DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18473084
title: Basque Protest Data 2010-2019

description: Arkaitz Letamendia

University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). This database is part of the Postdoctoral Research - Program for the Improvement of Doctor Researchers of the Basque Government (POS_2019_2_0029). Department of Political Science, Parte Hartuz Research Group. This database has been prepared during the postdoctoral research stay at the Center Émile Durkheim (CNRS, SciencePo Bordeaux, Université de Bordeaux) between January 2019 and January 2021, under the direction of Xabier Itçaina.

E-mail: arkaitz.letamendia@ehu.eus

 

 

1- Database (Excel)

 

Tabs: years 2010 to 2019.

 

Cells: number of protest events according to type of social movement and type of tactic, per year.

 

Rows: Type of social movement.

Indep.: pro-independence movement. Trabaj.: workers movement. Ecolog.: environmental movement. Femin.: feminist movement. LGTBIQ: LGTBIQ movement. Pacif.: pacifist movement. Antimil.: antimilitarist movement. Okup.: squatting movement. Vecin.: neighborhood movement. Prec/exc/aus: precariat, anti-social exclusion and anti-austerity movement. Educ.: educational movement. Eusk.: pro-euskera (basque language) movement. Estud.: student movement. Agr. y camp.: agricultural and peasant movement. Internac.: internationalist movement. Mem. hist.: historical memory movement. Animal.: animal rights movement. Antir/antif /ref: anti-racist, anti-fascist and pro-refugees movement. Anti E.: anti-ETA movement. Ultra: ultra and extreme-right movement. Otros: other movements.

 

Columns: Protest Tactics.

Manif.: demonstrations. Huelg.: strikes. A. dir.: direct confrontational and violent actions. A. simb.: symbolic actions. MMM: mountain, motorized and bicycle marches. A. cár.: protest actions in prisons. Okup.: squats. Desob.: actions of civil disobedience. Ayun.: fasts and hunger strikes.

 

 

     2- Brief description of the categorized types of social movements and types of protest tactics

Types of social movements

The types of social movements categorized in the database are defined from a broad theoretical perspective. The definition, based on the proposal of Tarrow (1998), considers all common collective action maintained over time as a social movement. This means that I propose a lax conceptualization of social movement, equivalent to that of political movement or popular movement, which must meet two conditions. On the one hand, it must be constituted by a common collective action that is maintained over time, that is, it must act and mobilize over time in the public space. On the other hand, it has to articulate some type of demand, claim or defense of socio-political objectives. In this way, the different typologies of social movements that appear in the database range from emancipatory, revolutionary and progressive movements, to reactionary or even extreme-right movements, as long as they are expressed in the public space through identifiable repertoires of collective action (Caiani, Della Porta & Wagemann, 2012). This broad and comprehensive perspective of movements and collective action tries to identify how and for what reasons a population mobilizes in a given territory and time. Thus, the types of social movements categorized in the Basque territory between 2010 and 2019 in the rows of the database are the following.

Indep.: pro-independence, pro-self-determination and pro-political prisoners movement. Trabaj.: workers and trade union movement. Ecolog.: environmental movement. Femin.: feminist movements. LGBTIQ: LGTBIQ movements. Pacif.: pacifist movement. Antimil.: antimilitarist movement. Okup.: squatting movement. Vecin.: neighborhood movement. Prec/ exc/aus: movement of the precariat, and anti-precariousness, anti-social exclusion, anti-evictions and anti-austerity movements. Educ.: educational movement, mothers and fathers of schools movement. Eusk.: euskaltzale, pro-Basque language movement. Estud.: student movement. Agr. y camp.: agricultural and peasant movement. Intern.: internationalist movement. Mem. hist.: memorial and historical memory movement. Animal.: animal rights and anti-speciesism movement. Antir/antif/ref: anti-racist, anti-fascist and solidarity movements with refugees and migrants. Anti E: anti-ETA, ETA victims and anti-Jihad movements. Ultra: ultranationalist, extreme-right and Spanish unionist movements. Otros: other movements that cannot be included in the previous categories.

 

Types of protest tactics

The protest tactics categorized in this database refer to the methods of mobilization and socio-political action of the population studied. This conceptualization is based on the works of Tilly (2007) or Tilly and Wood (2010), according to which any population shows a limited and well-established set of means for action related to shared interests. The range of means available to a group to make identifiable political demands, to which activists resort, suggests that within social conflict it is possible to find patterns and methods of collective action. These sets of protest methods and tactics used by the population make up the protest repertoires. These methods and tactics range from novel and innovative protest formats to adaptations of traditional forms of collective action (Itçaina, 2017). Based on this conceptualization, in the columns of the database I have categorized the following protest tactics for the Basque case between 2010 and 2019.

