The new elections in the Basque Country, planned for 17th April this year, have been served a severe blow by the banning of main Basque left wing political parties from participating. Tens of thousands of citizens have been denied the right to vote.

Democracy should be based in the will of the people, and banning political parties from left or right should not be in the equation, in this case it leaves around 14% of the Basque electorate without a voice.

Spain rules the Basque Country with an iron fist regardless of who is in power. The Basques are both an ancient and rooted culture and our contemporary European modern Citizens. They are resolute about keeping their language, culture and traditions alive with the new times, and to govern their own future by themselves. One could argue that this goes on behalf of the European cultural heritage, if we are serious about preserving our ancient languages, culture and traditions alive and with dignity, not just in museums and when is too late.

All fine and dandy till here but they also have ETA who kills people. True, but they haven’t done so for more than a year and are giving strong signals that they intend to give peace a chance. They have been planting bombs recently but they have let the police know where and when will they explode via calls to Basque newspapers. On the other hand the Spanish police have continued torturing Basque citizens, some wrongly accused of being part of ETA, even after complains by Amnesty International last year, and have given no concessions at all to any of the moderate Basques demands for greater involvement in decisions about their own future.

The Spanish government was changed after the Madrid bombing from Aznar to Zapatero, but unfortunately the policies regarding the Basque Country remain the same; a big no to anything that remind us of the Basque will for self determination.

Aurkera Gustiak (translated from Basque as “All Options Open”), is a new political party that was formed very recently, as a citizen’s initiative, in response to the banning of Batasuna from taking part in these elections. Thousands of Basque Citizens have put their names down for this initiative to denounce the anti-democratic situation of banning political parties and leaving the electorate without a voice. The Spanish government argues that Batasuna is ETA, but Spanish jails are filled with Basque people accused of being part of ETA, many with the smallest of evidence, and Batasuna representatives would be in jail if they could prove it, so if they cannot prove a link with ETA, why not allowing them to take part in the elections and speak their minds? Unfortunately not only Basque political parties have been banned without evidence, also Basque newspapers like Egin and Gara have been closed down, and also radio stations, youth political groups, youth houses, and anything Basque that moves has been targeted. Unlike the pro Franco political parties like PP or Falange Española (whose militants killed more people after the civil war that during the war) are free to campaign and run for elections. The socialist party in government, PSOE, was linked to the terrorist group GAL, which was funded with tax payer’s money to combat ETA, killed 100 people and brought the last PSOE government down when links to some ministers were found. No one argues now their electoral participation.

But just today the Spanish government has started procedures to ban the Basque citizen’s initiative Aurkera Gustiak, even when this newly formed party has managed to collect over 30,000 signatures to be able to take part in the elections, and even when they have already been approved by the electoral commission. It is insulting in a democracy to find out that the Spanish secret police has been busy investigating the backgrounds of each one of those who have signed for the initiative, this without any single evidence linking them to ETA. They found that 1,200 of those who signed have links with what they call “ETA’s world”, which can involve relatives of ETA prisoners, Batasuna voters or just anyone drinking in the same pub as them. This is a persecution of ideas that we hadn’t seen since Franco, an intrusion into citizens lives not permitted since the fascist regimes and a direct attack to the core principles of Democracy.

Silencing citizen’s voices is not the answer and these elections should now be cancelled as they won't allow the voice of the people to be heard.

A very sad day for Spain, the Basque Country and Europe’s Democracies.