The whole 19^th Century, up to 1876, was a period of parallel but non-integrated coexistence, of regionalism (Province) and constitution. A coexistence of theoretical distances and practical reunions through administrative formulas as described in the previous pages. It was a time of difficulties for individual freedom and democratic culture was only reached in 1868 and the culture of the romantic nationalism was still absent. At the end of the 19^th Century the principle of freedom was strengthened and the new nationalist culture entered in its different variants. It was a new period that will only be presented succinctly here. The constitutional culture began to open up to the legacy of the tradition to transform it in Europe (mainly in Germany), but the Spanish continued being pro-administrative and old fashioned. As regards regionalism, deprived of its council representation with the decline of the General Councils, which were dissolved but not abolished in Alava in November 1877, it remained not only as an ingrained culture but also as an institutional reality through individual Provincial Councils with regional functions, from the powerful Economic Order and the exceptionalisation of the regulations so that it accepted an administrative autonomy in municipal and budgetary matters etc. (except for some attempts to reinstate the General Councils that I will mention later on). However, the impact of the pro-Cánovas resolutions of the Carlist post-war period, and the appearance of radical regionalism and the new nationalism, made the idea of a drastic loss of the municipal charters in 1876 become rooted in the imaginary community (the "regional tunnel" has been unduly talked about on some occasions, which they had come out of in 1958!).

1931 was a key moment for the four cultures. The republican Constitution of this year drank from the constitutional system evolved by Weimar (Germany), which was more sensitive to historical realities and community representation than the French constitutional system. The culture of personal freedoms also had its opportunity. On the other hand, regionalism still had some confirmed Orders, although their County Councils were questioned, and nationalism, after some extreme right-wing catholic adventures with the Carlism, institutionalised its proposals through the Autonomy Statute (which also integrated the regional tradition). However, 1936 stopped this process as it cut so many other collective and personal projects. An authoritarian corporate political culture that originated at the beginning of century would seize the whole of Europe in a short time (World War II). The Spanish civil war was catastrophic in this aspect and in others, as it delayed and corrupted the whole process that we have mentioned here. 1945 was a year of liberation for Europe, but not for Spain or Portugal where the corporate authoritative system that was started in the thirties was transformed, up to 1975.

The years of Franco were good for the Spanish authoritarian nationalism, but not for anybody else. The freedoms declined along with the constitutional system. Basque nationalism was incompatible with Spanish nationalism in the framework of the dictatorship. They all remained, but they did it as hidden cultures without any institutional presence. Except for regionalism, the regional idea remained as an accepted culture (a revealing result, for example, is the polemic due to the electrification and unfolding of the Madrid/Paris railroad between Vitoria and the frontier in 1950-1951, in which Alava newspapers openly used the whole regional argument at a time when press censorship was prior and strict). And it also remained as an institution in Alava and Navarre (but as far as we know not in Guipúzcoa and Biscay because of the penalising Bylaw of 1937). The County Councils soon became known as Regional and Provincial Councils with the same administrative structure and level of equipment as before. The Order for Alava and the Agreement for Navarre were also confirmed. It was true that they were repealed in Biscay and Guipúzcoa. However it was more a war reprisal than a principle of incompatibility. Apart from this, as has already been analysed in other works, regionalism (County Councils, laws of civil charters, Order and some attempts to recreate the General Councils, to which I will later refer to briefly) experienced a certain development during the Franco years. Undoubtedly, as the County Council had much of the corporate representation of the territory (not in vain it was one of the promoters of the vertiginous industrial lift off in Alava in the fifties and sixties), regionalism survived, in the dark years of the dictatorship it was radically incompatible with freedom and democracy, and with any other nationalism that was not Spanish.

All this changed with the crisis of the regime and the hopes that arose from the 1976 Reform Law, the 1977 general elections and the 1978 Constitution. Everything changed with what was called the Transition, which was nothing more than a radical and peaceful transformation which produced a free society and a regime of democratic parlamentarism that was comparable to others in western Europe. The four traditions we are talking about here could meet and dialogue in search of integrative institutional formulas. Naturally, it was a new period, Europe had begun a convergence process that little by little would affect the whole process in Alava, and in the Basque Country in general. The constitutional system was now less horizontal and much more permeable to other legal traditions like historical regionalism. The individual freedoms could not be questioned now, and any form of parlamentarism had to be democratic at a time when the idea of the media democracy with the massive presence of new technologies of telematic communication would also shortly enter in Spanish and Alava society; a time of limited and shared sovereignties.

The period from 1975 (the death of Franco, Political Reform Law and Decree of study commissions for the regional reestablishment) to 1979 (first General Councils of the democracy and referendum of the Autonomy Statute) was decisive for the first configuration of the encounter in constitutional Spain, in the autonomous Basque Country and in the Province, that was always "regional".

1.- The General Councils in the 20^th Century. The genesis of representative Councils
      from 1977 to 1979

As I have already said, the regional culture remained effective after 1876 and throughout the whole 20^th Century (without interruption in the case of Alava; but with remarkable variations) supported by a potent institutional network. However, the institutions that we are interested in here did disappear. The General Councils, as a municipal union, met for last time in November 1877 to be dissolved by the civil governor for their "intransigence" against the proposals of the Cánovas government. Their powers were assumed by the interim Provincial Councils, which in a short time changed from being chosen by individual and direct vote, to universal vote from 1890. However, the memory of the Councils, already expelled from the legal system that regulated the new Provincial Councils did not disappear as far as we know. In 1885 the Biscay County Council developed several projects to recover the whole regional network, including the General Councils, coinciding with the negotiation of the 1886 and 1887 Order Law. Later there were various other formulas, always in a tentative way, which passed through the recovery of the Councils in the Basque counties. The initiatives were sometimes institutional and sometimes supporting, on some occasion they were promoted by regionalists, and on others by republicans or also by Basque nationalists, as in the Statute proposal made in 1917. The same Indalecio Prieto, moved by the pro-municipal tradition of nineteenth century progressivism, later inherited by Bilbao socialism, had some initiatives in this direction with the intention of investigating the "almighty" Councils.

The only place, that we know of today, in which a certain version was materialised of what the Councils were at the beginning of the 20^th Century was Alava (see professor Arana's works; Navarre is another case; Regional Council was maintained there). However, between 1909 and 1920 the Fraternity Councils of the Alava Members met annually with municipal representation which, lacking the functions of the old regional Councils, performed a certain advisory and control function. They had arisen due to an initiative of the Vitoria republicans, however the republicans soon found themselves defrauded by their real operation. Indeed, they were not very operative because their repeated demands of a greater autonomy for the city councils were systematically ignored. They disappeared in 1922, and, although new Regulations were drawn up for them (1927) under Primo's Dictatorship they did not meet again.

This culture lasted and it was adopted by the Franco system through Carlism and other cultures of the regime. The first Franco system made firm votes in favour of regionalism in its more archaic, authoritarian and paternalistic version (oligarchic and corporate representation of the territory, annulling, apart from this, its acclaimed municipalities and the citizenship in general). This proposal, apart from what has already been mentioned about the Regional and Provincial Councils, etc., materialised on 19^th May 1958 with the approval of the County Council for a motion that stated:

"Under the protection of the current and old customs, the Regional Council of Alava holds a commemorative party for the General Councils in the months of May [in the patronage of San Prudencio, in Tierras Esparsas] and November [in the patronage of the Virgen Immaculada or Santa Catalina, in Vitoria] every year".

All of this was carried out to the great figure of Franco who had encouraged "the restating of our traditions, old habits and customs" in the Session of the Spanish Parliament of that year.

"It is… - the report states - at certain times our Regional council contacts the most significant representations of the towns in the Province, in order to know about their problems with all solemnity,…". Provincial authorities and representations of a series of towns attended it, who were chosen "with complete freedom from people that due to their age, wisdom, affection for our Institutions and personal merits and of all nature, are considered appropriate" (in total 38 of the 78 municipalities of the province).

