Arrantzale, Baltzuri, Errementari, Gudari, Nik, Peli Azkasibar.
Basque nationalist leader born in Bilbao on July 20, 1892.
He wrote a wide variety of articles under the pseudonyms “Baltzuri,” “Erementari,” “Gudari,” “Javier de Urroz,” “Luki Ibañeta,” “Peli Askazibar,” “Usune Irugara,” “Zuriñe,” and “Arrantzale.” He studied commerce, learned the Basque language, which he immediately began to teach, and joined the Basque Youth Organization Euzko Gastedija in Bilbao, a group of which he became president. When Comunión Nacionalista, promoted by former Euskalerriakos, steered Basque nationalism towards autonomy, Gallastegui and independence-minded elements inspired by Sabino Arana-Goiri expressed their impatience and disagreement. An admirer of the Irish Sinn Fein, with whom he maintained relations, it was Francisco Cambó's famous visit to the Basque Country in January 1917 and the possible rapprochement Basque nationalism and the Catalan League that finally exasperated the group of young people from Bilbao, whose weekly newspaper “Aberri” was seized in March. Gallastegui was appointed treasurer of the BBB in 1920, but the dissensions continued and, at the end of July 1921, the EBB broke with Juventud Vasca de Bilbao, leaving Aberri as the press organ opposed to the communist Euzkadi. From this moment on, Basque nationalism was split into two groups: Eli Gallastegui's PNV (“Aberri”) and the Nationalist Communion of Eleizalde, Landeta, “Kizkitza,” etc., although the division had little impact in the other Basque provinces and almost none in Gipuzkoa.
From this moment on, Gallastegui and his party embarked on a continuous political creativity that was destined to be short-lived due to the dictatorship. In April 1922, he promoted “Emakume Abertzale Batza,” modeled on the Irish “Cumann Nam Ban,” in open contradiction to the harsh patriarchal attitude of his admired Luis Arana Goiri, whose “Euskeldun Batzokija” ed solidarity with Juventud Vasca. In 1923, he presided over the “Federación de Mendigoxales” (Federation of Mendigoxales), the driving force behind independence nationalism. Consistent with the thesis of the founder of nationalism, he adopted a firm anti-colonialist stance towards the war in Africa, proclaiming his solidarity with Abdel Krim, as Arana had done with the Cuban rebels in 1898. To this end, he staged Pedro Mari de Campión as a paradigm of the Basque attitude towards an absurd war and organized the Relief Committee to assist those who had been mobilized and their families. His attitude was also discordant and understanding in the controversy he held in the newspaper “Euzkadi” regarding the bloody events of August 23, 1923, in which Oscar Pérez Solís and a communist group barricaded themselves in the Casa del Pueblo in Bilbao.
Faced with his fellow party members' fear of the “Spanish red proletariat,” Gallastegui proclaimed his greater distrust of “Basque red and yellow capitalism.” The events of September of that year led to the closure of the premises in Bilbao and the disappearance of Aberri. Two days before the coup d'état, he had participated in the Catalan National Day, paying tribute, with Maciá, to the councillor Casanova and toasting the rebel leader Abdel Krim. However, Gallastegui's exile took place almost two years later, after the police raided the banquet-tribute held on May 3, 1925, on the occasion of his bachelor party, an event interpreted as a disguised political meeting. He lived in Zumárraga, where he was imprisoned several times. Finally, when a new arrest warrant was issued and he was threatened with a court martial that sought a twelve-year prison sentence, he had to flee first to Hendaye and then to Donibane Lohitzune.
In Donibane, he organized a Pro-Basque Independence Committee and laid the foundations for a League of Oppressed Nations in contact with Maciá and Catalan nationalists. In 1926, taking advantage of Pacho Belausteguigoitia's offer to put him in charge of his cotton office in Torreón (Coahuila), he moved to Mexico (December) with his wife, Margarita de Miñaur Mújica, and son Iker. He settled in this country, where he edited Patria Vasca from 1928 onwards, mobilizing the opinion of Basques in America and the rest of the world. It is in this newspaper—along with Aberri—that we most frequently find his fiery, humanistic, and supportive words. His involvement in the Mexican press also made the dictatorship uncomfortable, which tried, unsuccessfully, to have him expelled. In 1931, after the reunification of the two branches of nationalism in Bergara (November 16, 1930), he returned to the country at the of his followers. He ran a Basque-Irish commercial enterprise. During the Second Republic, he respected the statutory movement, although he did not share it because of what he considered to be dangerous consequences for nationalism. In September, he was imprisoned for his participation in incidents related to the attempted assault by leftist groups and the police inspection of the premises of Juventud Vasca in Bilbao.
In prison, together with A. de Altuna and twelve others, he drafted a manifesto and went on hunger strike, following the example of the Irish mayor of Cork and Gandhi, whom he fervently admired. In 1932, he was one of the organisers of the first Aberri Eguna (27 March) despite his growing disagreement with the party leadership. From an initial position of critical acceptance of unification, the failure of statism, the collusion of nationalism with the anti-republican right (concordat clause of the Statute of Estella, 1931 candidacies) and the emergence of the ambiguous AVASC soon put him back on the path to secession, together with the people of Jagi-Jagi, the Mendigoxale press led by Gallastegui. In 1933, he published the first volume of a selection of his articles entitled Por la libertad vasca (For Basque Freedom) (Verdes, 350 pp.). The following year, he and thirty-two other militants left the party for good after a controversy with Jemein over his pamphlet Sólo Jel basta (Only Jel is Enough). Opposed to Basque participation in the war of 1936, he was evacuated in June 1937 by the Basque Government on the eve of the fall of Bilbao. After several months in the Saint-Amand Montrond refugee centre, he managed to get to Ireland, where he remained until the end of the world war, helped by Irish patriots he had known previously. He then settled in Donibane (Lapurdi), where he remained until his death on 25 January 1974.
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