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The hostage
of purity
Interview by
Lucía Iglesias Kuntz, UNESCO Courier journalist |
Fernando Savater
Fernando Savater marching in a Basta Ya demonstration in San Sebastián.
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Thinking
under Surveillance
He’s been
called Spain’s Jean-Paul Sartre and compared to Salman Rushdie. They also say he’s
a hero, though he hates that. He’s just a concerned citizen with an interest in nationalism,
for simple reasons of self-defence.
Fernando Savater, born in San Sebastián in 1947, studied philosophy and literature
in Madrid, where he began his career as an assistant lecturer at the Autonomous University.
But after a brief spell in Franco’s jails, he was expelled from the teaching profession
in 1971 for political reasons. In 1975, he earned his doctorate with a thesis on
Nietzsche and shortly afterwards returned to teaching, this time ethics at the University
of the Basque Country. He has been teaching philosophy since 1995 at the University
of Alcalá de Henares, in Madrid, “although this year I haven’t been able to
teach my classes because I was advised not to for security reasons.”
Savater, who describes himself as “more a philosophy teacher than a philosopher,”
has written more than 45 works–essays, novels and children’s books. His philosophical
ideas, detailed in a personal philosophical dictionary (unpublished in English) are
based on thoughtful rebellion against the establishment, with a touch of humour and
irony.
His speciality is ethics, which he defines as “the belief that not everything is
equally valuable and that there are reasons for choosing one course of action over
another.” He has written several books on the subject, including The Task of the
Hero (1982), which won the Spanish National Essay Prize that year, The Questions
of Life: Invitation to Philosophy (1982), Ethics as Self-Respect (1988)
and Ethics for Amador (1991), which has been translated into 18 languages.
In 1997, he published The Value of Education, an essay dedicated to his mother,
who was his first teacher, in which he professes that education is the cure for most
of society’s ills. “Intolerance, fundamentalism and extreme nationalism must be tackled
from schooldays on,” he says. In January 2001, he published an anthology of his many
articles criticizing extreme nationalism that had been published in the Spanish daily
El País and the Bilbao daily El Correo. It is the catalogue
of an unarmed battle against weapons, an indictment of civil society for its passivity
towards terrorist violence and a call to citizens to stand up to the ETA.
A horse-racing fan, Savater has visited the world’s main racecourses. His latest
book, “Astride the Millennium” (2001, yet untranslated) is a collection of articles
about horse-racing.
As well as the Sakharov Prize for human rights that he received in December 2000
on behalf of the civic movement Basta Ya, for which he is the spokesman, Savater
has won the Anagrama Prize, the Ortega y Gasset Journalism Prize (2000) and the Fernando
Abril Martorell Prize for “his contribution to the defence and promotion of freedom,
tolerance and human rights.”
The ETA has been threatening to kill him for several years now. He lives in San Sebastián
and Madrid with his bodyguards, from whose “friendly protection” he would be delighted
to be “released as soon as possible.”
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Differences
aren’t necessarily a good thing, says Basque philosopher Fernando Savater. Threatened
with death for his opposition to armed struggle, he practises his own brand of “active
pessimism,” fighting weapons with words
You’re a philosopher,
writer and university professor. Despite your many activities and over 45 books that
you’ve written, it seems people only want to hear your views on the Basque conflict.
Does that upset you?
It’s a little tedious and one-dimensional because one does many things in one’s life,
maybe too many, though the only thing that interests people is the fact that one
day you stood at a corner with a placard. But in the end it’s just one of those problems.
Nobody’s required to be interested in philosophy, but I think you should be interested
in your own country. I’ve got no desire to draw attention to myself. I just want
to use the audience I can attract to promote something that seems vital to me–defending
the rule of law and fighting totalitarianism in my country.
It must be terrible to be unable to move without bodyguards.
The other day someone asked me with the best intentions what I felt about that, and
in response I asked: what do you feel like when you see a large number of your fellow
citizens–journalists, teachers, town councillors, housewives–having to live with
bodyguards? Why should someone with bodyguards have a psychological problem, but
not the person who sees him or her passing by with a police escort? People should
be asked how we can talk about European unity when there’s suddenly a part of the
continent where people can’t walk freely down the street.