The first of these meetings was held in Respaldiza, head of the Valle de Ayala, and the November meeting in Vitoria. These Commemorative Councils - which is what they were called - covered the paternalistic function of redistributing a certain amount of power between some networks of clientele and the local notables (treating different matters of local interest, always on an advisory basis), apart from what the legitimisation of the regime implied through a ritual representation of an old tradition rooted in the area. This was the moment when the regional tradition was furthest away from the other traditions of the constitutional system, individual freedom and the Basque nationalism culture.

As I have said, all of this ended with the crisis of Franco's regime after his death in 1975. In the Commemorative Councils of 26^th June 1977, held in Oyón, it was said:

"that the Councils are transformed to open the way to new councils that are more democratic, more representative, and have more political powers".

That same year, in Ribabellosa, they would be declared "suspended" until the appearance of new legislation on them.

People were already conscious of the need for radical reform, even though the direction it would adopt was still not known. All of this was fulfilled in the interval between 1977 and 1979.

1.1- Genesis of the representative Councils, 1977/1979

The first step toward reinstating the General Councils was taken in November 1975, when Franco was dying. On 7th November a Decree was issued creating commissions for a possible reestablishment of the Councils of Biscay and Guipúzcoa according to the 1958 model of Alava (materialised in the Decree-Law of 4th March 1977). On the other hand, the Decree of 2nd June of that year aimed to reform the Commemorative councils of Alava as municipal representation bodies. These were the times of Suárez and the young reformists of the regime that the UCD had already created with which the elections were presented on 15th of that same month. Positioned against the alternative of having to design a territorial organisation model, they tried to annul the autonomous model that the opposition massively defended at that time, by opposing a regional model reformed from the existing one in the old regime. As Santiago de Pablo has observed, the Home Minister Martín Villa worked intensely in that direction during the spring of 1977.

However, a pro-Basque project for Alava had already been developed for some time with a regional emphasis on Alava that was publicly expressed in 1976 in the series of conferences "Alava in the Basque context", held by the so-called "Mateos" (in memory of Mateo de Moraza) in the Escoriaza-Esquíbel Palace (José Manuel López de Juan-Abad, Juan María Ollora, Patxi Ormazábal, Armando Llanos, etc.) with a certain amount of backing from the old County Council. From the Vitoria City council, a group of councillors (José Angel Cuerda, María Jesús Aguirre, Merche Villacián and Vidal Sucunza, all of which were councillors with the democracy) supported this tendency through their participation in the "group of mayors" that impelled an Autonomy Statute for the Basque Country.

After the elections of 15th June 1977, the movement was articulated from the autonomous commitment reached between PNV, PSOE, ESEI, ANV, PCE and Basque Christian Democracy (which was later joined by Euskadiko Ezkerra) that sought to achieve autonomy for the Basque Country through a constituent process through which greater levels of freedom were obtained, and it would contemplate on the horizon the experience obtained from the regional tradition. The four cultures, which we have mentioned in the introductory section, looked to converge without having come up with a specific formula (and whose materialisation gave, as we will see, quite a few headaches). On 19th June in Guernica the Assembly of Basque Parliamentarians was constituted, which was integrated by representatives and senators from Alava, Guipúzcoa, Biscay and Navarre, with the aim of configuring an pre-autonomous body and drawing up an autonomy statute of.

This movement, to which no parliamentarians of UCD were incorporated initially, had the potentiality to abort the operation of the reformists of regime in its early stages that lead to a corporate and non representative-style modification of the General Councils, just as had been designed in the Decrees of 1977.

As far as Alava was concerned, the situation was ambiguous. Navarre was left out in the first negotiations since its parliamentarians, of which two thirds belonged to UCD, decided it (and the formula of the referendum for the possible incorporation of Navarre to what would be the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country, CAPV, was then established). Alava's situation was complicated. Three of the UCD parliamentarians did not go to the June Assembly meeting, however the two representatives and three senators that belonged to the "Frente Autonómica" (only limited to the Senate) did go. In spite of the particularistic campaign (under the protection of the municipal charter) that was promoted in the province, the Alava UCD parliamentarians finally decided to join the Assembly on 21st July of that year and to subscribe to the autonomous commitment with the other parties. However they assured that they were doing it "within the respect for the particular characteristics of the historical regions". An attempt of "Alavaism" with regional roots appeared that would mark a good part of the first period of Alava's juridical-political life in the following period (and it would mark it later on as a political culture).

By the Decree of 4th January 1978 the pre-autonomous regime was established in the Basque Country and the General Council of the Basque Country (CGPV) was formed with the same composition as the Assembly both in political terms and in territorial terms. From this date, the work began to write and negotiate a Statute for the Basque Country. It was then, after the final exclusion of Navarre was established, when the independent senator for Alava of the Frente Autonómica, Ramón Bajo, expressed his restlessness before a community that was organised unitarily and that relinquished the statutory legacy, which was so deep-rooted in Alava. According to Ramón Bajo, the mentioning of the Navarre's specific characteristics, whilst nothing was said about those of Alava, put the province's exclusive regime in danger. As others would do later, he opposed a federal idea of the CAPV to an national unitary idea (with unique institutions, etc., that especially defended Euskadiko Ezkerra and also some sectors of the PNV), and became the defender of the Alava Order and its exclusive regime. This response from inside the actual Frente Autonómica spurred UCD's anti-autonomous objections of a regional nature and certain sociological Alavaism. From this statutory debate in full discussion of the constitutional project (in which, apart from this, the PNV had defended its positions of sovereignist autonomy on an regionalist argument and from which they derived its regional amendment and the First Additional of the 1978 Constitution that "protects and respects the historical rights of the regional territories") an express appeal was made to defend the exclusive Alava regime and the equality of institutional treatment of the three Basque provinces was considered (it is in this way that the inclusion of Navarre was facilitated, something that at that time was considered possible and desirable from within what would be the CAPV).

It is true that, even though around 1978 a new constitutional culture had inevitably been established on a solid feeling of freedom (from here we have the failure of UCD's inadequate regional project), regionalism now collided with a more compact Basque nationalism and a unitary vision of what considered to be the Basque nation, Euskadi. This conflict lasted throughout the whole constitutive phase of the statutory and regional network and affected the prevailing constitutional system to the regime of individual freedoms and the articulation of democracy in the institutional structure in different ways.

This will be the axis of the history of the Councils between 1979, when their reinstatement was set by Decree (RD 122, 123 and 124/1979 of 26th January), and the middle of the nineties when the Regional Law was finally approved on the Organisation, Operation and Legal Regime of the Alava Regional Council (18th December 1992). The five-year laws were established on Contributions along with the inter-institutional agreements between the Basque Government and the three Regional Councils on different areas. With all of this the institutional map was drawn up in the Basque Country and Alava. This was the axis around which the first debates were articulated. Subsidiarily to this, but with the same degree of importance, the establishing of the powers and relations between the General Councils (initially very restricted) and the Regional Council as relations between parliament and executive in a parliamentary system.

In spite of appearing as provincial parliaments and having a social image of representative and regulatory chambers, in 1979 the General Councils started by merely supervising the decisions of the Regional Council (and only when they were able to). However, the imaginary group had become more and more imposing, and in the year 2000, they were much more the provincial parliament than society imagined them to be.

2.- A changing society. Alava 1960-2000

If this convergence between such different traditions was possible, it was clearly due to a new development of the respective ideological formulations. However, the society that welcomed them had also considerably changed. Things started to change in the fifties and sixties in the line of spectacular industrial growth and a clear modernisation of the social ways. The pre-war levels of production were recovered with difficulty and in the sixties a very quick economic surge sustained in the growth in the steel and mechanics industries. Out of all the Spanish provinces Alava had the greatest increase in production between 1955 and 1975 (453%, against 399% in Madrid, and 163% in Zamora, the province with the smallest growth) or available family income (327%, followed by Alicante with 289%, and Zamora with only 65%). This change, certain ruptures in generations and the perception of things, and new dimensions in the social relations made it possible for a profound transformation in the way of life. Vitoria, which had maintained a moderate level of growth until the mid fifties, grew at a much higher rate than the other Basque capitals, it passed from having around fifty thousand inhabitants to one hundred and seventy thousand in the seventies, and two hundred and thirty thousand in 2000. In 1981 85% of the population of Alava was urban population.

