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THE ITOIZ RESERVOIR

IN THE BASQUE COUNTRY :

A LOCAL CONFLICT

BECOMING (INTER)NACIONAL?

ECPR-2001- Joint Sessions

Grenoble 6-11 April

“Environmental politics at local level”

IÑAKI BARCENA and PEDRO IBARRA

POLITICAL SCIENCE DEPARMENT

BASQUE COUNTRY UNIVERSITY

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1) Introduction: The environment and its local and global

dimensions. A Basque case.

Globalisation is more than a merely economic phenomenon. Its tentacles

also spread out to the fields of culture, the environment or communications.

For decades we have known that the environmental imbalances provoked by

human activity or by natural phenomena (climate change and desertisation,

acid rains and deforestation, drinking water scarcity and toxic waste...) have no

respect for political frontiers, nor for interstate divisions. For many years there

have been international agreements and programs, organisations and

campaigns attempting to put a brake on ecological problems whose scope

reaches far beyond the limits of the local.

Every year on World Environment Day the mass media remind us about the

commitment we must make to save the planet from the ecological crisis. At the

start of June last year, for example, over 100 ministers and diplomats, brought

together by the UNO at Malmö in Sweden, reminded us that economic

globalisation is having seriously harmful effects on the environment. They

drew attention to the scarcity of fresh water, atmospheric pollution and

chemical pollution as the three most serious problems faced by the

international community (Euskaldunon Egunkaria, 4/6/2000. Environment

Special, page 5.)

As with economic dynamics, the global acquires meaning and its raison

d'etre when it takes control of, and manages the local, where it must establish

its bases or foundations (glocalisation). With regard to the environment, it must

be affirmed that the grave "global" environmental imbalances rest on local

"legs". Or as Robertson says "the local must be understood as an aspect of the

global"1.

Decades ago the ecologist movement brought into fashion the saying "think

globally, act locally", in their effort to remedy universal ills by combining

actions at the level of the workplace, facility or locality.

In its turn, the anti-developmentalist discourse of the ecologist movement

has been strengthened by a host of "NIMBY" campaigns (Not In My

Backyard), which attempt to put a halt to specific negative expressions of our

model of production and consumption. This has resulted in severe inequalities

in the sharing out of environmenatal damage (ecojustice) and also in public and

1 Robertson coined the term "glocalisation", a neologism formed from the words globalisation and localisation. See

ROBERTSON, R "Globalisation", M. Featherstone et al. (comp), Global Modernities. London, 1995. Quoted in

BECK, U. "Qué es la globalización", Paidos. Barcelona, 1997.

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private policies that seek locations where there is less popular response to their

projects for economic growth .

Normally, ecologist mobilisations have a local basis or origin and confront a

specific environmental aggression. Ecologist movements have arisen from the

stabilisation and, above all, through the spread of protests originally formulated

in the face of local conflicts. These local groups, which, as in the case of Itoiz,

are what Tilly calls "community-based environmental movements" (Tilly 194;

Cable & Cable 1995 and Kousis 1999) are networks of groups (residents,

women, church groups, cultural associations together with local ecologist

organisations) that react against an aggression on what they understand to be

their common living space. These are groups which, given the lack of rigidity

and heterogeneity of their original interests, are able to construct global

discourses and to make use of numerous and varied mobilisation resources.

The defence of the local is a movement of resistance by a community

against the invasion of, or aggression against, its territory by external

institutions or elites (Rootes, 1996; Smyth, 1998; Gould, Schainberg,

Weinberg, 1996).

And the local is what is culturally local (Preston, 1997). That is, the defence

of the local finds expression through the need of individuals to build for

themselves a space to their own measure, to feel themselves linked to a shared

territory, in which they are recognised. That need generates the construction

and corresponding sublimation of the space, and the experience of being

invaded from outside is lived as something directed against their interests,

which are defined as vital, directed against the life world (Lebenswelt) of these

individuals.

Localism represents a certain break with the orthodox environmentalist

discourse, where the collision of two counterpoised philosophies of Nature and

its relation with Society is expressed. In these local conflicts two different

ways of decision making are in confrontation. Confronting external imposition,

there is the "we" that decides on what is nearby, what is felt by the community

as its own. From this perspective, the defence of the local does not imply an

exclusively ecologist option. Really, what is considered to be under attack is

not Nature in the abstract, but a specific Nature, moulded, used and linked to a

concrete human community (Kamieniecki et al, 1995).

And for this reason there is an increase of collective actions that are

restricted to the area of influence of the local movements (local

demonstrations, use of local mass media, innovatory local actions...). It means

that in such mobilisations there is a prevalence of a culture and of an

environmental discourse that are obviously localist.

From the perspective of the political opportunity structure, this means that

what shapes and frames the process is the local political context, the specific

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form (formal process, networks of actors, political culture...) in which political

decisions are taken in a specific territory (McAdam eta alii,1996).

In our case, the Basque Country (Euskal Herria)2 underwent an intense

period of industrialisation in the 1960s and 1970s (steel industry, chemicals,

quarrying/cement, shipbuilding and heavy equipment...) which has left us with

a great ecological deficit, above all in the provinces of Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa.

The 1980s were years of unemployment, the dismantling of industries and

industrial reconversion.

At the end of that traumatic and pessimistic decade, the leading classes in

Basque politics and the Basque economy offered public opinion the choice of

taking the road of Maastricht and the European Union, of becoming first-class

citizens of Europe, or of continuing in a state of underdevelopment. In the

shadow of this rhetorical choice, a host of infrastructural and public works

projects emerged (the Bilbao Metro and the High Speed Trains, museums and

congress centres, new roads and motorways, reservoirs and canals, industrial

superports and recreational harbours, new thermic power stations and

regassification plants...). These projects, in the opinion of their opponents in

general and of the Basque Ecologist Movement in particular, mortgage the

short-term future of our country. What for the ruling elites is an advance in

terms of growth and integration into European and global competitiveness,

represents for many others a danger of local, national, social, environmental

and cultural dislocation. While for some this is a question of progress based on

the laws of the market, new technologies and representative democracy, for an

important sector of Basque society this means following a path towards

"unsustainability" and the negation of the possibility of finding solutions to

communitarian needs based on the criteria of participatory democracy3.

In Basque Society today there is a grave climate of political violence,

resulting from the failure to resolve an ethnic-national conflict, and it is for this

motive that we are generally known about at the international level. This

climate of violence overshadows a conflict-ridden social and environmental

situation (high levels of unemployment, above all amongst the youth,

marginalisation and social exclusion, an increase in racism, linguistic

disglossia, etc.). In its environmental facet, it has given rise to some twenty

"anti-developmentalist" campaigns, producing an image of our small green

country that is hardly a bucolic one.

2 The term Euskal Herria (the Basque Country, or the Basque People) refers to the inhabitants of three politico-

administrative areas. Nearly 2 million people in the three provinces of the Basque Autonomous Community (Bilbao,

Donostia/San Sebastian and Vitoria/Gasteiz), approximately half a million people in the Navarre Autonomous

Community (Iruña/Pamplona) and about 300,000 people in the French Basque Country (Baiona). 3 See BARCENA, Iñaki (co-ordinator) (2000) "Bilbo Nora Zoaz?" Is our model of city sustainable? Reflections for an

Environmental Atlas of Metropolitan Bilbao. Bakeaz, Bilbao.