The Basta Ya (Enough is enough) movement that you’re the spokesman for has just
been awarded the Sakharov Prize for human rights by the European Parliament. Can
you tell us about Basta Ya?
It’s another of the many recent attempts in the Basque country to denounce and oppose
violence. Perhaps what makes this one special is that we’ve taken to the streets
not just to say what we don’t want–violence, crime and killings–but also to say what
we do want, namely autonomy and constitutional rule.
In other words, we think Spain’s rule of law is better than what the Basque separatists
are calling for. This rule of law can of course change and evolve, but not by force.
In the quarter-century since the death of General Franco, the Basque country,
like other regions of Spain, has won increasing autonomy, yet ETA terrorism has killed
more than 800 people. Why is there such violence?
The violence is fed by an ethnic-totalitarian ideology that has developed over time,
probably incorporating elements from the past, from the Franco era, but which has
festered and turned into quite an unusual threat inside Europe, because I really
can’t see how such extremes can now be justified.
What’s happening in the Basque country is unheard of. Violence is not justified but
in some places there are genuine political and economic inequalities and clear violations
of human rights that explain why it breaks out. This is not the case in the Basque
country.
What other places are you thinking of?
Colombia, for example, is an extremely unjust country, with vast economic and
educational inequalities. I certainly don’t think the guerrillas there represent
a liberation movement, but you can understand why people take up arms. The same goes
for El Salvador, Guatemala and Ireland, where the Catholics have been discriminated
against and marginalized to the advantage of Protestant unionists. And of course,
there’s Palestine and the Middle East. Without going as far as saying armed struggle
is a good thing, you can understand why people resort to violence in some places.
Why do you think the Basque struggle is different?
People in the Basque country have the same freedoms as any other people in Europe.
There’s more political and economic self-government than in the German länder,
and it has its own parliament with all political parties represented, including the
separatists. It’s a developed area with no economic problems. The main Basque problem
is that there isn’t one–there’s no objective, historical or economic basis for one.
And ETA’s ideas, or to put it bluntly, the ideas of Basque nationalism, wouldn’t
be taken seriously were it not for the violence. Just as they aren’t taken seriously
in France.
Why is that?
For two reasons. The first, as the French ought to know or recall, is that the
French Basque nationalists were discredited by their collaboration with the Nazis.
Hitler began trying to expand his rule throughout Europe by preaching freedom, autonomy
and self-determination for Europe’s ethnic minorities. Many minorities collaborated
with the Nazis because they thought that if Hitler destroyed France, for example,
he would give the Basques special status, and if he conquered England, he would free
the Irish. The fall of Hitler at the end of the Second World War silenced the French
Basque nationalists for quite a long time. Secondly, we must not forget that ultra-nationalist
positions are hard to reconcile with a citizens’ Europe. If they hadn’t used violence,
who would have given them the time of day? In a free and prosperous country, where
the local language and human rights are respected, who is really going to be interested
in setting up a state that has never existed before?
What would you say to those who back the ETA, at least in terms of its broad goals,
on the grounds that armed struggle is the only way to gain independence?
Well it’s obviously the only way they’ve got to gain independence since they’re a
minority in a society that doesn’t want it. The ETA is as legitimate as a group of
armed bank robbers who, because they don’t have any money in the bank and the manager
isn’t going to give them any, force their way in at gunpoint to get what they want.
Both the methods and the very ideology of ETA are illegitimate. I don’t believe that
it’s legitimate to replace a civic democracy with an ethnic democracy. Creating a
state can be a political project because states are made through agreements, but
it is not a right, nor is it a duty, that people should be interested or excited
about a political programme advocated by those whose ideology, methods and ideas–half
racist, half radical Marxism–are not shared by the rest of the population.
Some say the Basques suffered more than other Spaniards during Franco’s regime.
That’s pure myth. Franco didn’t have many Catalan ministers, but he did have lots
of Basques in his cabinet. He also spent summers peacefully in a yacht off San Sebastían’s
La Concha beach, something Prime Minister José María Aznar obviously
couldn’t do today. The Falangist anthem, the Cara al Sol (Face to the Sun), was composed
by a Basque. Of course, Basques were oppressed, persecuted and wounded like all other
Spaniards. The Basque language was marginalized, though not as much as people said
because there were still conferences and classes in Euskara. But the Basques suffered
so little that their provinces had the highest per capita incomes in the whole country.
