More than a month after Basque President Joan Jose Ibarretxe’s controversial campus appearance, Joseba Arregi, a professor of sociology at the University of Basque Country, offered a rebuttal to Ibarretxe’s support of Basque independence.

Drawing on his personal story as a Basque citizen and a former member of the Basque government, the professor discussed his opposition to Basque independence Thursday night at Tresidder Union. Arregi argued that the complex identities of Basque society make achieving complete independence largely unpopular and unlikely.

“The Spanish Constitution answers to the complexity and plurality of the Basque society, a complexity and a plurality that makes it impossible for the Basque country to be independent,” Arregi said. “For it would mean the exclusion of all the Basque citizens who feel to be at the same time Basque and Spanish or to be included without the recognition of its difference in an entirely centralized state.”

Arregi said the Basque controversy continues because a minority of citizens is unwilling to accept the will of the majority. He said that the many visions of Basque society are best served by an inclusive Spanish democracy.

“Democracy is about citizens, not about identities,” Arregi said. “The rights of citizenship are not bound to one religion, to one ideology, to one political creed, to one linguistic or cultural identity.”

“In the end,” Arregi added, “the Basque conflict is, as it has always been, a conflict among the Basques, a conflict between freedom and imposition of unitary visions of identity, of culture, of language.”

Protestors of Ibarretxe’s visit to Stanford in February organized Arregi’s address as a counterpoint to the Basque president’s controversial proposal for a referendum on Basque independence.

“We wanted to give an opportunity to the Stanford community to hear more views on this controversial topic,” said graduate student Manuel Franco, President of the Iberia-Spanish Association, which sponsored the event along with the ASSU Speakers Bureau, the Graduate School Council and the Foundation for Freedom, a Spanish non-profit organization.

Arregi, himself a longtime nationalist, left the Basque government five years ago when he decided he could no longer work for an organization that he said had “joined hands” with Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA), a pro-independence terrorist organization.

“ETA is not willing to accept the fact that the Basque society is a heterogeneous and complex society,” Arregi said. “In my opinion, there is nothing to negotiate with ETA. There is nothing to satisfy the ETA but the destruction of the Spanish state, and also the destruction of the nation state system.”

Cristina Munoz ‘10, one of the few undergraduates in attendance, said she was impressed with Arregi’s argument.

“I thought President Ibarretxe’s speech was not substantial, and I thought today’s speech was logical, effective and backed up by historical examples,” Munoz said. “I felt that this guy was being frank.”

Munoz said Ibarretxe had refrained from answering some questions posed by protestors of the Feb. 14 event but that Arregi fielded all questions openly.

“Ibarretxe came to tell a dream, and Mr. Arregi talked about what the Basque country is,” said Jose Camporro, a community member from outside Stanford who had protested the Ibarretxe event. “For me this is more realistic; more the way we should be going.”