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From the broad spectrum of environmental campaigns and disputes that

have taken place in Euskadi over recent years4, we have chosen the conflict

that, since 1985, has evolved around the construction of the Itoiz (Navarra)

reservoir, because so far as we understand it exemplarises the new forms of

organising, thinking and taking action adopted by Basque ecologism and

because it could help us to understand and better interpretate the relationship

between the "local" and the "global" in ecological terms.

It is the environmental conflict that has received most coverage in the

communications media, and has constituted an obligatory point of reference as

regards water policy in the Spanish State and relations between the

Administration and the ecologist movement.

As Rootes pointed out "the global, the national, the regional and the local

are increansingly, interpenetrate". Indeed, it is the meaning of globalisationthat

that there are ever fewer arena of contention whose parameters are purely

national, regional or local5. For us, the Itoiz dam's conflict is an interesting

campaign to analize the relationship between the local, the national and global

environmental dynamics.

Its origins and development, its dimensions -local, Basque national,

Spanish State and European- the agents who intervene in the process, plus the

relations of alliance and confrontation, the discourses and strategies that are

evolved, all make it a prime example for study, and in some way we believe

that it demonstrates the "state of the art" of present Basque ecologism and its

connections with the new European ecologism.

4 BARCENA,GUARROTXENA, TORRE& IBARRA. "The ecologist protest in the Basque Country (1988-1997)

From nationalism to localism". ECPR paper. Mannheim, 1999. 5 ROOTES, Ch. (ed) "Environmental Movements: Local, national and global" F.CASS, London, 1999. Pag. 299.

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20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

180

200

1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997

Fig. 1. Environmental Protest in the Basque Country (TEA project)

ITOIZ

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As we have observed recently6, the tendency towards localism and NIMBY

type protest is common in the Basque and Spanish environmental movements.

But in the Itoiz reservoir's case, we are confronting the campaign that has

movilized the majority of the people, that have occupied the most of the space

and time in the media and given rise to the most the polemics in the news, and

that have brought together the most ecological organizations in their activities7.

In this sense Itoiz ceased being a problem of local scope and become the most

important, widely knonw and controversial environmental demand not only in

the Basque Country, but also in Spain, reaching the European Commission and

the European Ombudsman.

2) A SHORT STORY ON THE ITOIZ DAM PROJECT.

The roots of the conflict go back to the beginning of the 1980s when the

Central Spanish Administration and the Navarrese Autonomous Government

jointly decided to build a large-scale reservoir ( with 418 Hm3 of volumen and

456 Km2 surface, the biggest project in the EU nowadays) in the lower-south

Pyrenees area of Navarra, at a height of 135 mts. in the River Irati, a tributary

of the River Ebro.

In 1985 when the Ministry of Public Works and Town Planning

appouved the project a group of residents set up the Co-ordinator of Itoiz to

respond to the spanish and navarrese administration's plan Historically, the

Navarrese Autonomous Government have used three arguments to justify the

project. The first was that, through the construction of the controversial 8Navarra Canal , 57.000 new hectares of irrigated land would be created. Those

who were against were accused of being chained to prehistory and against

progress and modernisation. The second was that drinking water would be

supplied to the city of Pamplona (the capital of Navarra) and its surrounding

area. The third pointed out that the scheme would be used to provide 52 GW/h

of hydroelectric energy. These three arguments turned Itoiz into a project for

progress and development "both from and for Navarre". Although the Spanish

Government did not come out and specifically say so, in addition to supporting

the previous arguments, they considered it necessary to regulate the volume of

water in the damp North, via the reservoirs, in order to supply the industry,

population and fruit and vegetable agriculture of the Mediterranean with water.

6 See BARCENA , GUARROTXENA, TORRE &IBARRA (1999 and 2000) 7 Ibidem. 8 We use the word controversial since, despite certain political, economic and farming sectors in Navarra (Platform

for Water) expressing their support for it, this project -according to ecologist organisations and farming unions like

EHNE-COAG goes directly against the GATT agreement, the Common Agricultural Policy (PAC) and the Spanish

National Irrigation Plan itself, which encourage measures that tend to reduce agricultural surplus, the land-surface

under cultivation and farming jobs in Navarre and the Basque Country. Aunque el pantano de Itoiz ha sido financiado

al 100% por el gobierno de Madrid, el Canal de Navarra se propone financiar entre Madrid (60%) y Pamplona -

Iruiñea (40%).

LEIZARAN

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Fig-2- Map of localization-

For the Socialist Government in Madrid (between 1982 and 1994) and its

Ministry of Public Works and Town Planning, Itoiz was to be the first large-

scale reservoir to be brought into use from the National Hydrological Plan. The

draft bill envisaged more than two hundred reservoirs and now the Popular

Party is trying to pass it with the opposition of the mayority of the Ebro's river

bassin9.

In the Autonomous Community of Navarra the socialists in power took

on the project as if it was their own and were supported by all the

parliamentary groups except Herri Batasuna, the politically left-nationalist

coalition pertaining to the so called, Basque National Liberation Movement

(BNLM).

Since its origins in 1985, and with greater virulence since the start of the

works in 1993, this conflict has involved the affected local population and the

whole of the ecologist movement on one side, and, on the other, the Navarrese

and Central Administrations and the construction companies that make up the

UTE-Itoiz (Temporary Union of Companies), formed by Lain, Cubiertas and

MZOV and Sacyr.

9 Recently, last March 11th, near 400. 000 people from the Ebro's river bassin mostly demostrated in Madrid against

this National Hydrological Plan. See EL PAIS 12/03/2001

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For the oppositors to this dam organized in the Itoiz Coordinating group, the

first three lines of argument were false and only the latter point argued by the

Spanish governmet and concerning the Mediterranean angle, holds. It was

misleading to say that Navarrese agriculture needed that reservoir and a canal

to go with it when the European CAP goes in the opposite direction, there still

does not exist a State Irrigation Plan and the number of people devoted to

agriculture dropped from 22,000 in 1987 to 8,000 in 1996.

If the justification were that the water supply of the city of Iruña-

Pamplona, 25 kms. away from Itoiz, would be guaranteed, the project would be

over-sized since the quantity of dammed water could provide a population of 4

million, its industry included, with water. The entire population of Euskadi

does not reach 3 million and Navarra has around half a million inhabitants. The

hydroelectric argument is irrelevant to their case, because the Itoiz reservoir

would flood 4 small chutes that currently produce 34,6 GW/H10.

The ecologist line of argument was based on their own reports (Itoiz 93

and Itoiz 94) and those of other bodies such as the Institute for the

Conservation of Nature (Ministry of Agriculture in Madrid), the Higher

Council for Scientific Research (Ministry of Education and Science) and the

Spanish Ornithology Society. They held that the environmental and social

damage that would be caused -among other reasons because it would inundate

three enclaves designated as Natural Reserves and two Areas of Special

Protection for Wild Birds (ZEPAs)-, would be far greater than any hypothetical

agricultural benefits. And that a project of this kind could not be imposed by

decree and without social debate.

The autonomous Navarrese government and the central government of

Madrid have never recognised the Itoiz Coordinating Group as an interlocutor

and have refused any kind of contact, dialogue or concessions. This has led the

Group to accompany their propaganda work and social mobilisations with a

series of administrative and judicial processes, in Navarra, Madrid and

Brussels, in order to halt the building of the reservoir.

