Documents made public in the US show PNV received funding from Germany during the transition

The cables, which we reproduce verbatim, show that the PNV was not alone in that process, although the aid was not large either. During the transition, the Basque Nationalist Party received half a million marks (today 115,000 euros) from the German Christian Democracy to launch its political activity, according to a cable now declassified and dated 1977 from the United States Embassy. Some money whose purpose was to activate the PNV on the eve of its legalization. The leader who led the party at the time, now deceased, Xabier Arzalluz, was the one who made the revelation that was recorded in a communication reported to Washington by the United States Embassy. The document on financing appears as an annex in Jorge Urdanez’s book ‘The Transition According to the Spies’.

Until now it was known that the PSOE of the transition was funded from Germany. But it was unknown that it did the same with the Basque nationalists. According to Iñaki Anasagasti, a former senator from Geltz, who experienced those episodes first-hand, the help of the German CDU had its origins in the relations his party had already built with the Christian Democratic International, a movement in whose founding the PNV had intervened in exile in 1947.

The information on the financing was conveyed by Xabier Arzalluz to the consul of Bilbao, who transmitted it to Wells Stabler, then United States ambassador to Spain. This diplomat in turn informed the State Department in Washington, where the Spanish transition was followed with great interest. The conversation collected in the confidential cable is an excerpt from a broader conversation in which we talk about both the political positions that the PNV will maintain in the event of the arrival of democracy and the vision that the Jeltzel formation has for the future of the country. Basque.

In this context, it is a conversation that reflects the spirit of the times. The dictator Franco had died two years earlier and Spain was taking the first steps towards democracy. But, in the broader context, the world was in the midst of a Cold War between the Western and Communist blocs. The PNV, on the other hand, was not legal until March 23, 1977. The conversation took place a month earlier, in February, when the group was not yet authorized but was already functioning with full normality in public life.

The transcription made by the consul shows that Arzalluz knew exactly which buttons to play with the North American representatives. The Gelquid leader complained to his American interlocutor that communism had no problem obtaining financing in the Basque Country. “The communists are well financed from abroad and they are very well organized,” says the Penyuvist leader, who attributes this capacity to the support of “the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries.” Faced with this situation, Arzalluz assured that democratic parties have economic deficiencies. “The PNV does not even have the money to publish a newspaper. “(Arzalluz) even mentions receiving donations of 80,000 Marks from the CDU and 400,000 Marks from the Christian Democratic International, amounts too small even to cover the party’s current expenses,” appears the declassified cable.

To put that meeting in context, according to Iñaki Anasagasti, it should be taken into account that the PNV, as the founder of Christian democracy, had built up a wide network of European contacts in the years when its leaders were in exile. “In the 70s, we already had important relations with the CDU (Christian Democratic Union, from its acronym in German) and the Christian Democratic International and with leaders such as Venezuelan President Rafael Caldera,” explains Anasagasti.

Former senator Jeltzel remembers in particular three visits in which the Christian Democrats showed their support for the PNV. In the first of them, in 1975, they took us to Berlin and put us up in a hotel near the Wall, so that we knew what communism meant, we also went to the eastern sector through ‘Check Point Charlie’. It was a meeting that was very aware of what had happened in 1974 with the Carnation Revolution, when the military staged a coup in Portugal to end the dictatorship and it was feared that there would be a shift towards communism.

After that first contact, Anasagasti, on behalf of the PNV, attended a second meeting held in Cologne and sponsored by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, a German organization sponsored by Christian democracy, named after the first chancellor of emerging Germany after World War II and founder of the European Union. The purpose of this group was to help political parties in countries that were transitioning to democracy. “They gave us classes on political pedagogy and electoral techniques and resources,” Anasagasti recalls. And a third meeting was still held at the Melia Hotel in Madrid, attended by Aldo Moro, leader of the Italian Christian Democracy and Italian Prime Minister who was assassinated by the Red Brigades in 1978. That meeting was also attended by Joseba Goikoetxea, a PNV militant who would later become the leader of the newly created Ertzaintza and was assassinated by ETA in 1993.