In this time, the structure of its economy changed and its wealth grew in absolute and relative terms. Its provincial product (GDP) in constant pesetas of 1986, passed from 55,530 million in 1955 to 202,642 million in 1997, which is four times as much in real terms. The structure of its economy also changed. It went from being a society with an agricultural structure in the fifties, with old services in the capital to offer them to the province, through a fast industrialisation process up to 1980, to the re-growth of the services sector from this year (see Graph I). However the services that were established in the eighties in Vitoria-Gasteiz (it was given this name by the democracy) were no longer the old fertiliser warehouses for the province or kitchen tools. In the eighties the services sector now attended the industrial sector, it dealt with massive urban leisure and consumption. The capital of Alava had also begun to diverge. However, industry would continue playing a decisive part. According to a report written by the Treasury Member in 1997, Alava grew at a rate of 5% that year, 2 points above the Spanish average, and it had collected 17.9% of the Company Tax of the whole of Euskadi, when its GDP was 15.31%.

GRAPH I.

[GDP in Alava by sectors (constant pesetas 1986) 1955-1997]

Apart from this, as we can see from the reading of the GDP curve, in 1977 the provincial economy stagnated, with a crisis process in the industrial sector that did not pick up until the end of the eighties. This crisis was reproduced in 1993, but this time due to a general overheating of the Spanish economy, but in Alava, it would again affect the industrial sector. It was a crisis related to the situation, which it came out of with excellent economic health, a renewed economic fabric and an obvious lowering of unemployment rates (see Graph II.). This would be one of the great challenges that the new regional institutions that arose in 1979 would have to face through controversial plans of tax incentives, the creation of development institutes, the acquisition of land and the creation of growth areas.

GRAPH II.
"UNEMPLOYED POPULATION (EPA)"

[Unemployed population rate (1986-1999)]. 

However, if it was essentially the economy and the structural variables of the society that had changed up to 1975, from the eighties it was the every day and cultural customs that radically changed. In the previous years certain movements of cultural rupture had already arisen in the margins (such as the Orain group in painting, or Denok in theatre), and in the eighties the society radically changed its social habits, quickly standardising them to those of their environment in western Europe. It fully opened up to the outside world. Leisure changed areas and moved to nightlife. New night-clubs and garages/factory opened up where people came together at night in an atmosphere full of noise, smoke and alcohol, in places designed for a lot of dancing and little communication. It also suffered the bad things of those years: first drug addiction creating marginality niches, and then AIDS. New musical movements appeared, from Punk to the Pop, Blues or Indy groups; groups like Hertzainak, Potato, Allnighters, Reverendo Parker or musicians like Ruper Ordorika, Bingen Mendizábal or Juanjo Mena, who have very different paths but have their openness to the international musical offer and their integration in inter-city professional networks in common. Cultural projects were organised, such as the Katanga factory and exhibitions rooms like Itinerary. New projects arose in plastic arts such as Carlos Margote, Iñurrieta and Mintxo in painting or Girbau in sculpture, which were equally unrelated to all local pretence. alternative publications such as Lux Demoniorum, and radio stations like Hala Bedi Irratia were encouraged, cultural encounters were promoted (Martínez Salazar) and caustic talents arose for the cinema, like the case of Bajo Ulloa. Naturally, all of this formed a traditional culture that had received the blows of modernity, and during those years it also developed a vulgate of nostalgia (among the oldest members) or resistance (punk-blues confrontation in 1986). The openness to the outside is quite clear, as the Jazz Festival and the International Theatre Festival bear witness.

Alava's economy also opened up to the outside. We only have to look at the province's foreign trade figures.

GRAPH III.

"FOREIGN TRADE IN ALAVA (in Millions of Pesetas)"

If there was a substantial change in the every day customs, it was partly due to the fact that in the transition from dictatorship to democracy a clear generational and politically sensitive change took place between the political elite and the powerful elite. The main new characters (Emilio Guevara, José Angel Cuerda, Fernando Buesa, the Aguirianos, Txus Viana or Alfredo Marco Tabar), who all came from well-known families in Vitoria, were the ones who lead the political change and the juridical-political transformation that we are analysing. Vitoria was already a great city which a great number of new emigrants had flowed into (in fact; quantitatively they constituted majority). This social mass composed the city, which I have called "real Vitoria", with the industrialism and immigration, the one that gathered together in the streets for the funeral of those who died on 3rd March 1976. It was already a very varied society due to its origin and its cultures. However, they were periods that came from what anthropologists call moral community (the sector that from the sixties and clearly in the seventies, appeared as diffuser and arbitrator of the new laws, the values and morality of the place, children of old families of Vitoria), the "moral Vitoria", those that lead the change in its first stages. Only progressively, and from the second stages of politics and positions of technical responsibility, the elite of the local powers progressively opened the way to the "real Vitoria" (which is another symbol, because it is not statistically representative either although it is politically and socially representative), to the widest social elite who already ran the civil society (especially through a professional technical middle class with origins outside of Alava).

Culturally varied, the different opinion tendencies were moving towards the elections that were held from 1977.

GRAPH IV.

[General elections in Alava (1977-1999)]

GRAPH V.

Similar graph to the previous one but with the autonomous elections.

As we can see, the left-wing PSE or the central-right wing have systematically been the strongest in the general elections, especially the central-right wing after the victory of the PP in the general elections of 1996 and the debate about Lizarra that was started in 1998. However, in the autonomous elections the PNV has been the first option, except in 1986 when it was the PSE and 1998 when the PP won.

In these elections, with the purpose of outlining the great political cultures in connection with their community identity, if we mark a dividing line between those who have clearly expressed themselves in favour of a pro-Basque Alava, or purely for the pro-Basque, and those who have pro-Spanish Alava stances, or strictly Spanish, we would observe that the cultures with Spanish inclination clearly prevail in the general elections (between 49% and 68% in the last elections of 1999) against the pro-Basques (between 17% and 37% reached in 1987). However, in the autonomous and regional elections the pro-Basque (supposed changing electoral identification in time with large cultures) reaches a limit (1986 for the autonomous elections and 1987 in the regional ones) to open the way in the nineties to the political culture with a Spanish orientation.

This was the social framework in which the General Councils would start up: a society with radically renovated economic and social structures immersed in a deep process of cultural transformation of a renovating and open nature. A process of change initially directed by certain new local elite and that has progressively opened up to a new middle class with a varied origin intelligence that has been incorporated into the institutional network and has acquired increasing relevance in civil society.

On 7th May 1979, after constituting the Age Assembly in the Sessions room of the Provincial Hall, fraternity members of the province of Alava presented their credentials. This is how the historical General Councils of the province were restored and re-constituted.

Lázaro Gancedo presided over the assembly, he was mayor of Ayala and a man of deep historical resonance. He was the son of the assistant to the Chairman of the County Council, José Gancedo, who resigned along with the Chairman of the County Council Domingo Martínez de Aragón, leaders of the intransigent regionalist sector, when in February 1877 the General Councils voted to end the intransigent stances of the General Councils of Biscay and Guipúzcoa (later there were two new regional authorities; see the chapter written by Ortiz de Orruño and Portillo in this book). Lázaro Gancedo had been mayor of Ayala with the Republic and the only nationalist that accepted the appointment in 1931 for the Provincial Management Committee of the County Council, when his party, the PNV, boycotted it. He was exiled after the war, and he went back to live in Ayala from 1949. In his character a good part of the political traditions converged that would be the ones that reconstructed the new General Councils.