The European Commission detected the absence of dialogue between the

Administrations and the opposition, and forced the Ministry of Public Works,

Tourism and Environment to hold a single-issue seminar at the headquarters

ofthe Advisory Council for the Environment in October 1994.

In 1995 the European Commission decided to file the complaint

registered by the ecologists, which was based on the project's vulneration of the

Directive of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and that on Wild Birds.

However, it also recommended to the Spanish authorities that they carry out a

new more structural Study of Environmental Impact concerning the reservoir,

canal and areas of land under irrigation, and that they produce an up-dated

study of the water requirements of Navarra, with the aim of remodelling the

project.

10 BEAUMONT & BEAUMONT & ARROJO Y BERNAL. Pag. 113 onwards.

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In September 1995 the National High Court in Madrid issued a ruling that

declared the Itoiz reservoir null and void on the following grounds: because it

was in violation of environmental legislation, since there was no legal cover, in

the form of a specific law or hydrological plan to cover the project, and

because there was insufficent economic justification.

In January 1996 the Spanish National High Court issued an edict whereby

the work on the reservoir would be brought to a halt, once the sum of

24,000,000,000 ptas (144.000.000 ecus). be paid by the plaintiffs, the Itoiz

Coordinating Group. In March this amount was reduced to 13,000,000,000

ptas. (78.000.000 ecus) and they prohibited any flooding, deforestation or

movement of land above 506 metres, which would mean that no more than 10

Hm3, i.e. 2,5% of the initial project 418 Hm3, could be stored there.

The legal ruling in favour of the Itoiz Coordinator by the Spanish law courts

led the Navarrese Administration to opt for changing its own Foral Law of

Natural Spaces, which protected the lands that would be flooded by the

reservoir. The change to the Law made in the Navarrese Parliament in June

1996 was queried by the Spanish Audiencia Nacional that remitted the new law

to the Constitutional Tribunal.

On April 6th 1996, the group "Solidari@s con Itoiz" (Those in solidarity

with Itoiz), already well-known for over 15 earlier non-violent direct actions,

managed to cut the cables that supplied building material to the reservoir dam.

As a result of their action, work on the reservoir was held up for almost a year,

and led to an intense social and political debate.

On the initiative of the Navarrese government, and on the proposal of the

Spanish government, the Madrid parliament on May 29th

1997 declared that the

Itoiz reservoir and the Navarre canal were in the "general interest", in this way

providing legal cover for the works. Izquierda Unida and Eusko Alkartasuna

abstained, while the PNV voted in favour.

Next summer, at July 17 1997 to be precise, the Supreme Court of Spain

confirmed the previous judicial decisions whereby, in virtue of the need to

protect the environment, the dimensions of the reservoir is to be reduced

drastically from 418 Hm3 to just 9'7 Hm3. As a result of this decision the

Navarrese Government ought not only to halt the construction work under way,

but also to demolish a great part of what has already been built. It is time to

remember words spoken recently by the president of the Navarrese Governent

"I am not concerned, the sentences dictated by the Courts of Justice have never

worried me... These two great projects (Itoiz-Navarra Canal) are going to be

carried out regardless of what the attitude or sentence passed by the Supreme

Court might be"11 . In fact, in spite of the pressure exerted by the ecologists on

11 Quoted in BEAUMONT & BEAUMONT & ARROJO Y BERNAL. pag. 195. On the other hand, the Itoiz conflict

has not only revealed the inflexibility of the Navarrese political administrators( an inflexibility which leads them to ignore

court decisions when these do not fit in with their interests), but also something more serious. Several leading figures fron

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the Public Prosecution and the Courts, the construction work has still not come

to a halt and it is almost finished. But still without water.

For nine months starting in the autumn of 1999, the group "Solidari@s con

Itoiz" organised a "tournée" with the title "SOS Itoiz" to defend the Irati valley

and to seek solidarity for the 8 solidari@s sentenced for cutting the cables of

the reservoir works. They toured different European capital cities, towns and

institutions (the Millennium Wheel in London, The Hague Tribunal, the

Brandenburg Gate - Berlin, the Strasbourg Parliament...) denouncing the

irregularities of the project and also the support received by the Spanish

authorities from the European institutions.

In March 2000, the Spanish Constitutional Tribunal recognised the legality

of the change to the law of Natural Spaces of Navarre, in this way

strengthening the position of the Spanish and Navarrese governments. This led

the Itoiz Coordinator to appeal to the European Human Rights Court in

Strasbourg.

On the other hand, in recent years the argument employed by the Itoiz

Coordinator, the "Solidari@s con Itoiz" and Greenpeace has moved beyond the

question of the illegality of the works, concentrating on the "lack of safety" of

the reservoir due to geological factors. This argument is based on reports

prepared by university geology teachers, engineering consultancies and

companies, as well as the "hidden" reports made by both the construction

company and the Spanish Ministry of the Environment, which testify to the

problems of stability of the left bank of the reservoir. These problems would

increase if the reservoir were filled and because of this reason the European

Commission has reopened the Itoiz file12. After 16 years of environmental

conflict, the Itoiz issue is very much alive.

3) THE POLITICAL CONTEXT, THE ACTORS AND THE

ALLIANCES.

We will now review the different actors who have taken part in this long and

unresolved environmental dispute, in order to uncover the keys to

understanding their actions

Following the reference diagram of D. Rucht and F. Neidhart13 for the study

of social movements, and in order to review the positions and discourses of the

highly diverse actors that have entered into the dispute that concerns us, we

will situate the actors of the conflict in each part of the diagram and observe

their relationships of alliance and opposition.

the Navarrese Socialist Party have been imprisoned for their involvement in perverting justice, and receiving commissions

(16.000 million pesetas) from the companies building the reservoir. Thus the conflict over the reservoir, by leading to the

dismissal of certain corrupt politicians, has also served to regenerate the political system- even if only to a small extent. 12 See GARA and Euskaldunon Egunkaria 22/03/2001 13 Taken from - RUCHT, Dieter "Research on Social Movements. The state of the Art in West Europe and USA"

Campus verlag. Frankfurt. 1991.

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According to Rucht and Niedhart, the greater the level of differentiation

and autonomy that exists, or is achieved, between the different key groups of

the diagram, the greater the possibilities of success or influence of the social

movements (dependent variable) in the politico-administrative system.

Differentiation and autonomy here refer both to the relation between the

"key groups" and to the internal dynamic itself, that is, to the differentiation

between government and opposition and to the pluralism amongst parties and

amongst the mass media.

Fig-3- RUCHT, Dieter "Research on Social Movements. The state of the Art in West

Europe and USA."

On the contrary, as we have observed previously, what is outstanding in the

case of Itoiz is the bitterness with which positions are defended, the

polarisation between the two opposing and clearly defined sides, which have

scarcely varied their positions over 16 years, almost mimetically repeating the

ideological-political positions held by the different actors with respect to the

Basque national conflict in Navarre.

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1) THE ITOIZ CO-ORDINATOR.