When Franco died in 1975, Guipúzcoa had the highest and Vizcaya ranked second.
I think today they come 13th and 14th. So it’s a myth that the Basques suffered more
than other Spaniards. Most Basques–and of course most of those who became nationalists
only after Franco died, since until then they’d been his supporters–benefited from
Franco’s regime at the expense of other Spaniards.
Some historians are surprised that Spain made no effort to commemorate the past
during the transition period. Franco died, and the next day there was a constitutional
monarchy. Don’t Spaniards want to remember?
The vast majority of Spanish society tried to look the other way during Franco’s
rule, especially in the final years. People told themselves: “Don’t get too mixed
up in the details–let the guy die naturally, he doesn’t have much longer to go.”
In the Basque country, the process of remembering was more of an agreement to forget:
“I’ll forget what you’ve done and you forget what I’ve done.” In 1978 there was a
general amnesty in the Basque country for every kind of crime, an amnesty so global
and absolute that its like had never been seen before in Europe. The excuse for not
investigating officials from Franco’s regime was that the Basque terrorists were
not being investigated either. The ETA militant who had murdered was freed, as was
the general or police chief who had committed other crimes.
Are there any minorities whose claims to self-determination are legitimate?
Self-determination is a political right and a historic achievement by certain
communities who join together to form states. For historical reasons, the borders
and area of modern Spain are not those of 1,000 years ago and may be different again
in 1,000 years’ time. The same goes for the United States or anywhere else. But that
doesn’t have anything to do with minorities. The world has about 200 countries and
more than 5,000 languages, which means most countries contain many languages and
ethnic groups.
People might think you are against minorities...
I’m not against them. We all belong to minorities that are caricatured by others–to
groups of enthusiasts, interest groups or religions. I belong to the minority of
people who love horse-racing, but anthropologists don’t talk up for us and we’re
not represented at the United Nations. The world is full of such groups, and there’s
nothing wrong with that. What I’m against is people inventing identities for certain
groups and fragmenting humanity even more, instead of seeking to bring the benefits
of civilization to all. Especially when the identities feature the circumcision of
women or other such outrages.
But isn’t there a risk of uniformity?
I don’t think we need to crave difference or be horrified by similarity. Being
different is not good in itself. Some differences are valuable and enriching and
increase the joy of human existence, but others are terrible ancestral leftovers
best forgotten as soon as possible. So slavery is different to an employment contract,
but an employment contract is better and it would be silly for the sake of diversity
to have some people with work contracts and others as slaves. I would like the whole
world to be educated, have social security and give protection to children, pregnant
women and old people. It’s a pity that the world is becoming more uniform only in
commercial terms, with speculative capital rushing back and forth, and not in desirable
things like education and the defence of human rights.
Do you regret globalization?
Unfortunately, despite another myth I hear a lot, I don’t see the world moving
towards equality for all–far from it. Differences between let’s say Sweden and Rwanda
are going to increase, not diminish. Yet some countries have such horrifying features
that you would wish for a more uniform world in terms of respect for basic rights.
What should we be fighting for these days?
Creative ability. It’s vital that we defend all possibilities for creation wherever
they are. Conservation of some oddity because “it’s always existed here”–when in
fact it’s a matter of four or five folklore experts, archaeologists or anthropologists
conjuring up a historical identity that everyone then has to conform to–really doesn’t
help at all. So I’m not in the slightest worried about identity, which I’m not interested
in at all, or defending pluralism, which I think is guaranteed because people will
always be born different to each other.
What about cultural mixing?
The whole history of humanity is a constant process of mixing. The greatness
of the human species is precisely that we’re all a mixture of something. When the
human race started in Africa, we were probably all black and identical, but bit by
bit we became different, taking on various ethnicities, colours and sizes. Those
multiple mixtures are the salt of the earth, and will be even more so in a century,
when you’ll be able to travel and circle the world in just a few hours, or communicate
through a computer at the other end of the planet. In my opinion, everything pure–pure
identity, pure ethnicity–seems sterile. Purity produces nothing. Virgins don’t bear
children.
You say education can also change things and describe it as “supreme anti-fatalism,
the only way to free people from their fate.” Please explain.