The Councils of Alava were initiated with their special characteristic as regards the Councils of Guipúzcoa and Biscay (a regressive characteristic, against which the progressive parties fought in the first legislature). While these were chosen by direct and universal vote, the Councils of Alava were chosen in the second stage by the fraternities.

The General Councils, as the restoring Decree of 1979 states, are the "representative body of Alava,, through its Municipalities contained in Fraternities, in the administration and the provincial government.

Apart from its writing, as new administrativist, this formula strongly predominates rural representation as opposed to urban representation, and as I have said, 85% of the population of Alava lived in urban areas, while it gave up the universal and direct vote. They were chosen according to the 39/1978 Law, of 17th July in the first Local Elections that were held in democracy on 3rd April 1979. The index of abstention was relatively high (34.6%) compared with the general elections (only 16.4% in 1977). However this was the tendency from then on (only in the autonomous election the abstention increased even more). Around this time people started to distance themselves from politics (the phenomenon that would be known at the time as "disillusionment"). The nationalists triumphed over UCD and PSE in Alava for the first time both in Vitoria (the most aspiring place) and in the province. On 18th April the old provincial corporation presided over by Cayetano Ezquerra held its last session, and on 22nd April, the Provincial Electoral Council assigned members. Of the 57 members 26 were from PNV, 14 UCD, 7 PSOE, 3 Gure Aukera, 2 Amurrioko Aukera and 5 from different candidacies.

Soon all the protagonism in the government and the Province's regulatory initiative would be given to County Council that was in this first legislature in the old style, permanently for the Councils, incorporating all the parties present in them. There was still no clear parliamentary definition of the regional network and the functions were confused.

In the constituent session the Chairman of the County Council was elected in the second round, according to the proposal of the PNV spokesman, José Angel Cuerda, it was given to Emilio Guevara Saleta (who was invited to enter, because he was not a member). Guevara ("from Vitoria and son of parents from Vitoria", stated the local press, who was a lawyer in his father's practice at that time, and a very active member of the Transfers Commission to the CGPV) obtained the votes of his party, the PNV, and those of some independents (30 in total). Afterwards, he swore to defend the Municipal Charters of Alava (with what was proclaimed) and gave a brief speech with some generic ideas about the period and the principles that inspired him. He defined himself as "son of Alava" and as such he demanded the "full reinstatement of the Municipal Charters … as the clear demonstration of the will of the whole town of Alava". He made votes for "the immediate constitution of an autonomous Basque Country, politically articulated from the respect of the personality of all and each one of the Basque territories that form it". In his taking possession speech Guevara already appeared, just as he would show later, as a cultured neo-regionalist and moderate nationalist of a federal nature. Something that, doctrinally was a part of the harsh nationalism since Sabino Arana, who had even inspired the writing of the Basque Studies Society Statute in 1931, the origin of the so-called Statute of Estella, but which had been lost as a tradition in the directive nucleus of the PNV of the last Franco years. Even well-known regional appeals of senator Mitxel Unzueta shortly before in the constitutional debate, were very rhetorical in legal terms; they were just ad probandi arguments to justify a Basque right (historical) prior to the actual Constitution that was debated, and therefore prevalent. Guevara defined himself as exclusively from Alava, and his appeal to the Basque Country was to make immediate reference to the respect of the personality of each territory that formed it. A not very common stance in EBB at the time, but it would open the way, as we will see, to the debate of the Law of Historical Territories.

The new Chairman of the County Council accepted the Royal Delegation to preside over the Councils, and therefore from that day besides directing the County Council that would be formed, he would preside over the General Councils. At this point a small incident was produced when Guillermo Perea, an independent who was attributed to HB, proposed not to accept the King's presidency (or therefore his Delegate) until he had not sworn the Municipal Charters "just as they did within the reining dynasty", and he then pointed out a relationship that went from Felipe V to Isabel II. As it was not accepted, he and other members abandoned the sessions room.

Two motions were approved, one in favour of the Statute of Guernica, which was being processed at that time in the Parliament (42 votes in favour and 3 against) and a request to the County Council so that it promoted its participation in the CGPV (finally those proposed, presented to the Tierras Esparsas Session, would be Félix Ormazábal and Juan José Pujana of the PNV, and Carlos Solchaga of the PSE, in a CGPV that would soon be presided over by Carlos Garaikoetxea, President of the EBB). It was agreed (proposed by the PSE) to include the subject of the nuclear power stations and a regulation of the elections of the Administrative Councils in the next session. And a proposal of "total amnesty" was rejected (13 against, 3 in favour and 21 abstentions). Finally, all the members made a procession, with macebearers and flute players, to pay a tribute to Mateo Moraza in his statue in the Province Square, and concluded with the Agur Jaunak.

It was a solemn act as was appropriate for the historical event of the restitution, whose contents were vague, which was more ceremonial than decisive and in which it was announced that the Councils would have a subsidiary nature as regards the County Council in this first stage. The following sessions (the second symbolically in Tierras Esparsas, in Salvatierra, just as the General Councils of November 1876 had agreed, which were never held) followed the same tendency.

On 11^th May the Regional Council of Alava was constituted with sixteen representatives: eight for PNV, three for UCD, two for PSE, one for Gure Artea and another for the Independents of Iruña de Oca, which was going to work with eight Commissions that they resembled the archaic synodial system, with four presidencies for PNV, two for UCD, one for the PSE and another for Gure Artea (until June 1983 there was not even a Council of Representatives).

It was a time of great political density throughout Spain, but especially in the Basque Country, where around this time the general constituent framework was being closed with the negotiation of the Statute. On 3^rd June a Magna Assembly was held in Vitoria with councilmen, councillors and regional representatives to ratify the Guernica Autonomy Statute. One hundred and eighty seven city councils supported the Statute and the three Chairmen of the County Councils signed the supporting document. They were exhausting days of decisive meetings between president Adolfo Suárez and Carlos Garaikoetxea as president of the CGPV. Among the advisers for legal matters and the Order of the Basque representatives in the constitutional paper were the recently elected Chairman of the County Council, Emilio Guevara, and the person who would be his office partner, Pascual Jover. On 17^th July their work ended (with the new Orders approved on 13^th) and on 18^th, surrounded by the maximum representatives of the PSE, EE, PCE, ESEI and UCD (as well as Arzalluz and the President of the BBB, Félix Ormaza), Garaikoetxea gave a press conference in San Sebastián to announce the agreement. From this instant, only the ratification in the Parliament plenary session was needed and the referendum that was set for 25^th October of that year (1979).

The campaign in favour of the Statute was intense (while HB, supported by ETA-m, carried out a campaign against it). It is important and significant that the article that on the last day of campaign, October 23, was signed in the local press by Emilio Guevara ("Alava against the autonomy statute"). "Indifference is forbidden for us", he said. After 140 years of "sterile violence the political solution has opened, an Autonomy Statute". Alava cannot survive only with its Order, it cannot choose "a path without an exit". Even in the case that nobody shares the idea of the Basque nation, it should be recognised, he said, that the people of Alava are Basque by culture. Apart from this, "Alava has no other logical possibility than to accept the Statute". It is not necessary to foresee that the Order will be perpetuated if the Statute fails. As a result of this it the Statute is interesting for Alava and it should say "yes" in the referendum on Sunday.

The people of Alava voted positively for the Statute with a participation of 63.3% and a positive vote of 83.4% on the participants, only 9% voted "no". The participation was somewhat lower than in the neighbouring provinces, but similar to the participation produced in the election of the General Councils (which de-authorised the abstainers of the recently created coalition of HB). The "nos" (option proposed by the regionalists of AP, who did not have the support of the newspaper Norte Exprés) were more numerous than in Guipúzcoa or in Biscay, but even so they were insignificant. The Alava Council was congratulated in its first session for the approval of the Statute.