The Itoiz Coordinating Group was founded in 1985 as a local group14 which

brings together residents, councillors and ecologists from the affected area (9

villages would be flooded, inundating the land of six more. They had no faith

in the ability to fight back of the local councils and from the beginnning

received collaboration from people opposed to other hydraulic projects in the

Pyrenees. From the very first moment, the Cordinating Group defined its

identity as being the defence of their land, of their community. Thus, in the

first issue of their information bulletin (May 1992) we can read: "We are

totally against the Itoiz Reservoir, which negates the life of our land".

The Itoiz Coordinating Group received political and economic support from

ecologist groups in Euskadi and the Spanish State (CODA, Aedenat and

Greenpeace...), as well as the solidarity and political defence afforded by

European and international ecologism (UICN, ANPED,...), but it took on the

burden of leadership in the dispute all alone against the Navarrese Government,

both on the streets and in the courts (BEAUMONT & BEAUMONT &

ARROJO & BERNAL 1997, pag 54).

When work on the reservoir started in May 1993 the Itoiz Coordinating

Group was backed up by a range of groups and social movements- the whole of

the BEM and part of the movement in the rest of the Spanish State, and with

the support of Herri Batasuna and extra-parliamentary groups such as Batzarre,

Izquierda Unida (today in the Navarrese Parliament) and the Carlist Party.

Against it stood the rest of the political spectrum in Navarra.

Within the Basque Country, Navarrese society shows some specific

features. Its administrative separation from the Basque Country is not

incidental, and its political contexts, although similar, differ in important

aspects. It has been the usual practice of the Coordinating Group to appeal to

European authorities for help in trying to stop the project, to receive outside

help for scientific studies and economic calculations in order to refute the

official figures, and to maintain relations with other environmental networks

outside the Basque Country, such as Greenpeace, COAGRET, CODA. These

activities which extend beyond the Basque ambit undoubtedly deviate, in part,

from more nationalist practices, centred within Basque territory, that we find in

the majority of the BEM.

There are two aspects which make this conflict different, and which in

particular give the appearance that the Itoiz Coordinating Group is an

established and institutionalised organisation through its practice and

experience. These are their insistence on following legal channels to solve the

conflict, which has so far been clearly to the favour of the ecologists, and the

second is their relationship with the Navarrese media who are much closer to

the official line of the administration than in the rest of Euskadi (Basque

Autonomous Communnity).

14 According to its spokesperson,Patxi Gorraiz, the Itoiz Coordinating Group is not an ecologist group, rather it is a

neighbourhood group exclusively devoted to opposing the reservoir. Its objective is: "To win the question of the

reservoir and nothing else. When we have won, we'll disappear". Quoted in - CASADO da ROCHA,A. & PEREZ,

J.A. ITOIZ. Del deber de la Desobediencia Civil al Ecosabotaje. Pamiela, Pamplona. 1996 Pag.136 idem.

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Nevertheless, the bursting onto the scene of "Solidarios/as con Itoiz" and

the type of actions they have taken constituted a salutary shock which has

generated a new kind of response to environmental problems, which is not

peculiar to Navarre and which tends to spread.

Conven

tional

Demons

trative

Confron

tational

Minor attack

on property

Violence Other N

Eguzki 46 104 9 1 0 34 194

Coordinad. Lurraldea 53 95 8 0 0 8 164

Coord. de Itoiz 19 49 3 0 0 13 84 HB 11 24 4 0 0 1 40

Coordinad. Aranguren 7 19 9 0 0 0 35

EKI 28 30 8 0 0 9 75

Solidari@s 2 7 6 0 1 13 29 UAB 3 8 3 0 0 11 25

Asamblea anti-TAV 2 6 2 0 0 4 14

Greenpeace 9 1 1 0 0 1 12

ERREKA 6 10 1 0 0 3 20

Total N of events 229 403 72 15 52 114 692

Table 1: Basque Environmetal Groups and their forms of protest

(Number of events. TEA Project)

2) SOLIDARI@S CON ITOIZ. This group set up in 1995 and decided "to move on to direct action and to

campaign against the irrationality and illegality of the projects, using pacifist

and public actions" (Txitxarra Kolektiboa, 1996). They justify these actions

pointing to the defenceless position in which they find themselves when faced

with political "fait accomplis", the prostitution of the principle of legality

(changes made to environmental legislation to try to legalise Itoiz after the

event) and the inability of the legal system to halt work on the reservoir.

If the Coordinating Group have concentrated their attention on information,

social mobilisation and legal battles, "Solidari@s con Itoiz" have chosen to

complement these methods of struggle with civil disobedience. The group is

made up of activists from other campaigns and social movements (anti-

militarists, squatters etc...) who criticise the way conservationist and ecological

groups "with offices and faxes" organise and act. They define themselves as

"radical at heart, open and transparent in their ways of operating". They try to

be effective through their frontal opposition to the reservoir.

The radical action, which shut down work for almost a year, has been

questioned and criticised even from within the anti-Itoiz movement.

For some this was because of the effect it had; because condemnations of

this type of actions from those in power and from the media manage to win

over the majority of people. For other, like Greenpeace, it was because of the

form of action. Greenpeace believes that this action constituted a serious

mistake. They were not prepared to be carried along by a dynamic like that

which occurred in the Leizaran motorway, when the intervention of ETA led

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the conflict from the terrain of the ecological to that of political violence. Their

methodological criticism reads as follows: "We do not flirt with any kind of

violence, not only that directed against people, but also against things, such as

machinery"15.

In any case, unlike Greepeace, most of the BEM supported and defended the

actions of "Solidarios/as con Itoiz". In the opinion of the majority of the

important organisations the convulsion generated by the ecosabotage was

positive in that it brought the debate onto the streets and it encouraged people

to carry out similar principled actions. They felt the action was necessary,

effective and clean. As spokespersons from "Solidarios/as con Itoiz) pointed

out: "We chose to shut down the building works with all the means and

methods that we had and knew. We prepared our action thoroughly so that it

would turn out as it did. Fast, effective, without putting the workers at risk,

spectacular and liberating for the valley and the land itself"16.

3) GOVERNMENTS, PARTIES AND PRESSURE GROUPS.

As we have said, of the parliamentary spectrum only the nationalist left in

Navarre (in the 1980s Herri Batasuna, and at the end of the 1990s the new

formation Euskal Herritarrok, which included Herri Batasuna and initially

Batzarre) and extra-parliamentary groups, such as Izquierda Unida (now in the

Navarrese Parliament), Batzarre or the Carlist Party, supported the ecologist

position.

In a political situation that is characterised by a multi-party situation and

government instability, it is curious to observe how parties like Eusko

Alkartasuna (EA, social democratic Basque nationalists) or Izquierda Unida

(IU-communist) vary their positions between support for the movement against

the reservoir, abstention or support for the project. This depends on whether

they are in opposition or form part of the government, if they have

parliamentary representation or are outside parliament, or if they are speaking

about the closure of the works because of "sabotage" by the "Solidari@s con

Itoiz".

In any case, what is characteristic of the Navarrese socio-political situation

with respect to Itoiz is that the different autonomous governments (PSN, CDN-

PSN-EA and UPN) have been equally hostile to negotiation or to reforming

their postulates. The socio-political polarisation is such that the government

itself has made use of its available allies (trade unions and companies) for

public confrontations and has organised public mobilisations against the

ecologist positions.

