page_title: Julián Elorza Aizpuru
section_title: SEV president, mid-years
hierarchical_section_title: Julián Elorza Aizpuru / SEV president, mid-years
caption_attribution_description: Español: Vergara. 1930. Quinto Congreso de Estudios Vascos de Bergara. Localización: Vergara
context_page_description: Julián Elorza Aizpuru was a Spanish Carlist politician. He is best known as advocate of Basque autonomous establishments, promoted during the Restoration, the Primo de Rivera dictatorship and the Second Republic. He was member of the provincial Gipuzkoan self-government and served as its president. Elorza was also the founder and the first president of Sociedad de Estudios Vascos. Politically he refrained from Carlist militancy and remained on conciliatory terms with most other political groupings.
context_section_description: In the mid-1920s SEV was increasingly torn by differences between the Gipuzkoan and the Biscay disputations; while Elorza approached the dictator with proposals related to bilingualism, Basque university and municipal autonomy, his chief Biscay opponent Lequerica kept denouncing him as representative of “una tendencia contra el sentimiento españolista del País [Vascongado]”. Eventually in 1924 the Biscay board withdrew its representatives from SEV and curtailed links to the organization, with the immediate result of ending financial subsidies. Elorza considered legal action against the Biscay Diputación, but his proposal did not pass at the SEV executive. Some criticism came also from the ecclesiastic hierarchy, as the Church remained cautious about perceived lack of explicit confessional threads in SEV. On the other hand, the Carlist claimant Don Jaime fully supported Elorza's efforts to get the foral laws restored; also within Sociedad he received homages as the one who “dirige a la unión y bien de supais le hace merecedor de la estimación de todos los vascos, sin distinción de opiniones ni intereses”.
  As the dictatorial environment made autonomy plans irrelevant and as Gipuzkoan-Biscay conflict increasingly paralyzed Sociedad, after 1924 SEV entered a period of what is referred to as “semi-hibernation”. In 1926, following his dismissal from the Gipuzkoan Diputación, Elorza ceased to represent the province in the SEV's executive, replaced by José Luis Gaytan de Ayala. He retained the post of Sociedad's president though increasingly tired and frustrated, Elorza a few times tried to resign; none of his resignation letters was accepted. Relations with the Vizcainos improved once a new Biscay Diputación was appointed in 1926; the same year in Vitoria Elorza presided over 4. SEV Congress, dedicated not as initially planned to autonomy, but to “orientación y enseñanza profesionales”. This time Alfonso XIII did not attend; the gathering offered Primo their full co-operation. In 1927 Elorza published his best known and in fact only major work, a prologue to Zaballa's study on Concierto Económico; critical about new Calvo's municipal legislation, Elorza retained conciliatory tone versus the Primo regime. However, SEV's exhibition on civil wars, planned to be staged in Pamplona, was cancelled by administration, anxious about crypto-Carlist propaganda.
  The fall of Primo changed Elorza's fortunes. In 1930 the new Dictablanda regime agreed to include Elorza in the Gipuzkoan Diputación. The same year he headed preparations to the 5. SEV Congress in Bergara; as usual he assumed a withdrawn stand and in wake of fears about politicization of the gathering he left it to the commissions to work out details. He then presided over the Congress works, which renewed the autonomy question and appointed Elorza to a 5-member commission entrusted with drafting a detailed proposal; he formed part also of a sub-comisión on Gipuzkoa. It seems that at the time Elorza still viewed autonomy largely as return to 19th-century fueros, perhaps enhanced with some sort of federative vasco-navarrese regulations. Separatist threads were marginalized; the Congress closed with Gernikako Arbola followed by Marcha Real, though some scholars claim it tended to accidentalism.
caption: SEV Congress, Bergara 1930 (Elorza 1st from left)
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