Considerations on the constant distortion present in our studies on history

Considerations on the constant distortion present in our studies on history

 

Felipe Campo

 

Faced with the publication of new works on our history that – even with the best intention – do fundamentally distort all correct vision of the authentic historical, sociological and political reality of the Basque People and its State, we are publishing now some brief passages from our own bilingual – Spanish-English – historical work still unpublished: ‘Notes on the History of the Basque People/Euskal Herria and its State: the Kingdom of Nabarre’, so as to restore the correct understanding of a crucial aspect of our reality that is being systematically distorted:

“[...] Still feeling the need to ideologically strengthen the justification of the conquest of the Kingdom of Nabarre before the European courts, and despite all that had already been done on this matter by Luis Correa with his work ‘The conquest of the Kingdom of Navarre’ of 1513; and by Juan López de Palacios Rubios with his book ‘De justitia et jure obtentionis ac retentionis Regni Navarrae’ [“On the justice and right in obtaining and retaining the Kingdom of Nabarre”] of 1515, there still occurred in 1545, the year of the beginning of the Council of Trento, the posthumous publication in Granada of the work of Antonio de Nebrija ‘Rerum a Fernando & Elisabe[...]; necnon Belli Nauariensis libros duos’. It is a Latin translation of the aforementioned work of Correa, with which the whole battery of “legal arguments that justify” the aggression and conquest of our State is fully updated, in order to be able to step forth with it in the face of any eventuality that could arise in that “international summit” that every Council was.

 

Because, with this new work, Nebrija had not limited himself to making a simple translation of that work written during the military campaign in Nabarra but he sought to reinforce the legal and ideological justification of its conquest, in order to carry out a work of diplomatic propaganda. As stated by the author P. Fernández in his “doctoral thesis”:

 

“At this state of affairs, Nebrija and Juan Lopez wrote their works in their quality of the Catholic Monarchs’ chroniclers, a reason by which they develop in them a double aspect, both propagandist and diplomatic: that of Navarre is a just warbecause it has been waged against a monarchy that acts undermining the stability of the Church, and he who takes out that conquest is the quintessential ‘Catholic King’, [...]. Just that same purpose pursues the work of Nebrija; hence the necessary translation to Latin of the text by Correa. [...] Yet, the two Belli navarrensis libros duos by Nebrija are not limited to interpreting Correa’s text in the Latin language, but they insist even more on the justification of the conquest.” [P. Fernández; his Doctoral thesis ‘Edition and study of The conquest of the Kingdom of Navarre(1513) by Luis Correa’, University of Alcala, 2012. Emphasis added.]

[...]

However, it is regrettable to have to note that, in the face of the tenacious – at the same time as malicious, delirious and lying – propaganda activity of the Spanish apologists of the criminal conquest of the Kingdom of Nabarre (an activity that lasts to this day), for their part the authors who present themselves as defenders of our Country have incurred in an absolute negligence, carelessness and ignorance – which also lasts to this day – in maintaining the authentic historical facts, linked to our own approach. Likewise, accepting the absolute triumph of the postulates established by the said lying and counterfeiting Spanish propaganda, they have abandoned the fundamental ideological principles of our position, such as, on the one hand, that of the imprescriptible continuity of our State as a legal person of the highest rank that every State is, according to international law both contemporary to the facts and today’s; and, on the other, the affirmation of the absolute legal nullity of the aggression and conquest of the Kingdom of Nabarre by the Catholic Monarchy, as the also imprescriptible criminal acts and null and void that they were.

 

This is how these “historians and intellectuals from Upper Navarre”, absolutely assuming the theses of Spanish imperialism established between 1513 and 1545 with the aforementioned apologetic works of the conquest, do in the first place confuse the South-Pyrenean territories of the Kingdom of Nabarre definitively occupied by the Catholic Monarchy, that is: its five south-Pyrenean Merindades, with the State of the Kingdom of Nabarre. And then and secondly, they do accept as “normal” the falsehood that “therefore” the Kingdom of Nabarra, with the final fall of Hondarribia in 1524, “disappeared and ceased to exist” after the vicissitudes of its aggression and conquest between 1512 and 1524;and do totally ignore any idea of effective and legal continuity of the – for them – non-existent Kingdom of Nabarre, being so that since 1530 it remained effectively independent with its own territory of the Sixth Merindad and with its own and legitimate institutions and dynasty. However, for them all this is a confused thing that they call “Nether Navarre” but that in reality, just as it is postulated by the ideological position of Spanish imperialism whose theses they have assumed in their entirety, is France.

