ABSTRACT

This conclusion sets out a possible future political and social scenario in and for the Basque country, linked in the final instance to the prospects for sovereignty. Sovereignty and the right to decide are in a certain sense intertwined in the above statement. Sovereignty is when one decides, or when there is capacity for deciding, or when there are no external limits placed on that decision-making capacity. In this sense, sovereignty is not primarily a matter of governance – related to labor, economy, culture, etc. More importantly, sovereignty is exercised when a set of citizens have the capacity to decide on what it is they want to decide, without that decision having limits or frontiers. Emerging from the demand to assert national sovereignty through deciding, the very concept of the nation, or more precisely, the assertion of Basque nationhood, is flexible, open-ended and, above all, based on subjective will rather than objective elements.