Identity battles, social movement networks and political opportunity structures in the Basque public space: Bilbao's Aste Nagusia (2009-2010)

In this paper I will analyze the identity work performed by the organizers of Bilbao’s annual popular festivities (Aste Nagusia, AN). AN constitutes a major experiment of what I call “participatory culture;” it involves networks of state institutions, political parties, entrepreneur associations, and a group of social movement organizations and cultural collectives affiliated to a Federation of Comparsas. As such, AN represents the sole “cultural space” where actors with center-, right-, and left-wing ideologies, and Spanish unionist and Basque separatist tendencies meet, and collide, in Spain. Due to these characteristics, AN is an exceptional scenario for the display of “identity battles” related not only to the fiesta, but also to divergent understandings of culture, the city and political liberties. My paper will focus on the identity narratives developed by the Federation of Comparsas, the strategies and alliances it has crafted, and their symbolic and performative representation in the festive space. It will also provide an account of the arduous work of identity synchronization/de-synchronization conducted by the comparsas to articulate internal differences amidst radically changing political opportunity structures. I will focus on the critical years of 2009-10; the decade-long repression and criminalization of the abertzale Left (hub of socialist and independentist organizations linked to the armed organization ETA) reached Bilbao’s festive field during this period. 2009 was, too, the year in which the abertzales launched a “purely political way,” that is, an internal process of “democratization” aimed at putting an end to 50 years of armed struggle, and to their 8-year electoral proscription. Given that almost half of the comparsas in the Federation fall within the abertzale umbrella, this is a key period for my research. Textual and visual data analyzed in the paper come from a two-year ethnographic study conducted in Bilbao, archival material, and in-depth interviews.