Thus UGT and UAGN have, together with the Confederation of Navarrese

Businessmen and the Union of Agricultural Cooperatives of Navarre, been the 15 PASTOR,X. "La coherencia de Greenpeace" ARGITAGARBI, Number 8, Euskadi, Summer 1996. Pag. 8. Taken from

EGIN April 12th, 1996. 16 CAÑADA, M. "Había que hacer algo" ARGITAGARBI, No.8. EKI, Euskadi, Summer 1996, Pag. 9.

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15

spokespersons for the "Platform for Water", the counter-movement

orchestrated by the Government of Navarre against ecologist and local pressure

and interests, giving credibility to the localist discourse of the government:

"The reservoir is of and for Navarre".

4) THE AGENTS OF CONTROL.

The rancour and polarisation that has come about in Navarre, giving rise to a

division that is almost exactly the same as the division of sensibilities over the

Basque-Navarrese national question, has meant that the specifically Navarrese

agents of control (law courts, institutes, administration...) have been almost

totally absent. The role they have played is irrelevant and it has been other state

or European instances that have taken part in the affair.

The public hostility between the actors in the conflict has made any

understanding impossible, even on the bases of possible third instance

solutions. The European Commission has played a greater role as a controlling

agent than as a promoter or financier of the work. In 1995 Brussels decided to

shelve the complaint lodged by the Coordinator in 1992, before the works had

commenced, which was based on its violation of the Directive on

Environmental Impact Assessment and the Directive on Birds.

Recently, in March 2001, the European Commission (DGXI) has reopened

the Itoiz file taking into account a new complaint motivated by geological

security reasons.

The Tribunals and Law Courts have been the basic support of the social

movement against the Administration. Nevertheless, we should not

underestimate the role played as agents of control by other bodies such as the

Environmental Prosecutor, different European institutions such as the DGXI or

the ombudsman, the Institute for the Conservation of Nature (ICONA) or the

Higher Centre of Scientific Research (CSIC) that, with their reports and

dictates, have called the Itoiz works into question because of the procedure

employed and the aims of the project.

5) THE MEDIA

The mass media play a central role in the relations between actors, but they

are neither neutral nor "objective". and, as we shall see, their versions answer

to ideological-national positions.

Their role is to provide the public with the information considered

opportune at each point in time, which is adapted to the business and political

interests of each news company. The mass media are public or private

corporations that make their appearance on the political scene with their

interests and power depending on their capacity to attract the public (D.

Edwards, 1998).

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16

Within the Basque news spectrum, we have directed our study towards the

role played by the press, leaving aside for reasons of time and space the

important role played by the radio and the television.

As paradigmatic cases, we have studied the reflection in the press received

by the sentence of the Audiencia Nacional of 1995 that declared the reservoir

to be illegal, the sabotage action by the "Solidari@s con Itoiz" in 1996, and the

Sentence of the Superior Tribunal of 1997 that reduced the legal volume of

Itoiz from 483 to 9.7 Hm3.

When the sentence of the Audiencia Nacional was made public in October

1995, the press, as could be predicted, adopted very different editorial and

informative positions. At the two extremes we find EGIN ("The Itoiz Project,

Illegal"), whose editorial gave echo to the demands of the Itoiz Coordinator

and demanded that "the works be paralysed", and, on the contrary, the Diario

de Navarra, which emphasised that, in spite of the judicial blow received, the

government of Navarre and the Ministry of Public Works would appeal against

the judicial ruling and that the works would proceed. Also DEIA ("There are

arguments for paralysing Itoiz"), El Mundo and Egunkaria were critical of the

action of the Navarrese coalition government (PSN, CDN, EA). Other papers,

such as the Diario de Noticias, El País, ABC ("The Navarrese government

perplexed") or El Correo orientated their news content towards the position of

the Navarrese and Central Administrations and drew attention to the huge sum

of money invested in the work.

With respect to the action of cutting the cables, the majority of the media

(Diario de Navarra, Diario de Noticias, El Correo, El País, El Mundo, ABC,

with the exception of those media with a Basque nationalist orientation such as

EGIN, Egunkaria, DEIA and ETB) and the Navarrese, Basque and Spanish

political class considered this "violent sabotage" to be framed within the anti-

democratic and violent strategy of the Basque National Liberation Movement

(MLNV). For the minister of Public Works, Itoiz had ceased to be an

ecological problem, and was now a question of public order17.

This criminalisation, the result of what has come to be called the "Basque

syndrome"18, made the itoiz reservoir a "question of state", and turned it into a

confluence of interests and discourses between mass media and political

institutions. The activists were accused of being "disguised as ecologists"19, of

being violent, of having obscure terrorist intentions and of destroying the jobs

of two hundred workers20.

17 CAMINOS; J:M: (1999) “ Prensa y Conflictos Ambientales: El caso de Itoiz” INGURUAK, 24. Bilbao. September. 18 CASAD0 de ROCHA, A & PEREZ, J:A: "ITOIZ. Del deber de la Desobediencia Civil al Ecosabotaje." Pamiela.

Pamplona. 1996. Page 58. 19 Headline of "El País" 14/4/1996. 20 For example, the 200 workers, who lost their jobs during the months when the works were paralysed, accused the 8

imprisoned activists of being "ecoterrorists". They became a second counter-movement, after the "Platform for

Water", for mobilisation and anti-ethical discourse against the ecologist postulates. On the other hand, it is worth

recalling that the sacred character attributed to the jobs, the accusation of being violent and the generation of "ad hoc"

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17

In spite of the campaign of political discredit and criminalisation of the

members of "Solidari@s con Itoiz", there has been no lack of those who

describe the ecosabotage by the "Solidari@s con Itoiz" as "non-violent civil

disobedience", since they voluntarily surrendered to the Civil Guard in the

presence of several sympathetic mass media. In nearly all the newspapers we

find opinions by persons and groups that justify the use of force as a defensive

measure to neutralise the possible armed response of a guard and against the

material damage of an “illegal” works project. In the opinion of these authors,

this should not be confused with indiscriminate, crude and clandestine violence

(EGIN).

In such a debate, with its unequal balance of means, the representatives of

the MEV, HB, Batzarre, sectors of Izquierda Unida and representatives of the

different Basque social movements came to the defence of the action by the

"Solidari@s con Itoiz" . They denounced the brutal response of the Civil

Guard and the guards from the Prtectsa security firm to the 8 persons who

carried out the action; after they had voluntrily given themselves up, they were

imprisoned. Their aim was to act meticulously at every moment in order to

avoid causing personal harm, in the presence of journalists and the mass media,

and with a video film faithfully recording the clean character of their action21.

The conflict in the mass media again broke out in October 1997 when the

Spanish Supreme Tribunal responded to the appeal lodged by the Spanish

government. The mass media sympathetic to the arguments of the Itoiz

Coordinator interpreted this as "A firm annulment of the project. Itoiz is saved"

(EGIN), while for those on the side of the Public Administration reported in

headlines "satisfaction of the Foral government and the Ministry of the

Environment" because their project had been legalised (Diario de Navarra and

ABC). Others, more distant from the two sides in conflict, spoke equally of the

legalisation of the project and of the impossibility of filling the reservoir above

2% of its capacity.

counter-movements are formulae that the radical ecologist movement has had to face in other parts of the planet.

