ABSTRACT
Classical approaches to nationalism and ethnicity have traditionally understood ethnic groups as ethno-nationalist groups that were irrevocably predisposed to constitute political entities in order to preserve and promote their assumed unique socio-historical and cultural markers. However, we argue that the Basque case illustrates much the opposite. Basque ethnic identity was not only utilized by the Basque nationalist movement, but it helped to form diverse processes of national identifications such as the Spanish, French, or Venezuelan for that matter throughout the nineteenth century. In this sense, the debate on Basque ethnicity is not a marginal issue in the re-elaboration of Spanishness and identity politics on both sides of the Atlantic but a central and main one in the Spanish and Latin American national and state-building discourses.
