It’s not Christmas Day, it’s Christmas Day that we Basques need. Once a year there are repeated calls from potential patriotic parties and groups, on these dates, the homeland of the Basque Country is the Basque Country/Euskal Herria around the proclamation. It's a matter of a day, though. And not made together, either.

It is true that the popular initiative that has been working for the last five years to achieve a unified Patriotic Day is plausible. He didn’t get much, of course. Each party and group calls to themselves, in different places, the same name of Patriot Day, but nothing else. Neither the substance of the proclamation nor the date itself are agreed upon.

This year, for example, although the official historical date is Easter Sunday, April 20, the dates for the calls have been multiplied. The predecessors have called their own Patriotic Day on April 4 to build Itsasun, the “Basque Socialist State”; their successors, on April 11 to “unite as a people” in San Sebastián; on April 20, Easter Sunday, the calls have been multiplied and the patriotic citizens have been summoned to Gernika or Garazi, Bilbao and Pamplona. In each case, both the callers and the content are very different.

For a single day we have become a vinegar salad for many Patriotic Day. That's not what we need and want. We need a real chance. We need a real opportunity to achieve a united, sovereign, Basque, just and free nation. The Basque Country is an independent state, facing Europe and the rest of the world. This is precisely what we are calling on both parties and patriotic groups to agree on a clear, unified and coherent path, above their respective party agendas and interests, so that the Basque Country can be organized as an independent democratic nation.

But our discontent and surprise are often aroused by nationalist parties and groups. See, if not, how they have recreated the platform called Juntos in the North Basque Country and, to promote institutional knowledge, what and... the Lyon metropolis is a source of inspiration for us! Along the same lines, the leaders of the EH Assembly propose a confederal state and/or a federal pact within the Spanish constitution, while nurturing alliances with the governments of the PSOE. Or at the PNV, that’s where we have the same Aitor Esteban who has taken on a “renewed” leadership. Moved by his warm greeting at the Congress of Madrid, the Basques have called us to “be responsible and accept the budgets of the Spanish government”, while the hope of a new local status alienates them.

You can't bring Patriot Choice from there. We don't need any more Homeland Days for propaganda and whitewashing. What we are asking for is a very different path, focused on the Basque language, for the whole of the Basque Country to come together and develop a consensual nationalism. We need representatives, politicians, parties and patriotic groups that act in a coherent way on this path.

If we look at the modern and contemporary history of the Basque Country, we will find useful models. The first Patriotic Day was the only event convened in 1932, on Bilbao’s Gran Vía, to the doorway of Sabin Arana’s house, which gathered a crowd of about 60,000 citizens. This year, the calls, the clamors and the citizens will be dispersed. But we have other optimistic examples of the expansion of the Patriotic Option in our contemporary history, in which we have as an example the Lizarra Garazi Convention, an excellent road map that we obtained between 23 Basque parties, unions and groups in September-October 1998.

We must bring it to Patriotic Opportunity Day and open the roads to freedom in the Basque Country.