(TAYLOR, 1996) 21 See - "Solidari@s con Itoiz": "Itoiz: Una lucha clara y limpia". HIKA, Nº67, Bilbao, mayo, 1996, pages 7-9.

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Fig-4- Alliances and cleveages in the Itoiz reservoir conflict.

4) HIPOTHESIS AND INTERPRETATIONS. Normally we have found environmental mobilization proccesses in which

the pre-existent ecologist groups or some other type of organizations respond

to an environmental agression. In this case, by contrary, is the agression which

originates the creation of such environmental groupings or co-ordinators.

The leadership of this campaign is the Co-ordinator of Itoiz, created in

1985. Inside it we could find a set of people tieded to the territory that this

potential reservoir will cover. Obviously there are many other current green

organizations that suppport this mobilization but allways in a subsidiary

manner, till the creation of "Solidari@s con Itoiz".

This environmental conflict is therefore clearly localist, whith a Co-

ordinator or network of groups and personnes from this area, a local political

opportunity structure very determinant and a low-intensity ideological

discourse, connected mostly to the defense or "their" land.

Nevertheless and despite this localism, the Co-ordinator of Itoiz has

implemented a broad repertory of actions (demonstrations, courts appeals,

reclaims to the U.E. Commission, Ombusdman, Strassbourg Court of Human

Rights...) that has been hepfull to achieve solidarity from a diverse cluster of

Basque, Spanish and international organizations.

In the other hand this conflict has had the intervention of a very special

group, the so called "Solidari@s con Itoiz"-"Those in solidarity with Itoiz"-

that have performed several civil disobedience actions trying to get the

attention of the media at national and international level. Our aim is to find out

the reasons because this conflict is going beyond the local limits and how and

in which manner is becoming a national or international affaire, if to some

point we are allowed to say it so.

A) (INTER)NATIONALISATION HAS OCCURRED BECAUSE OF

THE TYPE OF POLITICAL OPPORTUNITY STRUCTURE IN

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NAVARRE AND ITS READING OF THE BASQUE NATIONAL

CONFLICT

Our first hypothesis is related to the special political community of Navarre.

We thought that the main reason to overcome the local limits lies in the fact

that the type of its political culture, the type of actors we could find and the

social structures ( mass media, university community, Church and public

society in general) make conflicts like that of Itoiz manifest themselves in

peculiar ways, in our case going beyond Navarrese frontiers.

In light of the above we must point out that, within the Basque Country as a

whole, Navarrese society has certain specific features. Its administrative

separation from the Autonomous Community of Euskadi is no accident. The

political contexts of the two Autonomous Communities, although there are

similarities, also differ in important respects, in their social and territorial

structure, as well as in the political sphere. What is special about Navarre is

that the type of political culture produced by the mass media, the university

community, the Church and by society means that conflicts like Itoiz adopt a

peculiar form.

The different autonomous governments of Navarre (PSN, CDN, UPN) have

at no time recognised the Itoiz Coordinator as an interlocutor and have refused

any type of contact, dialogue or negotiation. This has led the Coordinator to

accompany its work of informing the public and social mobilisation with a

series of administrative and judicial processes in Navarre, Madrid and

Brussells, in order to prevent construction of the reservoir.

We thus find ourselves facing a political opportunity structure whose central

elements are as follows:

1) A formal institutional structure that is unwilling to open its doors to

social movements and that is expressly opposed to the position and arguments

of this specific social movement, whose promoters it regards as its principal

enemy and hich thus form the axis of its discourse and actions. Thus the

conflict-orientated mode of working of the system is highly conducive to

mutual confrontation.

2) A scarce institutional system of alliances in support of the movement,

which is limited to certain local institutions and to the Basque radical

nationalist left, to the so-called MLNV and its electoral expression Herri

Batasuna, although at the end of the 90's this framework widened somewhat

with the inclusion of Batzarre, first together with EH and now on its own in the

Navarrese parliament. The Basque nationalist left is an important ally, because

of its strength and capacity for social mobilisation, but it can also constitute an

element of distortion, if - as has happened on numerous occasions - the local

framework of the conflict is surpassed and the discussion becomes orientated

towards the Basque national conflict.

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20

3) A highly closed Navarrese institutional "input" and a policy of pressure

making use of the fait accompli. This, due to the disparity of means and

because of the continuous application of institutional "steamrollering", has

meant that the option taken by the anti-reservoir movement has been to go

beyond the Navarrese framework in search of other parameters where allies

and social, political and institutional support for its demands can be found.

4) The channels of participation and the mechanisms for the inclusion of the

demands of civil society are non-existent, and where they do exist they are in

disuse.In the mid 90's, the Advisory Council on the Environment was created

in Navarre, which was to be severely criticised by the Navarrese

environmentalist organisations for its unbalanced composition, since it left the

ecologist viewpoint in a clear minority, and for its inefficiency and for a lack of

democracy in its workings. Its activity has been scarce and the Itoiz question

has never appeared on its agenda, lending weight to the argument that the

actions of the Administration aimed at environmental participation are more

linked to strategies of institutional self-legitimation than to a new direction that

accepts the necessary involvement of the environmental NGOs in decision

making and in the processes of environmental planning (Jímenez, 2000: 252).

Through its own strategic design and because the Itoiz Coordinator is a

legalised group, the anti-reservoir social movement in Itoiz has made profuse

use of judicial procedures as a form of contesting the Navarrese government's

positions of force. This is a mode of action that has not often been employed

amongst the majority of the groups of the Basque Ecologist Movement so far,

but due to the victories obtained by the Itoiz Coordinator in the law courts, it

represents a new testing ground for Basque ecologism.

The effort made to direct the conflict along the judicial channel, besides

representing a novel ecologist tactic in the Basque Country, has opened a

fissure in the closed context of the Navarrese institutions, taking the dynamic

of the conflict towards higher administrative frameworks.

Although it does not have the capacity to veto the activities of the

administration, by means of its legal actions the Itoiz Coordinator has managed

to remove the conflict from the local sphere and position the judicial apparatus

against the reservoir project.

B) MOVING BEYOND THE LOCAL TO WIN (INTER)NATIONAL

EFFICACY, RESOURCES AND ALLIES

While the use of judicial channels and the special treatment received in the

Navarrese mass media, both critical and pro-Administration, give this conflict a

differential character, these two aspects have given the Itoiz Coordinator an

image of being an ecologist organisation that is both stable and professional

due to its practice and experience.

As we have said above, this organisation has received support from the

MEV and important help from the radical nationalist left (HB-EH) in extending

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21

and organising its mobilisations and campaigns, not only in Navarre but

throughout Basque national territory, in a first leap from the local to the Basque

national level.

Even so, what is special and novel in the Itoiz case is the ease with which

this conflict has been exported outside Navarre and the Basque Country, an

aspect that is new with regard to previous environmental conflicts. This type of

activity reaching beyond the Basque ambit, the external help received for

carrying out scientific studies, the economic estimations commissioned by the

Itoiz Coordinator to refute official figures, and its relations with other

environmental networks not situated in the Basque Country, such as

COAGRET, CODA or Greenpeace, mark a clear deviation from more

nationalist practice. The previous practice of the majority of the campaigns of

the BEM had been centred on Basque territory. The stratey of the Itoiz

Coordinator permits an interpretation of the conflict in a register different from

that of Lemoiz or the Leizaran motorway (Barcena, Ibarra & Zubiaga 1995:

36).

