page_title: Víctor Pradera Larumbe
section_title: Regionalist
hierarchical_section_title: Víctor Pradera Larumbe / Regionalist
caption_attribution_description: Euskara: Jose Antonio Agirre Lekube 1933ko Aberri Egunean EAJ-PNVk Donostiako Maitea frontoian antolaturiko hitzaldian. Gipuzkoa, Basque Country.English: Jose Antonio Agirre Lekube's speech during Aberri Eguna, Day of the Basque Homeland, 1933. in Maitea Jai-Alai, Donostia / San Sebastian. Gipuzkoa, Basque Country.
context_page_description: Juan Víctor Pradera Larumbe was a Spanish political theorist and a Carlist politician.
context_section_description: The regionalist question posed an indispensable component of Pradera's theory; it also kept coming back as a major thread of his political activities. Today among many Spanish citizens – especially the Basques – Pradera is principally recognized only for his stance on this very topic, usually as a sworn enemy of national minorities.
  From the onset of his career Pradera declared himself a supporter of traditional regional fueros, and identified himself as unswervingly regionalist. In his political vision the regions, with their specific legal, economic and social establishments, were among key entities forming a nation, and his recommendations to Primo endorsed a strongly regionalist state. The fueros, however, did not provide  an autonomous legal framework, but to the contrary, they were viewed as a pact between a region and the Spanish state. Hence, he consistently fought all designs perceived as fostering separatism and embracing autonomy, confronting Liga Autonomista, lambasting Wilsonian arguments on self-determination, fighting theories advanced by Sabino Arana and Arturo Campión, thwarting autonomy projects of late Restauración, publicly admonishing Primo de Rivera for fostering separatism, fighting Vasco-Navarrese autonomy drafts during the Republic - with particular hostility to incorporating Navarre into the autonomous project - and voting against the Catalan Leases Act in Tribunal de Garantias.
  Pradera denied the Basques and the Catalans a separate political identity, be it historical or contemporary, and was particularly infuriated by racist thread of the Basque national discourse. Recognising their separate ethnic status, he considered the minorities "pueblos", forming part of the Spanish political nation. He remained restless denouncing what he considered invented nationalist myths and proving that the Basques had neither formed a unitarian cultural entity nor had ever possessed a common political self. As confronting Basque and Catalan political aspirations became a major thread of Pradera's activity, driven by concern for unity of Spain, he soon grew into the nationalist Basques' primary foe, accused of españolismo, hyperpatriotism and jingoism.
caption: Basque nationalism: Euzkadi
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