page_title: Fuero
section_title: Echoes of the fueros after suppression in Spain
hierarchical_section_title: Fuero / Basque and Pyrenean fueros / Echoes of the fueros after suppression in Spain
caption_attribution_description: Español: Si el famoso árbol de Guernica da este fruto, procuremos que no vuelva á retoñar.
context_page_description: Fuero, Fur, Foro or Foru is a Spanish legal term and concept. The word comes from Latin forum, an open space used as a market, tribunal and meeting place. The same Latin root is the origin of the French terms for and foire, and the Portuguese terms foro and foral; all of these words have related, but somewhat different, meanings.
  The Spanish term fuero has a wide range of meanings, depending upon its context. It has meant a compilation of laws, especially a local or regional one; a set of laws specific to an identified class or estate. In many of these senses, its equivalent in the medieval England would be the custumal.
  In the 20th century, Francisco Franco's regime used the term fueros for several of the fundamental laws. The term implied these were not constitutions subject to debate and change by a sovereign people, but orders from the only legitimate source of authority, as in feudal times.
context_section_description: After the First Carlist War, the new class of Navarre negotiated separately from the rest of Basque districts the Ley Paccionada (or Compromise Act) in Navarre (1841), which granted some administrative and fiscal prerogatives to the provincial government within Spain. The rest of the Basque districts managed to keep still for another 40 years a small status of self-government, definitely suppressed in 1876. The end of the Third Carlist War saw the Carlists strong in the Basque districts succumb to the Spanish troops led by King Alfonso XII of Spain and their reduced self-government was suppressed and converted into Economic Agreements. Navarre's status was less altered in 1876 than that of Gipuzkoa, Biscay, and Álava, due to the separate agreement signed in 1841 by officials of the Government of Navarre with the Spanish government accepting the transformation of the kingdom into a Spanish province.
  Despite capitulation agreements acknowledging specific administrative and economic prerogatives, attempts of the Spanish government to bypass them spread malaise and anger in the Basque districts, ultimately leading to the 1893–94 Gamazada uprising in Navarre. Sabino Arana bore witness to the popular revolt as a Biscayne envoy to the protests.
  The enthusiasm raised by the popular revolt in Navarre against the breach of war ending agreements made a deep impact on Sabino Arana, who went on to found the Basque Nationalist Party in 1895, based in Biscay but aiming beyond the boundaries of each Basque district, seeking instead a confederation of the Basque districts. Arana, of a Carlist background, rejected the Spanish monarchy and founded Basque nationalism on the basis of Catholicism and fueros (Lagi-Zaŕa, as he called them in Basque, "Old Law").
  The high-water mark of a restoration of Basque autonomy in recent times came under the Second Spanish Republic in the mid twentieth century. An attempt was made at restoring some kind of Basque self-government in the Statute of Estella, initially garnering a majority of the votes, but controversially failing to take off (Pamplona, 1932). Four years later and amid a climate of war, Basque nationalists supported the left-leaning Republic as ardently as they had earlier supported the right-wing Carlists (note that contemporary Carlists supported Francisco Franco). The defeat of the Republic by the forces of Francisco Franco led in turn to a suppression of Basque culture, including banning the public use of the Basque language.
  The Franco regime considered Biscay and Gipuzkoa as "traitor provinces" and cancelled their fueros. However, the pro-Franco provinces of Álava and Navarre maintained a degree of autonomy unknown in the rest of Spain, with local telephone companies, provincial limited-bailiwick police forces (miñones in Alava, and Foral Police in Navarre), road works and some taxes to support local government.
  The post-Franco Spanish Constitution of 1978 acknowledged "historical rights" and attempted to compromise in the old conflict between centralism and federalism by establishing a constitutional provision catering to historic Catalan and Basque political demands, and leaving open the possibility of establishing their own autonomous communities. The Spanish Constitution speaks of "nationalities" and "historic territories", but does not define them. The term nationality itself was coined for the purpose, and neither Basques nor Catalans are specifically recognized by the Constitution.
  After the 1981 coup d'état attempt and the ensuing passing of the restrictive LOAPA act, such possibility of autonomy got opened to whatever (reshaped) Spanish region demanded it (such as Castile and León, Valencia, etc.), even to those never struggling to have their separate identity recognized and always considering themselves invariably Spanish. The State of Autonomous Communities took the shape of administrative districts and was ambiguous as to the actual recognition of separate identities, coming to be known as café para todos, or 'coffee for everyone'.
  However, the provincial chartered government
caption: Spanish satiric depiction against the fueros embodied in the Tree of Gernika
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