Although these results predicted a fast clarification of the political panorama, the terrorism, torturing and dirty war that were still practised, they obscured it beyond redemption. On 9^th January 1980 the Commander-in-Chief of the Miñones, Jesús Velasco was murdered. In the Extraordinary General Councils on 12^th January, according to the proposal of the President, they categorically condemned the terrorism and the regional official's murder. In June, on the other hand, Enrique Gómez from Vitoria was also murdered in Bayonne, he was supposed instructor of the legal commands of ETA. This event also produced incidents in the capital of Alava (in the same way that they had been produced in the funeral of the Commander of Miñones).

In February 1981 ETA murdered the engineer from Lemóniz, José María Ryan. More than 300,000 people held demonstrations throughout the Basque Country against that murder, whilst the Basque Government and Alava County Council asked the population to hold a categorical stance against the terrorism. However, that same month, the presumed member of ETA, José Arregui, died in Madrid due to torturing. The Basque Parliament demonstrated against the antiterrorist law that had been applied to Arregui. There was a generalised stoppage in Alava and mass demonstrations were held. On the banner that headed the demonstration of Vitoria the following words could be read: "Euskadi… Paz y Libertad/Euskadi, Pakea eta Askatasuna" (Euskadi... Peace and Freedom).

On 1^st October of that year ETA-pm was dissolved, but ETA-m continued with the murders and kidnappings. In an Extraordinary Session (17 December 1987) the General Councils joined the Basque Parliament in its declaration against violence after the bloody attacks of Zaragoza, Basauri and Placencia. In the Session of 28^th January 1988 they joined the agreement subscribed by the parties PSE, PNV, EA, EE, AP and CDS for the Normalisation and Pacification of Euskadi (Ajuria Enea Pact). On 10^th March 1989 they made an Institutional Declaration, unanimously approved, to call the society of Alava to participate in the demonstration to be held in Bilbao in favour of Peace on 18^th March. There were still eight years to pass until the antiterrorist insurrection that followed the murder of the PP councillor in Ermua. However society was maturing, and with it, the institutions.

Another of the problems that worried the Spanish society over these years was the re-conversion of obsolete industry. The phenomenon, with its social blemishes, relatively affected Alava (especially in the area of Llodio, with which the Councils and the County Council had taken special attention). Vitoria was also affected by it. The Michelin factory established an employment regulation and shift changes against which the workers went on strike. In June 1980, a terrorist command murdered the head of installations at Michelin, as the finish touch to a series of violent events. On 8^th March a group broke the Gothic image Virgen Blanca. On 14^th a mass demonstration (20,000 people) attended the procession of the Rosario de la Aurora as a sign of apology. A violent iconoclast movement, anarchist thuggery with light union connections was developed during those years in Vitoria, however it did not last beyond 1984.

The General Councils were only an echo of everything that happened in the street. Hardly a body with initiative, caught between its institutional marginality and the protagonism of the County Council. HB, which was linked to some of the movements, did not participate in them, in the same way that it did not participate in the rest of institutional life. It was the Regulation approved on 18^th January 1980, which at the proposal of the PSE separated the presidency of the Councils from the post of Chairman of the County Council, that lay the foundation stone in the aim to redefine regionalism in the sense of a provincial parliamentary system, with separate chamber and government. Francisco José Ormazábal (Patxi Ormazábal), of the PNV, became the president with 25 votes from his party.

TABLE I

LIST OF PRESIDENTS OF THE GENERAL COUNCILS OF ALAVA, 1979-2000

TABLE II

LIST OF PRESIDENTS OF THE REGIONAL COUNCIL OF ALAVA, 1979-2000

The next step in this direction was the approval on 5^th March 1983 (at the same time as it was carried in Guipúzcoa and Biscay), in a tortuous plenary session, of the Elections to General Councils Law, and on 7^th of the Law about Institutional Organisation of the Historical Territory of Alava. The electoral system was transformed in the 4-1983 Law of 7^th March. The PSE and EE, which had repeatedly claimed it in order to substitute Martín Villa's Decree for a universal, direct and proportional voting system, were forcibly opposed to the one proposed by the PNV as it radically dominated the rural vote (see Graph VI). The Law, obtained with only the votes of the nationalists, divided the province in seven districts; as many as there were Groups. In these districts 51 members were chosen: 25 for Vitoria, 13 for Ayala, 4 for Salvatierra, 3 Laguardia, 2 Zuya, 2 Añana and 2 Campezo, in a procedure that combined proportional representation with territorial representation. The Law passed the obligatory step through the Basque Parliament thanks to a last minute Pact between PNV and Coalición Popular, because the rest of the parties of the opposition abandoned the room, impeding the quorum for a moment.

The session in which the Law was approved on Institutional Organisation of the Historical Territory of Alava (also approved in Guipúzcoa and Biscay), was equally stormy. In them, just as the nationalist speaker, José Angel Cuerda, stated, a new structuring of the provincial institutions as a system of provincial self-government with a legislative and an executive was proposed. It was, in fact, a true statute of provincial autonomy that superimposed article 37.3 of the Basque Statute (that established the powers of the Territories) on 10.3 (powers of the CAPV). The opposition, which believed that the Law should be postponed until the powers that the Law of Historical Territories (LTH) granted it were known, that were being debated and that, in any event, the only legislation should be the Basque Parliament, abandoned the Room questioning the quorum in the Meetings. Finally, the text was voted with the nationalist members who were present, as the presidency considered that the fact that HB did not presence the act, reduced the necessary quorum from 29 to 26. The 26 members of the PNV took the law through. From this law, the Councils, representative bodies of the Province, would have legislative capacity in some matters (Regional Laws), and the County Council would lose its representative nature and acquire a executive presidential structure.

With both laws (both approved with the exclusive vote of the PNV; Buesa and Aguiriano, of the PSE, commented around this time that the nationalist laws had been imposed as a "put up with it") a great step had been taken in the line of redefining the regionalism inside the Province as a system of provincial self-government, according to a parliamentary system with strong territorial representation.

Apart from this, in the first legislature the Regional Council already defined some of the priorities that would occupy the provincial institutions in the period that we are dealing with up to the year 2000. The topics that were considered to be urgent were Foronda airport (its definition; today it is a cargo airport); FASVA and the health service; the CUA (now the University Campus of the UPV); Basque Language Service (later, normalisation laws); the County Council/City Council relations; adaptation of the Tributary Reform to the Regional Treasury (with readjustments in Personal Income Tax and company taxes), which implied a reform and rationalisation of the Treasury Department; the elaboration of a General Plan of Infrastructures (roads: Málzaga/Burgos, reorganisation of the N-1 main road to Alsasua and new bypass to Vitoria; railroads: Vitoria/Bilbao via Orduña and communications with San Sebastián and Pamplona, at present the Basque "Y"; the development in Júndiz of a centre for the distribution and transport of goods), drawing up a plan for towns (that would be the Works and Services Regional Plans and the FOFIM); and a general plan of action in the Valle de Ayala.

Finally, the County Council, favoured by a Government that feared the infection of the Navarre effect in Alava, had the good sense and ability to attract the capital status from the CAPV to Vitoria (Government agreement of 12^th May 1980), and the perspicacity to not be satisfied with just that ("Bonn" syndrome), but to back industrial development that would not condemn the capital to being a dormitory or administrative city.

However Alava's great argument was an uninterrupted Economic Order from its enactment (as was the Navarre Agreement) that had allowed it to form a powerful administrative machine and equipment and services levels without comparison. To the point that Juan María Ollora, Treasury Member, offered the Alava Order as a model for the Biscay and Guipúzcoa Orders. In January the 12/1981 Law of Economic Orders was signed by the Basque Country. The Alava County Council (and the Councils) gladly approved the new Order (not for nothing they had been one of its main organisers), and the Treasury Member did not hesitate to mention the way towards full regional reinstatement (old claim of the PNV) and in the direction of a federal Euskadi.