Manif.: demonstrations and concentrations. Huelg.: strikes and work stoppages. A. dir.: direct actions that include a wide range of forms of confrontation and political violence, such as confrontations with the police, barricades, sabotage, and armed actions. A. simb.: symbolic actions that include a wide range of collective actions such as parodies, dramatizations and performances, human chains, audiovisual and telematic events, human puzzles and mosaics, hybrid and community events, and other recreational and visual forms of vindication. MMM: mountain marches, motorized gears in cars, motorcycles or tractors, interurban and bicycle marches. A. cár.: protest actions within prisons such as hunger strikes or refusals to leave the cells. Okup.: squatting of buildings and resistance to its evictions. Desob.: actions of civil disobedience such as sit-ins, lockdowns, chainings and blockades. Ayun.: fasts and hunger strikes.

 

 

  3- Empirical design and data collection

Units of analysis: Protest Events

The units of analysis, classified and quantified in the database, are the protest events. Protest events are collective activities carried out in public space to show rejection or support for socio-political objectives. Thus, these types of events must meet the following conditions: there must be more than one person involved in them; the participants have to articulate some demand, either of rejection or of support to some objective; and they must occur in the public sphere, or have been open to the public (Soule & Davenport, 2009). Each protest event can be classified according to the type of tactic, and the type of social movement that carries it out.

 

Territorial scope of the study

The territorial scope of the database covers the whole Basque Country (Euskal Herria). This territory is made up, on the one hand, by the Basque Autonomous Community and the Navarra Foral Community (Southern Basque Country, or Hegoalde), belonging to the Spanish State. And on the other hand, by Northern Basque Country (or Iparralde), made up of the provinces of Labourd, Lower Navarre and Soule, belonging to the French State.

 

Temporal scope of the study

The forms of protest analyzed and collected in the database range from January 1, 2010 to December 31, 2019.

 

Analysis technique

The technique used to carry out this study is the Protest Event Analysis (Koopmans & Rucht, 2002). The Protest Event Analysis (PEA) is aimed at systematically analyzing, quantifying and interpreting the incidence of a large number of protests through an analysis content from newspapers, official reports or other types of sources. The PEA, according to Koopmans and Rucht (2002), provides a solid empirical basis for the observation of protest activities in various geographical areas and over considerable periods of time.

 

Data source

The preferred sources for data collection in the PEA are newspapers (Hutter, 2014). To carry out this study and compile the database, I have chosen the Basque newspaper Gara. This is for several reasons. On the one hand, because it covers the chosen territorial area: the whole Basque Country. On the other hand, because it offers exhaustive information on protest and mobilization events that take place in this territory. Finally, there is a practical reason: it is a source that I have previously used in other research and in my doctoral thesis (for more details, see Letamendia Onzain, 2015:55).

 

Classification and quantification of protest events in the database

After analyzing, following the PEA technique and the indicated newspaper source, every day between January 1, 2010 and December 31, 2019, I identify and classify the protest events as follows. Each event is classified according to the type of protest tactic used, and according to the type of social movement that has carried it out. Following this classification process, I quantify and sum all the events (depending on the type of tactic and the type of social movement), per year. In this process, protest events that last several days (for example, a workers' strike that lasts for several days) are counted as a single event. Likewise, events that for the same reason are held in several locations on the same day (for example, simultaneous rallies in several towns in favor of the rights of Basque prisoners), are also counted as a single event (for more details, see Letamendia Onzain, 2015:56).

 

Data validity and triangulation

When it comes to establishing the validity of the data, the choice of newspaper sources in the PEA technique poses two types of challenges, related to description bias and selection bias (Soule & Davenport, 2009). Description bias refers to the way the event is described by the newspaper. According to Soule and Davenport (2009), this bias is easily overcome if we ignore opinions about the event and focus on classifying the type of action carried out. However, the selection bias, according to these authors, represents a greater problem for the analysis, since it refers to the fact that not all protest events are collected by each newspaper, and those that are collected do not have to be a representative sample of all the events that have actually taken place. The editorial line of each newspaper (in the case of Gara close to the Basque pro-independence left) can influence this type of bias. This bias can be overcome if we compare and triangulate the data obtained with other similar studies based on the PEA.