Societies where education plays no part are stratified societies, in which each group
is supposed to follow in the footsteps of its ancestors or the minority they belong
to. The peasant’s son learns from his father how to till the fields, mothers exchange
information about children and childbirth, and soldiers learn how to shoot arrows
or ride horses because that is the destiny society has given them. Education, on
the other hand, moulds open-minded humans who can fit any number of roles within
society. Greece in the time of Pericles, for example, educated its citizens so that
each could become whatever he wished, whereas there was no education in the Persian
Empire because everyone was predestined to play a set role. In our modern-day society
there’s also a kind of fatalism condemning the child of a poor person always to be
poor, and the child of an uneducated person always to be uneducated. Education, on
the other hand, is a progressive force, powerful enough to bust that social fatalism
and create something new. In open, mobile societies, the street-sweeper’s child can
become president or head of a university thanks to education.
In this reinvention of society through education, what parts do the family, the
school and the pupils respectively play?
By education, I don’t just mean its academic side, which is the easiest to measure,
but is not the sole kind of learning. Although the family has evolved and is not
the same as it was half a century ago, it still has a role in bringing respect and
emotional intelligence into the world. The problem is that adults in today’s families
have, or say they have, little time to educate their children, often preferring to
pay others to carry out this work. School education for its part acclimatizes children
to a more egalitarian and abstract world that is not just about feelings, but also
legal entitlements, which is an important step forward. The media of course educates
people too, as do socially influential people such as performers and sports personalities.
But in the end, it’s the person, the pupil, the beginner who learns. The most us
teachers can do is teach. Only the pupils can learn. What we have to do above all
else is awaken the child’s willingness to do so. As soon as that appears, he or she
will find the best ways to move forward.
Your books Ethics for Amador and Politics for Amador were attempts to explain to
your son Amador and other children, the bases of those subjects. Do you think children
are really interested in that?
I’ve never met a young person who isn’t. Most aren’t interested in learning such
things from their teachers, but in all my 30 years in education, I’ve never met kids
of 15 or 16 who weren’t interested in freedom, beauty, justice and death. But I have
certainly known adults busy making money and doing other things they believe are
important who’ve stopped being concerned by these things.
At the risk of boring you, I would like to finish by asking if you’re hopeful
about a solution to the Basque crisis.
There is a milonga [a popular Argentine song] which says hope often means wanting
a rest. If this is the case, then hope means saying: “we’ll sort this out in the
end, bit by bit, through life and time.” I don’t think space or time will sort out
anything by themselves–that’s why I’m an active pessimist. Things don’t get settled
on their own: the situation is very serious and utterly awful. Letting Europe know
what’s happening here, so that it takes responsibility or somehow helps those of
us fighting fascism, could prove of use. The same people who rallied to help those
threatened by totalitarianism in Kosovo and elsewhere need to take action here. When
you do something you hope it turns out well, and in that sense it is optimistic because
you think the situation might improve. But it isn’t an automatic process. The problem
isn’t about getting nationalists and constitutionalists to reach agreement–it’s nothing
to do with that. Are we going to change the way we educate our children? Are we going
to change the propaganda on television? Are we going to change the systematic instilling
of hatred in the Basque country for everything connected with Spain or the Spaniards,
who make up more than half the population living here? Are we going to change that?
Is there some law that can be passed to change that? We have to keep on struggling.
Are you going to continue?
I’m going to try, if I’m allowed to. |
The Basque
Country: 33 years of conflict
The Basque country (Euskadi) is one of Spain’s 17 autonomous regions. Since 1979,
it has had two official languages, Spanish and Euskera, and since elections in 1980,
its own parliament. The autonomous Basque government is responsible for education,
health and taxation and has more powers than any other regional body in Europe.
The ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, or Basque Fatherland and Freedom) is calling for
independence for Euskal Herria, an area between the Ebro and Adour rivers that includes
Navarre, the Spanish Basque country and two departments of southwest France.
The organization, founded by a group of students in 1959, carried out its first terrorist
actions in 1968 and has since caused the death of more than 800 people, 90 percent
of them after the advent of democracy in 1975.
For many years, the ETA’s main targets were the police and the army, but in recent
years, it has stepped up physical attacks on politicians and extended them to other
sectors of society, such as university teachers and journalists. |
The Basque Country |
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