Indeed, if it had been possible to redefine the regionalism inside the Province by reconciling it with the constitutional system and the tradition of individual freedom (a constitutional system with the radical primacy of the executive and very restrictive democracy), it needed to be inserted with the nationalist tradition established in the Basque Government. This would be the next task, and perhaps the most arduous. An insertion that had its victim: Carlos Garaikoetxea, President of the EBB who would resign as lehendakari (Head of the Basque Autonomous Government) in December 1984. This was the debate for the LTH.

3.2.- The LTH and the affirmation of the exclusive rights of Alava. A regional Euskadi

It has been said that this was a conflict in the heart of the PNV that it was an internal conflict of power. This is true and false. It is true, because both the regional tradition (or neo-regionalism) and the estricto sensu nationalist cohabited in the same party. However it is false, because it was not an internal conflict: it also interested other social groups a lot. In the case of Alava it clearly interested the businessmen of the Chamber of Commerce or the future SEA, the old AP, but it also interested the socialists like Fernando Buesa, the then Chairman of the County Council, or Alfonso Martínez, spokesman in the General Councils, or the current PP, not to mention those who supported the option of Unidad Alavesa in its day. In Alava there was a certain social feeling of a special identity (that did not coincide with what was later UA), as the phenomenon of the autonomous senator Ramón Bajo had already proved in 1977 (see above-mentioned)

The first draft of the LTH (BOPA, Series A, No. 8, 3^rd June 1981) was extremely nationalist/autonomous. It spoke of "a radical historical cut with the past" in regional matters. It implied the absolute primacy of the institutions that were common to the Basque Country, to Euskadi (Government and Parliament), against the individual ones, those that were only reserved the right to propose initiatives to the Basque Parliament (Councils), whilst the Regional County Councils would simply be guided administrative entities with only regulatory powers. This put those who sincerely declared regionalist and federal ideas of the organisation of the Basque Country on their guard and several sectors interested in a renovated power of the County Councils (in the strong nucleus of the Alava County Council there was a reasonable and legitimate combination of both attitudes; Emilio Guevara was, as we have said, an eminent neo-regionalist).

However, those who first put an attitude of pro-Alava and regional rejection in public circulation against the LTH project announced, were sectors of AP (Santiago Griñó, owner of the Norte Exprés and member of the Basque Parliament) and the director of the newspaper, Felipe García Albéniz (an well-known old regionalist in the best tradition in the old regime). They aimed to alarm the population of Alava against a "centralist" Statute and a pro-historic exaltation of all of Alava's exclusivities. Even the Commemorative Council in Franco's time were exalted in this speech. Their model was Navarre.

However, the leader of the Alava neo-regionalism soon began to take up positions. On 31^st May 1981 the Chairman of the County Council, Emilio Guevara, gave his customary speech in the General Councils of Tierras Esparsas, in Respaldiza, in which he was against a pyramidal idea of the power in the communities. He said that the autonomy must come in towards the inside. When presenting its Budgets, Alava demonstrated that it was able to face up to the challenges that it had presented on its own. For Emilio Guevara the General Councils had recovered the legislative and taxing capacity of the management of the County Council. A vision that did not tally with the first draft of the LTH, as we can clearly see.

The same day the Basque Government's first General Budgets were presented before the Basque Parliament as bills along with the LTH. The parliamentary groups immediately took sides: the right wing criticised it for its little respect of archaistic regionalism (UCD and AP), whilst it had the support of the left wing (PCE, PSE and EE).

Guevara would also soon enter in public and explicit disagreement with both projects. In January 1982 he already said that he could not share the way in which the Basque Government's Budgets had been drawn up: "It is sought to reduce the County Councils to mere tax collectors". He believed that there was an inadequate interpretation of articles 37 (Historical Territories) and 42 (Contributions of the County Councils to the common Treasury) of the Statute, and an anti-regional philosophy. He said that the Contributions unilaterally demanded for 1982 could imply a serious limitation in the expenses of the Regional County Councils. He added that he expected the full information, because the regional outline and the outline of the Concert was not included in the Budgets. However, before going on stage he had received the support of his County Council. On 8th June 1981, all the members of Alava, from different parties, as we know, with the exception of Félix Ormazábal (PNV), approved a motion on the LTH that claimed the respect of the special characteristics of Alava. The motion stated that the relations should be based on: 1. - the respect of the historical personality of the Territories, according to articles 3, 25, 37, 41, 42 and Additional Provision of the Statute; 2. - the Territories, and their rights and abilities are represented by the County Council and the General Councils; 3. - by tradition and by right, both the Treasury and the Order, have been characteristic of the Territory (the Province). They hoped Parliament would keep all of this in mind. In a few days, after studying the differences between Emilio Guevara and the Basque Government, the ABB came out in defence of its Member.

Around this time the LOAPA (the known autonomous equalisation Law) had been drawn up promoted by UCD and supported by the PSOE. On 5^th October the anti-LOAPA Front (PNV, EE, PSA, PCE, Esquerra Republicana, CiU and PSUC) was constituted. They were not good times for the reconciliation. Not even within the CAPV. José María Makua, Chairman of the Biscay County Council, came out to defend Guevara: he believed that Alava, as regards its uninterrupted regional function, held powers that were not held by Biscay or Guipúzcoa, and therefore it required a greater budget. On the other hand Guevara did not assume an imputation in the Basque Government's Budgets for Alava of 13.05%, when the national income index was 12.91%, he believed that the index should be readjusted to that of 1981 (12.26%), and even this way, he assured, the other provinces were financed.

In an internal report of June 1981, Guevara maintained that the LTH project "was no good and needed to be modified" completely. The LTH invaded powers of the Territories and altered the Order system.

"It suppresses the free availability of the Regional County Councils, the patrimonial yields and the revenues of all the Provincial Councils in Common Territory. The County Councils become Treasury Delegations", and it is "particularly serious in Alava" due to the expenses already acquired in running costs. "The project leads us to an unfair situation and it would represent an enormous political error if we really want to advance in the drawing up of a national political project". We have to start off with a "real internal autonomy".

In February 1982 he threatened to resign if his demands were not met. In view of the dimensions that the conflict took, EBB and Arzalluz intervened in the matter. Guevara forced the holding of the PNV Regional Assembly which would come out reinforced.

Things were going badly for the PNV in the Basque Parliament, where Guevara was spokesman of the party. Only EE's votes impeded the return of the Budgets to the Government. Guevara began to receive support from the Alava Chamber of Commerce, the socialist spokesman in the General Councils who considered that the Basque Government, the Biscay County Council and the EBB excluded Alava, or Txus Viana, spokesman of the CDS parliamentary group. On 9^th March the multi-party County Council (PNV, PSE, UCD) unanimously delegated the negotiation of the LTH to their Chairman. On 27^th the Parliament Plenary Session was suspended without an agreement between the Government and the Alava County Council. On 30^th the newspapers had the headline on the front page "The Basque Government forced to accept Emilio Guevara's stance", and it was very true.

The opposition still blocked the amendments of the Government/Guevara agreement for a time, but the Alava member (freed from his responsibilities as Chairman of the County Council since the municipal and regional elections of May) was inflexible. Finally, with the help of Garaikoetxea and the votes of the PNV and the CDS, the Law went ahead as L.27/1983 of 25^th November. The Government admitted that Alava's regionalism pushed the new LTH forward. It considered it to be a decisive factor. However, to the outside it was still justified with the idea that a federal Euskadi would help the incorporation of Navarre. Navarre was never incorporated and never even attempted to incorporate itself . However, it was certain that with the last formulation of the LTH, Euskadi acquired a federal structure.