 

To see the spectacle of the ideological alienation of these authors: who pretend to be sincere when they represent with nostalgia the defence of our State (something that is impossible, if not also hypocritical, once they have assumed all the ideological postulates tenaciously established by Spanish imperialism since the sixteenth Century and that until this work they have never been refuted on all fronts: historical, legal, ideological and political), is something that causes consternation.

 

As a sign of the triumph of that Spanish mentality, the historian Aitor Pescador Medrano has not only published recently Nebrija’s book (‘Elio Antonio de Nebrija – La guerra de Navarra’; Pamiela, 2022) but, in the presentation of his book, has stated that once the war was over in 1524, “Either you remained in exile, or you returned to Navarre as a subject of Charles I.” (Diario de Noticias, October 22, 2022). As there can be seen, for this author the possibility of continuing – as so did our institutions and legitimate monarchs – in the independent territories of the Bearne that were part of the Crown of Nabarre, was “remaining in exile”. (Other intellectuals who consider themselves “patriots” no longer have any qualms about using the expressions “Castilian Nabarre, Spanish Nabarre, and French Nabarre”. Their degradation seems to have no limit.)

 

Neither does the mentioned author point out at all, at least in this presentation disseminated from the mass-media to our People, the fact that only six years later, with the abandonment of the Sixth Merindad by the Catholic Monarchy in 1530, the Kingdom of Nabarre was able to continue with full efficiency and independence in its own territory and with its own institutions until 1620; and that, from that date and from the illegal “Edict of Union”, it continued formally and internationally recognized as “United Kingdom of France and of Navarre” until 1830.For them, the Kingdom of Nabarre did simply “vanish” into thin air in 1524, and that’s it.

 

While the Kingdom of Nabarre remained internationally recognized until 1830 (date of its illegal abolition), Poland and Lithuania “disappeared” totally – and also illegally – after their Third Partition in 1795 between three empires; just as Ukraina had “disappeared” in 1709 after its defeat at Poltava, as we shall see. However, no non-corrupt or alienated intellectual from those Countries did ever affirm that their countries had disappeared on those dates. Instead in our Country, despite having continued our State internationally recognized until 1830, the “historians” who present themselves as defenders of “our history and our memory” say that the Kingdom of Nabarre disappeared in 1524 and that, from there, “either you remained in exile or you returned to Navarre as a subject of CharlesI”... “of Spain”, of course.(Apparently, this “small detail” is not added since it is unnecessary. After all – they come to suggest to us un-confessedly – what else are we but a part of “Spain”?)

 

As there has been pointed out, for these authors to remain in Garazi or Donapaleu was “to remain in exile”, undoubtedly in France. This does not prevent them from the audacity to blame othersfor abandoning positions that they themselves should maintain and that do not maintain, and from saying with total brazenness that “Europe has always had a long tradition of abandoning weak States invaded by superior powers” (ibid.); when it is they themselves who, having endorsed Spanish propaganda and availing themselves of its material comfort, have abandoned and do deny their own State by saying that it was liquidated in 1524.

 

The typical, hypocritical and ridiculous escapes and alibis that affirm “the impossibility of properly assessing facts of the past with current eyes”, or that “the historical fact is one, but the interpretations, diverse”: said precisely by those who have assumed the fundamental positions of those apologists of the criminal aggression and conquest against our People and State, and in any case the result achieved with them, are flagrant signs of their mental and moral weakness and of their bad conscience; and, in taking our People for idiots (since they believe that they will be able to deceive it with such tricks), they also mean adding insult to crime. In them the triumph of Nebrija is total.

The denunciation and total rupture with this mentality, and to affirm the continuity, validity and actuality of our State, is the fundamental object of this work.” Etc.

(‘End of Chapter 7: ‘Hispanic propaganda: its ideological justification for the annexation of the South-Pyrenean territories of the Kingdom of Nabarre, of our work: ‘Notes on the History of the Basque People/Euskal Herria and its State: the Kingdom of Nabarre’.)