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Identity battles, social movement networks and political opportunity structures in the Basque public space: Bilbao's Aste Nagusia (2009-2010)
Abstract
In this paper I will analyze the identity work performed by the organizers of Bilbao’s annual popular festivities (Aste Nagusia, AN). AN constitutes a major experiment of what I call “participatory culture;” it involves networks of state institutions, political parties, entrepreneur associations, and a group of social movement organizations and cultural collectives affiliated to a Federation of Comparsas. As such, AN represents the sole “cultural space” where actors with center-, right-, and left-wing ideologies, and Spanish unionist and Basque separatist tendencies meet, and collide, in Spain. Due to these characteristics, AN is an exceptional scenario for the display of “identity battles” related not only to the fiesta, but also to divergent understandings of culture, the city and political liberties. My paper will focus on the identity narratives developed by the Federation of Comparsas, the strategies and alliances it has crafted, and their symbolic and performative representation in the festive space. It will also provide an account of the arduous work of identity synchronization/de-synchronization conducted by the comparsas to articulate internal differences amidst radically changing political opportunity structures. I will focus on the critical years of 2009-10; the decade-long repression and criminalization of the abertzale Left (hub of socialist and independentist organizations linked to the armed organization ETA) reached Bilbao’s festive field during this period. 2009 was, too, the year in which the abertzales launched a “purely political way,” that is, an internal process of “democratization” aimed at putting an end to 50 years of armed struggle, and to their 8-year electoral proscription. Given that almost half of the comparsas in the Federation fall within the abertzale umbrella, this is a key period for my research. Textual and visual data analyzed in the paper come from a two-year ethnographic study conducted in Bilbao, archival material, and in-depth interviews.
... Although armed separatism existed for a brief period in Catalonia, political attention has long focused on the 'Basque (armed) conflict'. In 2009, the abertzale (Basque-nationalist) left, a coalition of different social movement organizations and party formations, began a transition from a hybrid political-military strategy to a 'purely political' oppositional strategy, akin to the Irish and South African separatist causes (Perugorría 2012). As noted below, this transition had ramifications felt in the municipal elections that followed the initial protests of the 15M movement. ...
To promote economic attractiveness in experience-oriented societies, urban regeneration strategies often encourage local distinctiveness through community and culture. When these are rooted in political struggles, the upgrading of cultural festivals by today’s eventful cities often appears ambivalent, then diagnoses of de-politicisation are close at hand.
As a reclaimed space that stimulates local cultural practice alongside their popular participation, the Big Week of Bilbao (Bilboko Aste Nagusia) is a participatory cultural festival that attracts millions of visitors, contributing to its own exploitation. In view of its highly political origin, this chapter discusses what kind of effects unfolds neoliberal embracement for political subjectification.
Guided by praxiography, my ethnographic approach follows ordinary practices in an extraordinary setting. The everyday production of pleasure is apparently the main purpose of the festival experience. Political subjects performing as festival organisers normalises its resistant character, but also functions to produce community, to be physically present in space, and to recover from political activism. Especially, the ordinary appearance of the implementation practice contributes significantly to the political subjectification of the organising collectives, which I discuss with the concept of subversion. The invisibility of critique during the Aste Nagusia seems to be an end in itself that sustains resistive practice.
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