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José Antonio Aguirre

From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.

José Antonio Aguirre Lecube (Bilbao, March 6, 1904–Paris, March 22, 1960) was a Spanish political figure. He assumed the position of first lehendakari or president of Euskadi during the Spanish Civil War. He was determined to create a Basque Army to fight on the side of the Republic.

A former player in the Athletic Bilbao football team, a student at Deusto University and militant of the EAJ-PNV party, before becoming Basque president he was mayor of the Biscayne locality of Getxo. His main characteristic was loyalty to the Second Spanish Republic. He knew that the future of Euskadi was dependent on a Republican victory.

He formed a Government of concentration in that nationalists, republican, Socialists, Communists and other sectors were present, not without tensions among them.

Battalions of different ideologies formed the Basque Army, which reflected the state of the Government. Badly armed and barely trained, the Eusko Gudarostea managed to mobilize 100,000 soldiers. One of the most pressing deficiencies, that unbalanced the odds, was the absence of heavy artillery and aviation. Famous are the desperate calls of Aguirre to his allies Prieto and Azaña to send equipment to Euskadi. Historians agree that this action was nonviable due to the difficulty in breaking the siege that Biscay was put under.

In June 1937, the nationalists broke through the Iron Belt of Bilbao and entered the Basque capital thanks to the defection of the engineer Goicoechea, who had designed the fortifications. Aguirre transferred his Government to Trucíos before maintaining course to Santander later to march to Catalonia, where he arranged to continue fighting with his men for the Republic. In the meantime, the nationalistic leader Juan de Ajuriaguerra agreed to a surrender in Santoña (now in Cantabria) to the Italians (Pact of Santoña) that Franco did not respect, all behind the back of Aguirre, who was in favor of continuing the conflict.

But events superseded the efforts of the first lehendakari in history, who fled to France after the war, being pursued for years by pro-Franco agents, leading to an incredible exile that took him to Paris, Berlin, and New York.

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Aguirre, from Guernica to New York.

Aguirre went first to France, where organized the camps and services with him heading it personally. He was in Belgium when Hitler occupied that country and so he started a long travel to Berlin under a false identity. Under the protection of a Panamanian ambassador, he reached Sweden and, dodging SS German intelligence, he arrived in Brazil on the ship Vasaholm to the port of Río de Janeiro on August 27 of 1941, the Brazilian customs authorities registered that Panamanian Doctor José Álvarez Lastra and Venezuelan María de Arrigorriaga, the last accompanied by their sons José and Gloria, entered the country. They didn't suspect that they were José Antonio Aguirre, his wife María Zabala and their sons Aintzane and Joseba escaping the long Nazi arm. But in spite of the intense efforts made by Manuel de Ynchausti in the United States, the difficulties remonstrated by the English consul Ralph Stevenson around the impossibility of entering with a name and leaving with another, it seemed far from being solved. While after a month his true personality was in danger of being discovered.

He wrote then to Ramón María de Aldasoro, former Counseler of Intendency and Commerce of the Basque government, who leaded the Euzkadi Delegation in Buenos Aires. This representation, integered by Isaac López Mendizabal, Santiago Cunchillos and Pablo Artzanko, had arrived to America on November 1938. But the efforts made by Aldasoro didn't succeed under an authorities that had yet undisimuled sympathy for the European "New Order".

Aguirre and his family in the Uruguayan border.

Seeing it, Aguirre went to Uruguay and there asked to a reduced group of Basque patriots what Argentine denied. The Uruguayan president general Alfredo Baldomir not only was willing to do it but to receive him with the honors corresponding to his high dignity. Six men movilized the political personalities there not only to get safety but to remove the awake the consciences of the diaspora, dormant cause the Francoist propaganda. Culminated the arrangements, the public announcement of the arrive of the president would be made on Octobre 8, when the Montevidean newspapers informed widely about his arrival and his biographical whereabouts. A little delegation integrated by congressional representatives Julio Iturbide and Juan Domingo Uriarte went to the Brazilian city of Río Grande do Sul accompanied by its Uruguayan consul, to accompany him in his last stage of his travel.

His personality was reinstated and given visa to New York, where he established under the protection of American-Basques as teacher of Columbia University. When the United States decided to back Franco in 1952 he went to France anew where the Basque Government in exile was established. Also there he encountered that the pro-Nazi French government of Vichy confiscated the Basque Government building and De Gaulle maintained it under the Franco government possession, building that today is the Instituto Cervantes premises, in a joke of destiny. Anyway the president of the government in exile was always a PNV member and even the Spanish sole representative in the United Nations was the Basque appointee Jesús de Galíndez until his murder in a obscure episode in the time of the Spanish entry in the United Nations. He also decided to put the big Basque exilees network at the service of the Allied side and collaborated with the US Secretary of State and the CIA along the Cold War to fight Communism in Latin America.

Jose Antonio Aguirre y Lecube died on March 22, 1960 of a heart attack. His body was shipped from Paris to Saint-Jean-de-Luz where it spent a night in the Monzón house. He was buried on March 28 after a funeral mass at the Saint Jean parish church.

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