It was the specific way in which regionalism and nationalism converged. With this the constitutional tradition became richer, but with clear advances of the historic customs and the negotiation against the regulatory constitutional system. Democracy, on the other hand, felt the effect with the proliferation of executive bodies (such as the Basque Financial Council) with hardly any federal parliamentary control; because, if the executive was multiplied in varied federal ties ("inter-institutional"), the same thing did not happen with the legislative, which was dispersed in four unconnected chambers: Parliament and three General Councils. Whilst, the County Councils took the place of the parliamentarians of each province (with a federally inspired peer distribution) in their provincial representation against the common bodies. And more specifically, the decision making was carried out in the Basque Financial Council (County Councils and Government), taking away from Parliament the possibility of debate to limit itself to the ratification or rejection of the each Territory's Contributions; the reconciliation technique was brought to an end for the actions of the different administrations, which were present in the first project; the Government's objectionary abilities disappeared before Arbitration Commissions on the regional bodies' decisions; a singular tax system was adopted by which the inferior institutions were the ones that financed the central entities (up to 92%); the Contributions would follow a similar system to that of the Share of the Order; and the list of expenses of the central administration was also subject to negotiation in each renewal of the Contributions Law; each Territory increased the exclusive powers and with this the Councils were given a regulatory capacity (the Regional Laws), beyond the regulations, which was a real legislative capacity. In short, from the convergence between nationalism and regionalism, regionalism clearly came out the strongest.

Juan María Ollora, new Chairman of the Alava County Council from May, made an urgent evaluation on 29^th November. Given that exclusive powers existed, a hundred workers were moved from the Basque Government to the County Council with its corresponding powers. He believed that this way the County Council would be strengthened. The powers of the County Council were institutionalised as regards tax, roads, town planning and the regional police force. In addition, new responsibilities were achieved in agriculture, culture and town and country planning. In Heading I the Laws on the municipal electoral system, demarcations, supra-municipal institutions were exclusively attributed to the County Councils. Lastly, Alava conserved its right to make its own Budgets and establish its Works and Services Regional Plan, and it had good reason to be satisfied.

The left-wing, closer to a regulatory constitutional system and in favour of central institutions that were strongly due to rationality and democratic cleaning, was very critical with the new LTH, like what happened in the political debate of the Councils in December that year when they denied the executive characteristic to the County Council and the regulatory characteristic to the Councils. However, the reality of the provincial network (with which they would govern from 1987) would be imposed.

On the other hand, Garaikoetxea whose stance had been seriously compromised and that with the so-called "agreements of Zarauz" (internal PNV agreements, of 7^th January 1984) sought to link his re-election as lehendakari in a respectful line with the Government's co-ordinating and initiative capacities, he saw how this proposal was denied to him in practice by the reinforced Regional County Councils (with the Chairman of the Biscay County Council, J.M. Makua, directly negotiating the Law of Local Regime Bases in Madrid, with Sodupe's support and EBB's consent) he resigned on 19th December that year.

With this, a new political cycle was opened in the Basque Country and specifically in Alava, with José Antonio Ardanza as lehendakari, the democratic nationalism divided into two formations, and the socialists first negotiated a legislature pact with the PNV and later government agreements that would affect the Alava County Council.

In the balance of a year that the Councils completed in December 1984, the opposition praised the new political role of the General Councils but it harshly criticised the County Council. The PNV-PSE agreement had enabled Ollora to govern, however, the PSE was very critical about the topics of Territory Ordination, Agriculture, Health and Culture. For Patxi Ormazábal, President of the chamber, the General Councils "are no longer folkloric, they are a real provincial assembly". This was a fundamental change.

From this moment the County Council/General Councils institutional relationship was regulated. The 22/1987 Regional Law of 21^st December modified some articles of the General Councils Operation Regulations (20^th December 1984). Through the 6/1986 Regional Law of 25^th March the initiative of popular Regional Law was regulated. In the same way, the systems for the Censorship Motion were also regulated.

The Councils also needed to grow in order to exercise their limited but important legislative function and control the County Council. However they would only grow very slowly. In 1995, the Secretary of the General Councils requested more personnel due to "work accumulation" (there were only 11 employees in the Chamber). Only in December 1996 would the new offices be inaugurated. The General Councils would still be a subsidiary of the County Council for a long time.

However, the social image of the General Councils as representative and regulatory chambers (and not just mere administrative departments of the central institutions) had just materialised. Even in a world of shared limited sovereignties, it reproduced a new image of a quasi-provincial state. In the Santa Catalina political debate of 1996, they already mentioned the debate of the Province State. It had already been granted basic institutional regulations. Even in 1992 it reformed its "statute" with the 52/1992 Regional Law, of 18^th December.

4.1.- The Councils and the parties system

To talk about the parties system that was configured in Alava around the General Councils, from the nationalist assault on the local Alava institutions in 1983 (already in the municipal elections of 1979) to the take over by the PP in 1999, passing by the coalitions, the first presided over by the socialist Buesa, from 1987, goes beyond the aims of this section. Table III, and Graphs VI and VII, with the notes that accompany them, are enough for this purpose.

In general, the take over that had been produced in the political class with the Transition, was more radical in the regional bodies than in the municipal bodies of Vitoria. The County Council was completely renewed and the Councils were created ex novo. The new elite from the "moral Vitoria" (here it would be necessary to talk about Alava) fully incorporated itself in the regional tasks (Guevara, Ollora, Buesa, López de Juan-Abad). However, later it was more impervious to the access to the "real Vitoria" than the City Council. Although now in the nineties a new incorporation of the professional elite and technical scenes had been given.

Indeed, as a newspaper of the time said, "the 8-M [of 1983] dressed Alava as a nationalist". That was the year in which the PNV won in all the fronts. It won in the large and small municipalities, and it won with a large margin in the elections to General Councils. In Councils, and thanks to the absence of HB, it was one point from absolute majority. It is true that the division in districts by Groups favoured the PNV, a more homogeneously distributed vote over the whole county, and therefore a councillor "cost" them less than the rest of parties (see Graph VI), but it is also true that it obtained its best electoral results (see Table IV; although, if we joined PNV and EA, the best results would be in 1987).

TABLE III

NUMBER OF SEATS PER PARTY IN GENERAL COUNCILS

GRAPH VI

[and its relationship with the votes]

The government of 1983 was Juan María Ollora's one-party PNV. A government with effective economic management (although it was repeatedly accused of irregularities in Councils), defined by its Chairman as social-democratic, regionalist and "pro Guevara" (the former-chairman's prestige was this high after his victory in the LTH). It had difficulties approving its management in the General Councils because the united opposition had an absolute majority (24; never counting HB). In December it had to withdraw the Regional Law on Institutional Organisation (the opposition still aimed for a synodial non-presidentialist County Council, with representatives from all parties) and to paradoxically amend the one proposed by the opposition. In March 1986 it was about to lose a Censorship Motion presented by 27 members against the Assistant Chairmen, José María Guerenabarrena and Alberto Ansola, and the Chairmen Domingo Ruiz de Azúa, Rafael de Miguel and Edorta Gancedo, and from which it saved the pacts that had already been signed with the socialists in Euskadi (the voting was 17 in favour of the Motion; 17 against, and 9 blank votes).

If the PNV was going through a serious crisis (that would lead to the division of 1986), the PSE in Alava also went through one. In June 1983, badly lead negotiations forced Angel Gavilán's "pro-Guerra" sector to call new elections to the Executive, which the previously defeated Fernando Buesa, Javier Rojo and Luis Alberto Aguiriano entered strongly, who would lead the PSE from then on.

GRAPH VII

[Graph of the Elections to General Councils in Alava, 1983-1999]

The elections of June 1987 were the most well attended elections to General Councils to that time, with a participation of 68.25%. In Alava they were won by Eusko Alkartasuna (EA), Garaikoetxea's party, thanks to Cuerda's "influence" in Vitoria. EA took over the government of the capital, but in the Councils the PNV-PSE pact was imposed, which already worked for the Basque Government. From then up to 1999 it had been the axis of the coalition that has governed the county.

