The Council of Euskalgintza is warning of the linguistic emergency we have been experiencing in recent weeks. Several years have passed since the beginning of describing the situation of the process of revitalization of the Basque country at the crossing, at the roundabout, at the inpasse and with similar words, since the need to make the leap to linguistic policies was underlined. During the last year, with the help of UEMA, Iñaki Iurrebaso has dedicated himself to socializing the conclusions of his extensive research, village to people and social agents. Anyone who wanted to know already knows where we are: “much closer to death than to a situation of full health”, “in a drastic minority”. In this situation, he has proposed that it is an essential step for the Basques to become aware of our situation of gravity, to reverse the situation and to open a new and strong period of Euskaldunisation. However, we are neither the first nor the only ones to use this concept, as both in Catalonia and Galicia have already insisted that they are in a linguistic emergency. It is not our particular problem, but the general trend of minority languages worldwide. This is what the development of the patriarchal and neocolonial capitalist system brings from globalization.

It is also evident that the “diagnosis” of the emergency situation has accelerated with the reaction, as in recent years the areas with benefits are being questioned and the steps taken are being delayed. The media, parties and political and judicial institutions that we have always faced are in full offense, and within these movements the role of the CCOO and UGT unions and of the PSOE that in recent times are giving rise to the regression of the process of Euskaldunisation, both from the courts and from the institutions, to the most active and effective agents. In this initiative, beyond denouncing in isolation the offensive against the Basque Country, we should begin to denounce that these agents are fuelling the rise of fascism and the reactionary wave they supposedly criticise. Indeed, within the same logic there are cuts in the different rights achieved by the oppressed through the struggle. We Euskaltzales should be more careful about how and how relationships and alliances with them are built.

On the other hand, emergency(s) cannot be understood, as it has come, as a temporary phenomenon that is going to go at some point, but as a permanent consequence of deep structural problems. The alarm sounds are not useless, they have to lead us to the search for the causes of the problem at full speed in order to be able to provide an effective solution to the problem at every moment. And this, as in the case of minority languages, applies to many other issues, at this time of multiple crisis.

There are, here and there, deniers who refuse to face these alarms the causes of diseases and, many times, the evil itself. In our case, we have heard speeches such as that the situation in the Basque Country is on the right track or that the problem lies in the lack of personal commitment of the Basque Country. In the same vein, in recent times there has been a predominance of the tendency not to say that behind the cancer situation in the Basque Country there is a national, and therefore linguistic, oppression to depoliticize the issue.

In times of anti-politics and the rise of the far-right, we believe that little or nothing will be achieved by depoliticisation (at least we can wish it). We have to repoliticise the Basque problem, in updated terms, of course.

It is clear what is the cause of the emergence of us and of any minority linguistic community: the states that want to assimilate peoples by imposing their hegemonic languages; and in this hyperglobalized and capitalist world, a whole system in crisis that has the need to produce periodic reactionary offensives in order to maintain the quo of state of the most powerful.

In the face of this situation, we do not have magic recipes, we are going to discover that path among the agents of Euskalgintza. But it is clear from where the solution of the emergency should go: from the awareness of our situation and the network; from the assumption of our rights and, through input, from the overcoming of the established borders; from the opening of our linguistic community to the plurality of new members and with them the construction of a better community/s and/or more/s strong; from the struggle of the Basque people with other struggles and alliances; from the political level. We don't need anesthesia, we need a cure.

And it is clear to us what the cure is: the Basque needs a statue, the Basques have to write our constitution, from the bottom up, of the Basque and the Basque. From Euskalgintza, with the help of other popular movements, we appeal to go down that road, and the Euskaltzales, to organize it and to create the conditions to awaken that pride that we need. On 7 December we have an important quote in that direction. Let us fill the streets, let us see the strength of the Vasquist anti-fascist front and join forces for the independence we need!

Sugoi Etxarri Zabaleta e Intza Gurrutxaga Loidi, coordinadoras de Euskal Herrian Euskaraz