As a second leap, moving beyond the Basque ambit, the Itoiz Coordinator

has sought and found technical and academic support, the help of professionals

and experts in geology and engineering, economics and the biological or

juridical sciences, in order to refute the arguments of the Administration and to

give its own arguments a scientific-technical foundation.

To this end, the Itoiz Coordinator has made use of the reports and studies of

official institutes and bodies such as the Institute for the Conservation of

Nature (ICONA) or the Doñana Biological Station, as well as the help of

professors and professionals, working in a private capacity, for carrying out

different reports (Itoiz 93, Itoiz 94, Cost-Benefit Study of Itoiz-Navarre Canal,

Hydrological Accounts of Itoiz, Artistic-Historical Patrimony to be lost,

Reports on Safety....) which have backed both its mass media discourse and its

judicial actions. It is curious to observe that in almost no case has there been

collaboration in the preparation of these reports from professionals or

university staff of Basque-Navarrese society, perhaps the Coordinator has been

seeking the political "neutrality" of professionals from outside the Basque-

Navarrese ambit22.

Another novelty in collaboration and joint work has been the involvement of

Greenpeace in the Itoiz conflict. Greenpeace is the ecologist organisation with

most affiliates in the Basque Country (around 6,000) but it has no offices in

Basque territory. The specific campaigns that it has carried out in this territory

(against the import of toxic wastes, in defence of traditional fishing methods,

against the Bilbao incinerator....) have been developed in contact with local

groups. Itoiz, however, has been a special landmark in Greenpeace's

collaboration with a local social movement, providing it with international

coverage and sharing its strategy of action.

22 BARCENA, GUARROTXENA, TORRE &IBARRA (2000)

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22

Perhaps this is why, when the "Solidari@s con Itoiz" cut the cables of the

reservoir works, Greenpeace did not hesitate to condemn the sabotage because

of the of violence23, which produced a strong argument amongst Basque

ecologist groups and a decline of several hundred in the number of

Greenpeace's affiliates.

Besides Greenpeace, other international ecologist organisations such as the

International Union for the Conservation of Nature (UICN-June-1994) the

Alliance of Northern People for Development and the Environment (ANPED-

November- 1994) have taken public positions against the construction of the

reservoir.

Greenpeace also played a relevant role with respect to the Itoiz affair in the

Spanish Advisory Council on the Environment (CAMA) created in 1994. The

Itoiz reservoir has been analysed twice, firstly during a special session and

secondly by an "ad hoc" commission24. Consultative motions calling for its

paralisation were voted on on two occasions, which caused discontent amongst

environmentalist organisations when they were not implemented. Greenpeace

abandoned the CAMA in 1997 and one year later the other environmentalist

organisations (CODA, Aedenat, Consejo Ibérico...) did the same in order to

denounce its inefficiency and the interested use made of it by the Ministry of

the Environment.

In the Itoiz conflict, the Administration, those "challenged" to employ the

terminology of Kousis25, counter-attacked with the creation of a broad and

powerful "ad hoc" social counter-movement in the ambit of Navarre, the

Platform for Water26, which has carried out mobilisations in the streets, in

international forums and put pressure on the mass media in favour of the

construction of the reservoir and the Navarre canal. The Navarre executive, in

view of the series of unfavourable sentences received in the Madrid courts,

then decided to take recourse to an international expert in such disputes to

change public opinion.

Burson-Marsteller, a public relations and image advisory company, with a

broad environmental experience (Harrisburg, Exxon Valdez, Bohpal...) and of

support for dictatorial governments (Nigeria, South Korea, Argentina....) drew

up a report for the Navarre government. This basically recommended carrying

out publicity emphasising the defence of local interests, following the line of

23 See PASTOR, X. "La coherencia de Greenpeace" ARGITAGARBI, number 8, Euskadi, Summer 1996. Page 8.

Taken from EGIN April 12th

, 1996. 24See AGUILAR Susana " Is Spanish Environmental Policy becoming more participatory? in EDER & KOUSIS (Ed)

" Environmental Politics in Southern Europe" Kluwer, Dordrecht, 2000. pags. 269-273. 25 Kousis, Maria: " An exposition on environmental movement reserach worldwide: the cahllengers, the challenged

and "sustainable development". in AGiijswift, F.Buttel, P.Dickens, R.Dunlap, A.Mol and G.Spaagaren, Sociological

Theory and Environment Part II. Procedures of the Second Woundschoten Conference (RC 24-ISA) SISWO,

University of Amsterdam, amsterdam, pags. 85-97. 26 See interview with Juan Antonio Cabrero (UGT) Water's Platform speaker in EGIN. (20th October 1997- pag.14)

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the Platform for Water, and continuing with the argument that the water of

Itoiz was "of for Navarre".

C) (INTER)NATIONALISATION DUE TO THE IDEOLOGICAL

DISCOURSE. AGAINST GLOBALISATION AND

DEVELOPMENTALISM

The final argument we wish to set forth concerns the leap from defence of

the local to an (inter)national dynamic and perspective, brought about for

ideological reasons.

Defence of the local, as in Itoiz, means a movement of resistance of a

community, not too large, to the attempts of invasion or aggression (or to be

precise, those acts perceived to be aggressive) to their territory by external

institutions or elites. The concept "outside" or "external" does not just refer to

authorities and elites which are objectively foreign. Rather it refers in

particular to those institutions and elites which arise within the territory itself,

but which are perceived by the movement as in practice alien to the real

interests of the land, of the communal space, linked to foreign strategies27.

Fig.5. From local to global in the Itoiz conflict.

Note that the important thing is not the type of aggression, or which

particular elements of the territory are affected, but rather the fact that the

27BARCENA& IBARRA (2000)"The Ecologist Movement in the Basque Country" in EDER & KOUSIS (Ed) "

Environmental Politics in Southern Europe" Kluwer, Dordrecht. pags.175-196

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aggression comes from outside and the fact that territory which is experienced

as one's own is affected- in any way- by external agents.

In this respect the leap from the local to the Basque national would be a

communitarian leap, which would be relatively simple in the discourse of the

Coordinator and of "Solidari@s con Itoiz"

We can thus point to some data which lead us to believe that factors such as

Itoiz and direct confrontation with economic development plans which pose

dangers to natural and cultural values are common to Navarra and the rest of

the Basque Country. Since confrontation is a permanent feature of the relations

between political and economical elites and environmental organisations,

conditions for an increase in conflict persist.

Thus the conflict-ridden national context in the Basque Country reinforces,

at least in terms of argument, the option of the defence of one's own territory,

the physical space of the community..

However, we cannot say that Itoiz has become a problem with a national or

Basque-Navarrese scope, because the Coordinator has not employed that

discourse - it does not appeal to Basque society as such to support its

mobilisations - nor have the Solidari@s framed their repertory of actions and

campaigns employing a nationalist sentiment.

Moreover, the specific localisation of the conflict generates another type of

leap. Thus, in our case, the lower pressure exerted by Basque nationalism in

Navarrese space has made it possible for the movement to achieve greater

success when taking the conflict outside the territory and when making

common cause with, and drawing towards itself in terms of solidarity,

discourse and common work, other local anti-reservoir campaigns

(COAGRET), ecologist organisations of the Spanish state (CODA, now called

Ecologists in Action) or Greenpeace.