In 1987 Fernando Buesa the socialist, who was assassinated by ETA in 2000, entered to preside over it as Chairman. He was the first non-nationalist politician (since Ramón Rubial in the CGPV) that presided over a supra-municipal executive in the Basque Country since the democracy was established in 1977. Later Ramón Rabanera achieved it as Chairman of the County Council from July 1999.

The coalition governments (to which EA was incorporated in 1991) were pro-status quo, with slight differences that it is not appropriate to analyse now (essentially in the politics of fiscal exemptions for companies and reconciliation with the general legislation). It had been the executives who had consolidated the provincial network as a complete parliamentary system, and developed their powers until they reached that tone of quasi-state that we mentioned before. They are also the ones that carried out the greatest achievements. However, only in the 1999 legislature did the General Councils acquire their true protagonism as a representative body and a provincial parliament (although in 1991, with the entry of the regionalist UA, a turnaround took place). Probably due to the situation of majority minority in which the PP governed, and because, for the first time, they will have to make some Budgets negotiated in Council with the opposition after the ones presented by the executive for 2000 were rejected.

The relations of the tripartite began to deteriorate in April 1997, when the PSE separated from the other government parties in the approval of the Works and Services Regional Plan by abstaining. They considered that Ormazábal did not achieve sufficient consensus in the executive and allowed excessive inherence of ABB in the County Council. The situation grew worse when the PSE abstained in the Basque Parliament and in the General Councils of Alava (in Guipúzcoa and Biscay it voted in favour) on the Share and Order Law. Finally, among mutual accusations, José Angel Cuerda dispensed with the socialist councilmen of Vitoria in August 1997. The tripartite was broken in September, as the socialists left the County Council. From then on (María Jesús Aguirre, PNV, substituted Jesús Loza in Welfare and Fernández de Quincoces, EA, substituted Julio Herrero in Town Planning), the County Council governed in minority, with the external support of the PP (in the Reform of Personal Income Tax and the development of the Order).

The situation changed quite a lot in 1999 (the change was already observed from at least the autonomous elections of 1998). The population polarised with the strategic inflection of the PNV and its ascription to the coalition of Lizarra (in spite of the distancing of this stance shown by the Alava nationalism). They voted before in this matter than in others of provincial or municipal interest. The PP obtained a radically minority majority with which it constituted single-party PP County Council in July (that aspired to establish a "government model" in Alava, that could be moved to Euskadi), whilst the PSE assumed the presidency of the General Councils.

They were hard, decisive years, in terms of terrorist activity and the fight against it. The Regional County Council and the General Councils strongly condemned the kidnapping of Ortega Lara by ETA and the murder of the councillor M.A. Blanco on 12^th July 1997. The population of Alava (and the whole Basque Country) came out onto the streets in masses, in a kind of "velvet revolt". However until now, they have not known how to lead this movement.

Finally, with the provincial network constituted as a parliamentary/regional body and the community environment of the CAPV as a federal network, it was time to extend this network downwards and give it contents. This had been carried out from the early eighties, and it was thoroughly accepted in the nineties.

If regionalism "invaded" the area of the Community, article 46 of the 1981 Law of Order (12/1981) fully opened the way to another "invasion", this time downwards, towards the municipal environment on which the regionalism grew from the 19^th Century. The article establishes that the National Funds for the Financing of Local Corporations

«will be entirely at the disposition of the Regional County Councils who will distribute the corresponding amounts, in accordance with the criteria that they consider appropriate, among the Local Corporations of their respective Historical Territories».

Therefore they were not part of the Share. However, as far as we are concerned, from this moment the County Councils assumed the task of providing the traditional supervision functions and updating of the balances of the municipal country properties.

In the General Councils of 12^th February 1982, at the proposal of the Treasury Member, Juan María Ollora, a Regional Fund of Municipal Financing (FOFIM) was created. It was approved unanimously with a standing ovation, with the characteristic enthusiasm of the foundational times. The criteria for the distribution that were established were: 1. - The number of inhabitants; 2. - Growth of expenses in population concentrations: increase of 30%; and 3. - The municipality's level of contribution to the Provincial Treasury (in successive years these criteria would be slightly changed). In 1997, the Fund had 13,802 million pesetas, and gave 10,682 to Vitoria-Gasteiz.

The County Council was generous in municipal financing, and in 1995 the Alava city councils owed the County Council 1,000 million pesetas. In 1995 it created the FOFEL (Financing Fund for Local Entities), with the surplus budget of the previous year and a similar formula to the FOFIM. The result was that the Alava municipalities depended on more than 90% of their budgets from the payments of the Regional County Council's FOFIM.

To regulate this, and to the image of the Basque Financial Council, the General Councils created the Territorial Financial Council in 1996 (7 representatives from the County Council and 7 representatives from the City councils that belonged to EUDEL), of n initially deliberative nature, that would acquire progressive weight in the provincial balances. In 2000 the direct presence of the city councils in the Basque Financial Council was debated.

On the other hand, the actual County Council directly intervened in the municipal plans through the Works and Services Regional Plan.

The Local Regime was also regulated from the General Councils. In 1989 (Regional Law 62/1989) the Constitution Procedure, Legal System and Operation of the Fraternities of Municipalities and Town councils Services were established with the possibility of creating Unions and Fraternities among local entities. In 1995 Regime of the Town councils was regulated (Regional Law 11/1995 of 20^th March).

After the five-year regulation of the Contributions (these did grow in favour of the Basque Government until their current stabilisation in 65% of the total collected; see Graph VIII) through the Basque Financial Council and the Contribution Laws (the last one of 1997-2001; coinciding with the Law of Order that made Ardanza talk about the 16^th State of the Union), a system that can dominate the collection thanks to the Compensation Fund and it was a source of tensions between the Provinces (in 1997, Guipúzcoa and Alava requested an audit from Biscay; in 1999, Alava requested an external audit from the other Provinces) in which the Government was the arbitrary power, a thick web of inter-institutional agreements has been woven that met the functions from a federal executive that was not subjected to parliamentary control if it was not ratification.

GRAPH VIII

[Graph of the County Councils' Contributions related to what is collected, 1985-1995]

Perhaps the most important of them is the one that in 1996 linked the Government and the County Councils in a co-ordinated policy of tax incentives for investment through the company tax and the so-called "fiscal holidays" (a subject, as we know, that was controversial and was appealed in Brussels). The same year the Inter-institutional Infrastructures Plan was signed in the framework of the Territorial Ordination Guidelines of Euskadi (the DOT). In 1996 the N-1 main road to Navarre was inaugurated. The following year the Conchas tunnel was opened from the Llanada to the Rioja, the recovery of the ownership of A-68, investments in the Urbina/Málzaga.

And like this, other Inter-institutional agreements, such as the employment agreement for 2000-2003, etc.

On the other hand, the County Council lead an active policy of investments, design of strategic plans (Plan Alava 2000) and directing plans, creation of public promoters for the industrial investment or the attraction of business (VIA, public promoter of Foronda, PRINIA, Alava Development Agency), creation of the Miñano Technological Park and the impulse of the Júndiz Industrial Estates, area of Foronda, Salvatierra/Vitoria urban motorway, buying of land in Salvatierra, Nanclares de la Oca, Amurrio, Alegria, Murga, Araya, etc., that has enabled the business growth in the Basque Country to be concentrated in Alava.

Promotion of the Alava Campus of the UPV-EHU, approval of the Regional Law on the Use of Euskera (the Basque language), the commitment to build a Museum of Contemporary Art are proof of perfectly established and decisive regional entities for the development of the area.

* * *

In summary, a profound transformation that has led to a peculiar combination between the regional traditions (constitutionalising them) with the constitutional cultures (accentuating the elements of use and negotiation over the regulatory ones, and giving the community a federal structure) and democratic (superimposing the executive on the legislative), and with the nationalism tendency (making it more regional). A transformation and an insertion that is only possible in a fully renewed society that is open to its environment like the society of Alava at the end of the century.

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