I am convinced that the vast majority of people in this vast world are pacifists, all of them except a pathological minority or a war negotiator. I don’t know if most people are Pacific. I, speaking of myself, am not so sure. I am convinced that all people, including most of the warriors, and with the exception of the minority in question, prefer peace to war; I am lost in countless doubts as to whether we are capable of maintaining the ideology of Pacifism, the whole of the ideas and beliefs of Pacifism, and its consequences.

I place pacifism in the field of ideology – in the purest and most positive sense of the concept, that is, in the field where the heart and the mind converge – while in the field of desire and hobby, in the field of natural preferences and healthy but deeply unthought feelings, pacifism. When Nago Carlo Levi said “they loved peace so intensely that they were not willing to fight for it” and denounced that attitude, he thought of pacifists, not Pacifist prezeskis. Because the Pacifists, unlike many pacifists, are fighters: always peacefully, but fighters, not rarely fighters willing to suffer direct repression, imprisonment and even death for a cause in any conflict.

Well, I'm not sure I'm a Pacifist at this level. Fighter, at my humble level and in all appearance sterile, yes; but pacifist, in any conflict? I'm not so sure about that, and I'd be lying if I said I'm a Pacifist. But I must say that, at the same time, I admire more yews for a just cause than the Pacifists, the nameless, the warriors, even the most brilliant, even the greatest martyrs, who are. I admire Che, I admire Chabi Etxebarrieta, Pequeño... but more commonly I admire Luther King or Gandhi, that is.

As a historian, I am well aware that violence has been the birthplace of history. But the title of historian does not give me the gift of being a seer: it does not give me the gift of deducing that it will always be so in the future, as if there were such a law. That is why I admire the Pacifists, because they are convinced that there is no Law of History, because they are convinced that we can also change History itself, the course of History, that in a time when we can have a future, conflicts and disturbances, all of them, will have solutions outside the means of war. Such a utopia, truly admirable! So admirable that I'm also afraid of where believing in it would lead me.

If I am a Pacifist, hic et nunc, you have me here and now; here in the Basque Country; and now, today, for a long time and a long time. As an experienced and historical historian, I have seen for a long time: because I have seen where the absence of pacifism of certain pacifists has led us; as a historian, for a long time, for two reasons: on the one hand, because I do not believe in any law of history, because I believe that it is in our hands to change once and for all that disastrous character of history so far, the deplorable vanity of violence; and, secondly, because in Western Europe at least, the obstacles, the cunning of the State authorities, are the ethical tools, the philosophical and philosophical means by which we demand from peaceful means, of struggle.