I Beginning of the Garat Project (1803). It had been 14 years since the French Basque Country had lost its autonomy and its institutions, the same years that the obscure deputy to the Estates General had begun his brilliant political career that had led him to become a minister twice. Senator Garat, on holiday in Ustaritz, wrote to Consul Bonaparte on 27 December 1803, trying to draw his attention to his compatriots to whom, he said, "the French Revolution has passed like a great phenomenon that they have scarcely understood and has left them as they were before". Garat comments on the unproductive situation of the French Basque Country and the need to "attract to us so many goods that the Spaniards let perish among them", all in the context of the rearrangement of the Pyrenees planned by the Consulate.