Regarding quantitative studies on forms of Basque mobilizations that have used the PEA technique, systematically counting protest events over the years, I have identified two cases: the work of Bárcena et al. (2003) and that of Ciordia Morandeira (2020), both focused on the Basque environmental movement.

The work of Bárcena et al. (2003) focuses on the Basque environmental movement of the 1990s: they count environmental protest events throughout that period through the PEA technique. For my part, the database that I present here analyzes the Basque protest events between 2010 and 2019, so the two studies cannot be directly compared. However, indirectly a connection can be established between them. In my doctoral thesis, where I used the same analysis technique and source as the one described here, and of which this study is a continuation, I also analyzed forms of protest from the 1990s. Specifically, those from the year 1995. In the research by Bárcena et al. (2003), in 1995, 62 environmental events were recorded, compared to 64 events in my analysis; what could be considered a minimal difference between both studies. This verification was carried out in the doctoral thesis (for more details, see Letamendia Onzain, 2015: 105).

For his part, Ciordia Morandeira presented his research in the doctoral thesis at the University of Trento (Italy) in 2020. This research addresses the collective action of the Basque environmental movement between 2007 and 2017, analyzing through the PEA the protest events of the years 2007, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015 and 2017. In this way, the years whose analysis coincide with my database, and can be compared directly, are 2011, 2013, 2017 and 2017. The sum of the environmental mobilization events of these four years is 223 (60 + 54 + 58 + 51) in the case of Ciordia Morandeira (2020 : 88); while in the database that I present here, the sum of environmental events of these same four years is 214 (70 + 55 + 44 + 45). In none of the years 2011, 2013, 2015 and 2017 the difference of protest events in both studies is greater than 10 (for more details, see Ciordia Morandeira 2020: 87-88).

 

Period of realization of the empirical work

The data on Basque protest from the years 2010 to 2013 that appear in this database were collected during the completion of the doctoral thesis (Letamendia Onzain, 2015: 134-136). The data for 2014 were collected between April and May 2018. The data for the years 2015 to 2019 were collected between June 2019 and November 2020, while I was doing the postdoctoral research stay at the Center Émile Durkheim (CNRS, SciencePo Bordeaux, Université de Bordeaux). The data between 2010 and 2013 were obtained by analyzing the daily editions of Gara in the UPV/EHU Central Library, while the data for the years 2014 to 2019 have been collected by analyzing its daily editions digitally through the computer.

 

 

4- References

Barcena, I., Ibarra, P., Guarrotxena, E., & Torre, J. (2003). The Basque Country. In C. Rootes (Ed.), Environmental protest in Western Europe (pp. 200-215). Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Caiani, M., Della Porta, D., & Wagemann, C. (2012). Mobilizing on the extreme right: Germany, Italy, and the United States. Oxford University Press, Oxford. 

Ciordia Morandeira, A. (2020). Less divided after ETA? Green networks in the Basque Country between 2007 and 2017. Doctoral Thesis. University of Trento, Trento. http://hdl.handle.net/11572/277816  

Hutter, S. (2014). Protest event analysis and its offspring. In D. della Porta (Ed.), Methodological practices in social movement research (pp. 335-367). Oxford University Press, Oxford. 

Itcaina, X. (2017). Conclusion: Popular Culture, Folk Traditions and Protest—A Research Agenda. In I. Favretto & X. Itçaina (Ed.), Protest, Popular Culture and Tradition in Modern and Contemporary Western Europe (pp. 229-248). Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/978-1-137-50737-2_11

Koopmans, R., & Rucht, D. (2002). Protest event analysis. In B. Klandermans & S. Staggenborg (Eds.), Methods of Social Movement Research (pp.231-259). University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.

Letamendia Onzain, A. (2015). La forma social de la protesta en Euskal Herria 1980–2013. University of the Basque Country Press, Leioa. https://addi.ehu.es/handle/10810/16210  

Soule, S., & Davenport, C. (2009). Velvet glove, iron fist, or even hand? Protest policing in the United States, 1960-1990. Mobilization: An International Quarterly, 14(1), 1-22. https://doi.org/10.17813/maiq.14.1.y01123143t231q66

Tarrow, S. (1998). Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Tilly, C. (2007). Contienda política y democracia en Europa, 1650-2000. Hacer, Barcelona

Tilly, C., & Wood, L. (2010). Los movimientos sociales, 1768-2008. Desde sus orígenes a Facebook. Crítica, Barcelona.