The European protection of the transition did not only affect the PNV. In its obsession with preventing communism, the German Social Democratic Party SPD financed the Spanish PSOE, after verifying that its implementation in the country was weak and had little penetration. The same year of Franco’s death, the German socialists sent money to the network of labor law firms that served as cover for the PSOE and even opened a delegation of Germany’s oldest political foundation, Friedrich Ebert, in Madrid. This aid would be tainted by a corruption scandal, the ‘Flick case’, which investigated bribes to German political parties by one of the main businessmen.

According to some information from the time, the Ebert Foundation gave more than 2.4 million euros to socialist parties in Spain and Portugal. The amount received by the PNV, 115,000 euros, is much more modest. “At that time, we didn’t even have the money to organize rallies. German aid barely allowed us to buy a photocopier,” Anasagasti recalls.

In addition to the secret cable on financing, the documents that have been made public reveal another incident in which the PNV was the protagonist and which was about to break relations between Spain and the United States at such a delicate moment as the Spanish transition.

The main figure in that event is the Democratic senator from Idaho Frank Church, a politician who will chair the Foreign Committee of the North American Senate and who has become famous in history for the investigative committees he set up to denounce the excesses of the CIA, both in the Vietnam War and on American soil. For example, if the existence of the North American electronic spying agency NSA is known, it is thanks to Church’s investigations. His most recent biography, published last year, is titled ‘The Last Honest Man’.

On March 24, 1978, Church landed in Bilbao to participate in that year’s ‘Aberri Eguna’, the last act of that type that would be done jointly between all nationalist forces and leftist parties. Church was invited by a group called the ‘Euzkadi-USA Cultural Exchange Program’, although his trip was managed by the PNV. The US senator was greeted at the Bilbao airport by Arzalluz and Juan de Ajuriaguerra, who presided over the PNV in exile.

On March 26, Frank Church was taken to the balcony of the Gran Vía in Bilbao, owned by Rufino Urquijo, father of the future president of Athletic Ana Urquijo, so that he could see the Eberri Eguna from that privileged place. From there he went to San Juan de Luz to meet the PNV leader Manuel de Irujo, whom he had met in Caracas.

Iñaki Anasagasti remembers that the visit represented the support of the world’s leading power for the PNV and was achieved due to the fact that Church, a senator from Idaho, a state with a large presence of the Basque diaspora, “wanted his voters to originate in Euskadi”.

Cables made public in the United States reveal how the North American leader was “received with great enthusiasm” in Bilbao, where his plane from London had landed. That same day he had lunch with the historical leader of the PNV, Juan de Azuariguera, and with Arzalluz himself, who reminded the church of “the support of the Basque secret services for the Americans in World War II and the Americans’ failure to fight.” against Francoist oppression.

Anasagasti remembers a meal at which the United States consul refused to drink alcohol because of his religious beliefs “and demanded a Coca-Cola with hake.”

The senator’s activity disturbed the government of Adolfo Suárez hourly. For the Spanish executive, the fact that Church did not go to Madrid before going to Bilbao was already an offense. But his support for the PNV also raised the level of tension. In this atmosphere, Church traveled to Madrid after finishing his trip to Euskadi to meet with Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelino Oreja. There the first disagreements occurred. “In a rare display of poor political judgment, the minister refused to receive the senator,” US diplomats wrote in a confidential cable. Church’s humiliation continued when, after keeping the senator waiting for a long time, an undersecretary approached him “for a brief and futile conversation.” The contempt continued and he threatened that no one in the government would take notice of him.

The emerging crisis was not known until 1991, when Ambassador Wells Stabler was interviewed for the Association for Diplomatic Studies magazine. There he revealed the scope of the diplomatic incident and how he had to present himself to King Juan Carlos to stop the tensions. «I called someone close to the monarch and told him: Church is going to become chairman of the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee and you want to make friends there. You are going to oppose someone who will never forget such arrogant, rude and disrespectful behavior not only with him but also with me as the United States ambassador. To be honest, I am extremely dissatisfied.» “The only way to save the situation is for the king to see this senator.” Juan Carlos accepted this and not only met with the North American politician but also reprimanded the foreign minister, who rushed to telephone Church to meet him.

Almost a century later, Anasagasti remembers the visit to the church as a sign of great support for the PNV which was beginning its path in transition. And he especially remembers a phrase that the senator said to him in an aside during his stay in Bilbao. “I hope you find politics boring soon.”