Lexicon

NEW PHOENICIA

Part III of the Garat Project (1811). The political and military circumstances had changed considerably. In Spain, the clergy managed to ignite the anti-French nationalist fire which, despite the initial peaceful reception, spread in some parts of the Iberian Basque Country, which remained occupied and in 1810 was divided into two separate governments, Navarre and Vizcaya. The possibility of creating a large Trans-Pyrenean Country with Vasconia, Aragon and Catalonia was considered. In 1811, Garat sent the Duke of Bassano, Napoleon I's Minister of Foreign Affairs, a summary of the work he had written: Recherches sur le peuple primitif de l'Espagne, sur les revolutions de cette péninsule, sur les Basques espagnoles et français. The work is intended to inform the Emperor, apart from Joseph I, about the nature of the people that Garat wants to reunify in order to underpin the "voluntary submission of Spain" and "the coming humiliation of England". Reiterating the considerations set out in previous years, Garat advocated the formation of a Basque National State with Basques from both sides, a state made up of the departments of New Tyre and New Sidon and called New Phoenicia as a whole. Its flag would be that of Navarre because "due to extraordinary circumstances, there are strong reasons to believe that the coat of arms of Phoenicia has been preserved in the coat of arms of Navarre".