symbol norm as if there was a possibility that a mayor of Bildu would break the law. But its inclusion is due to the use of the ikurriña by Asiron in the chupinazos of 2015 and 2017. In addition, Bildu is committed to ensuring the “recognition and reparation of the victims generated by ETA’s violence”, according to the document provided by the PSN, although Zabaleta has included in his explanation the “politically motivated victims” who do not appear in the text. A tagline that the Abertzale coalition incorporates to incorporate those who denounce police torture without judicial sentences to prove it.
The socialists accept in their blank check to make Asiron mayor the “promotion and dissemination” of Basque in Pamplona which, in the Bildu version not included in the PSOE document, is a “minorized language” that will have more municipal resources. “Special attention” to Basque in Pamplona will only be limited by the “premises of voluntariness and equal opportunities.” The socialists, for the moment, reject EH Bildu’s demand for Basque to be a co-official language throughout Navarra, an open debate in a parliamentary presentation in which the Otegi coalition has the support of Geroa Bai (a coalition in which integrates the PNV) and the left-wing alliance Contigo Navarra.
The signed pact adds a commitment from Bildu and the PSN to “work for Sanfermines free of political tensions and spaces of exclusion.” A Kafkaesque clause in a document signed by EH Bildu after in the last five years supporters of the Abertzale left harassed and insulted Mayor Enrique Maya and agents of the Local Police during the Pamplona festivities while cheering Joseba Asiron, the sponsored candidate by Arnaldo Otegi.
“We have had enormous patience,” Otegi warned from Bilbao while in Pamplona all the Navarrese political leaders appeared to analyze the 180-degree turn taken by the PSN to consolidate its iron alliance with Bildu in Congress, the Government of Navarra, in the Navarrese federation of municipalities and, now, in the Pamplona City Council. A “policy of alliances”, as Otegi defined it, that EH Bildu also intends to extend to the Basque Country.
“With what solidity does this [the pact in Pamplona] happen there and here [in the Basque Country] it cannot happen?” Otegi asked himself in an interview on EiTB, the Basque television that is broadcast throughout the provincial community of Navarra. . The leader of EH Bildu now demands that the “progressive governments” be led in Euskal Herria (Basque Country and Navarra, in sovereignist jargon) by the candidate with the most votes. Without yet demanding it, Otegi expressly referred to the Vitoria City Council and the Guipúzcoa Provincial Council, where the Bildu candidates won at the polls but which are governed by the PSE-EE and the PNV thanks to the votes of Núñez Feijóo’s PP.
The leader of the PP yesterday insisted on Sánchez’s “hooded pact” with EH Bildu to facilitate his inauguration and had the gesture of approaching the seat of UPN deputy Alberto Catalán to offer his support to the regionalist party chaired by Javier Esparza. While this nod from Feijóo towards UPN was taking place, Javier Esparza announced the total severing of relations with the PSN in Navarra. “The Socialist Party has decided to hand over the Mayor’s Office of Pamplona to the EH Bildu terrorists,” Esparza denounced categorically.
The regionalist president called on Navarrese citizens to “civically demonstrate” against this motion that ousts the candidate with the most votes at the polls from the mayor’s office to replace the nationalist leftist candidate. “The socialists are paying the price for the investiture of Sánchez and Chivite,” Esparza denounced with great annoyance. After the regional elections in May and the general elections in June, he had advocated a policy of pacts with the PSN and Geroa Bai, but excluding Bildu. President Chivite was elected in 2019 and 2023 thanks to the votes of Otegi’s party.