The basis of its discourse was to be the ilegal character of the works project,

its anti-democratic impossition and, later on, the lack of geological security.

In this way, Itoiz, while continuing to be a local conflict, has become a

rampart and the symbol par excellence of the ecologist struggle against the

National Hydraulic Plan. The paralysation of Itoiz will be considered a key

factor for putting a brake on hydraulic policies that are based on large-scale

infrastructure (reservoirs and canals), water privatisation and speculation, and

the transfer of water between river basins. Itoiz has thus become a spearhead

and an obligatory reference point for the strong movement of opposition to the

use of the water of the Ebro basin for the tourism and intensive agriculture of

the Mediterranean.

For their part, the "Solidari@s con Itoiz" , although they express themselves

as an "ad hoc" group with a single leitmotif of "stop Itoiz" employing the

course of non-violence and direct action, were to generate through their

exemplary actions a movement of publicity and anti-repressive support known

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25

as "Solidari@s with the "Solidari@s con Itoiz" , which was to amplify and

disseminate information about the conflict. Normally, conflicts of a NIMBY

type do not give rise to an anti-development and anti-capitalist discourse, but in

this case it was to be this message that provided cohesion and resulted in Itoiz

becoming an axis for action and mobilisation in other places.

The echo of the action of cutting the cables and the defence of those arrested

were also to generate an international movement of support for Itoiz, with local

and international repercussions and demonstrations.

Unification of anti-developmentalist struggles and discourses is a common

aim of the new radical European ecologism and the "Solidari@s " were to

ensure that news of this conflict was received not only by ecologist activists,

who were to come to Navarre to protest, but also in the European mass media,

for example when Itoiz and Narmada28 joined their names on the Millennium

Wheel in London (26/10/1999, The Times, The Guardian and The Sun).

Recently29, Itoiz has become a place of denunciation and direct action for a

"Radical" international group (www.dossa.nav.to) that has inserted steel and

glass into thousands of trees to make it impossible to fell them and thus prevent

the flooding of these terrains. Their message is revealing, "This is not an act of

solidarity. We do not live in the Basque Country, but we feel that what is

happening is an aggression against ourselves".

CONCLUSIONS

At Itoiz, the scenario and the discourse are clearly localist. Or to be more

precise, we are facing an ecologist movement based on a local community.

Within the coordinator that leads the movement, a decisive role is played by

representatives of the residents of the valley threatened by the reservoir.

However, like the long shadows cast by the rising sun, the Itoiz conflict has

spread in an exemplary way to the Basque national context, to the Spanish state

and to the European Union.

In what way and for what reasons is a conflict whose format and culture are

originally local carried to higher levels? As a general hypothesis we can

suggest that this leap occurred because of the existence of an especially closed

political opportunity structure that forced a local social movement to subvert an

unfavourable balance of forces at the local level by means of alliance and

collaboration with external networks and resources. And by arming itself with

28 The macro-project for a dam in Narmada (India) has become an international conflict that has forced its promoter,

the World bank, to rectify and question its realisation. 29 See GARA and EGUNKARIA (22 and 23/2/2001, pages 21 and 24).

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a discourse that attracts and makes possible alliances and work in common

with external associations, institutions and agents of control.

At Itoiz, the Navarrese political process has been, and is in a decisive way

the factor orientating the identity and strategy of the movement. Thus, for

example, a certain authoritarian political culture, characteristic of some

Navarrese political institutions, has forced the movement towards radicalism.

Besides, the special and tense relation of some sectors of Navarrese society

(and of its institutions) with respect to the Basque political context has meant

that the Coordinator has planned its mobilisations independently from the

organisations that follow a Basque nationalist discipline.

The way in which the Navarrese political process has tried to reinterpret the

Itoiz conflict as an episode of the Basque national conflict between Basque-

Navarrese and Spanish-Navarrese, has led the local social movement to

contemplate the search for support and resources that make it possible to

negate this logic that is so pernicious for local interests.

And this is how the appearance of factors and subjects external to the local

Navarrese space, called in by the Coordinator and the Solidari@s, have meant

the (inter)nationalisation of this environmental battle.

In these times of economic, environmental and cultural globalisation, certain

state and international authorities such as the European Union or the Spanish

government might attempt to prevent cases like the Itoiz reservoir from

surpassing their local dimension, but its special contextual configuration means

that the demands of this local environmentalist movement have found insistent

expression beyond its valleys. Adapting the discourse, searching for diversified

allies and changing the terrain of play where political decisions must be taken,

could be the keys to success. That was one of the lessons that the Earth Summit

of Rio de Janeiro in 1992: the environmental crisis demands "thinking and

acting locally and globally."

Larrabetzu, March of 2001

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INTERVIEWS

- Patxi Gorraiz, representative of the Itoiz Co-ordinator. May-1999. - Mabel Cañada, member of Solidari@s con Itoiz. December -1999 - Patxi Gorraiz ( II) representative of the Itoiz Co-ordinator. December-

1999. -Juantxu Lopez Uralde, representative Greenpeace, November-1999. - Alfredo Rueda, representative of Ekologistak Martxan.December-1999 - Alberto Frias, representative of Eguzki. (May-1999)

SURVEYS AND QUESTIONARIES

- Itoiz Co-ordinator - Greenpeace - Ekologistak Martxan- Navarre - Eguzki - Solidari@s con Itoiz. TEA proyect.The Transformation of Environmental Activism. To be consulted: www.ukc.ac.uk/sociology/TEA.html

LIST OF ACRONYMS

- BNLM-MNLV : Basque National Liberation Movement

- UTE : Temporary Union of Companies.

- CAP-PAC: Common Agricultural Policy

- EHNE- Basque Farmers Union

- COAG- Spanish Farmers Confederation

- ZEPA : Areas of Special Protection for Wild Birds

- EIA: Environmental Impact Assessment

- PNV: Basque Nationalist Party- Christiandemocratic

- EA- Eusko Alkartasuna- Basque Solidarity- Basque Socialdemocratic

- IU- Izquierda Unida-United Left (Former Comunist)

- CODA- Coordiantor for the Defense of Nature- Now “Ecologists in

Action”

- UICN-IUCN : International Union for the Conservation of Nature

- ANPED: Alliance of Northern People for Environment & Development

- BEM- Basque Environmental Movement.

- Batzarre- Navarrese Leftwing Organisation

- HB: Herri Batasuna-Popular Unity- Basque Nationalist Leftwing Party.

- E.H.: Euskal Herritarrok- New electoral coaliton of the nationalist left

(HB)

- PSN: Socialist Party of Navarre

- CDN: Democratic Center of Navarre. Center -Right

- UPN: Unity of Navarrese People- Right

- UGT: Socialist Union.

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- UAGN: Farmer’s Union of Navarre

- ICONA: Institute for the Conservation of Nature

- CSIC: Higher Centre of Scientific Research

- EGIN-GARA- Basque Left-Nationalist newspaper

- DEIA- Basque Nationalist newspaper

- ETB- Basque Public Television

- ABC: Spanish Rightwing newspaper.

- CAMA : Spanish Advisory Council on the Environment

- COAGRET: Coordinator of Campaigns against Hidrological Projects

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