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Instability and complexity in Basque studies

This review article was completed on the eve of Spain’s 2008 general election, the day after Isaı́as Carrasco, former town councillor and member of Spain’s ruling socialist party, was assassinated by ETA in Mondragón (Guipúzcoa). How fitting then that, at a time when greater need than ever exists for insight into the history and the ideologies that lie behind the problematic issues embodied in the geographical and political configuration that is the Basque Country, these texts should have been published. The two titles under review here set out to explore somewhat different and yet irrefutably compatible aspects of Basque history, society and culture. Although they raise many questions that to some extent have already been widely debated, Woodworth and Hamilton offer fresh, often unique, insight into this most fascinating, often problematic, area of study. Whereas the former focuses on a wide range of subject matter, the latter examines a specific sector of the Basque population within a much narrower time period, drawing heavily on oral history and memory. Almost a decade ago, this very journal published a book review by Carrie Hamilton on Shirley Mangini’s Recuerdos de la resistencia. La voz de las mujeres de la guerra civil española. She lamented the fact that, in accordance with Mangini’s observations, the subordination of Spanish women’s stories was still in operation at the turn of the century (1998, p. 101). The first volume under review in this article could indeed appear to stem from Hamilton’s desire to challenge that situation, in particular, with regard to a very specific group of women whose voices have rarely been heard – those involved in the Basque separatist movement ETA. The resultant groundbreaking text Women and ETA: the gender politics of radical Basque nationalism offers the first in-depth study of this subject. Hamilton analyses the role women have played within the context of Basque radical nationalism and explores their contribution to the separatist movement since the 1960s. The layout of the volume, which is divided into eight sections, follows both a chronological and a thematic approach with the author adopting a multidisciplinary tactic to her examination and analysis. Whilst acknowledging the attendant dangers of carrying out this form of research, a notable strength of this study – of which there are many – is the manner in which the author pays particular attention to the invaluable nature of oral history and memory in shaping a nation’s or a people’s history. This would seem to hold great significance at a time when much of Spain is engaged in recovering the memories of its painful past, as expressed in an article that appeared in The Independent on 14 July 2006 reporting on the opening of the Centre for Memory in Salamanca (Keely 2006). Hamilton begins