Overview
- The regional executive met at the Hotel Carlton in Bilbao to honor the first Basque Government led by Jose Antonio Agirre and posed on the balcony to echo the iconic 1936 photograph.
- Lehendakari Pradales read an institutional declaration that praised concrete steps from 1936, including the creation of the Ertzaintza police and a public university in Euskadi.
- The statement also cited advanced social measures such as housing support, unemployment aid, progressive taxes, help for refugees, and the evacuation of Basque children abroad.
- The government opened a year-long commemoration that will run from June 2026 to June 2027 with a program of events to highlight that legacy.
- Pradales urged “dialogue between different” and linked the 1936 experience to today’s tests from technological change, climate stress, rising populisms, and renewed talk of genocide, rearmament, or unilateralism.