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How It Began: the Evolution of Basque Nationalism until the Civil War (1876–1939)

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Nationalism, Violence and Democracy

Abstract

Like other nationalist movements, Basque nationalism was in its origins a phenomenon closely linked to modern, urban, bourgeois, industrial society. It emerged in Bilbao at the end of the nineteenth century within the context of rapid economic growth, massive immigration and violent social turmoil. Its first followers were recruited among sectors of the traditional urban, lower middle classes, who saw themselves as victims of modernization, displaced from the centre to the periphery of society and under pressure both from the socialist labour movement and from the small clan of the politically and economically leading elite of the financial and industrial oligarchy.

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Notes

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  1. University of the Basque Country, Bilbao, Spain

    Ludger Mees

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© 2003 Ludger Mees

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Mees, L. (2003). How It Began: the Evolution of Basque Nationalism until the Civil War (1876–1939). In: Nationalism, Violence and Democracy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403943897_3

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