Baztan and Elda: two Spains that don't fit in one country

Baztan and Elda: two Spains that don't fit in one country

Baztan, the Navarrese valley of green meadows and stone houses, looks like it was lifted straight out of the Black Forest. Elda, in inland Alicante, evokes more of a desert landscape, run-down houses, even a film set for 'The Hurt Locker'. The visual contrast is stark. But the underlying debate isn't aesthetic: it's economic, and it has been wrapped in a pseudo-historical narrative that splits Spain between a supposed 'Celtic Spain' and a 'Moorish-Phoenician Spain'.

The idea going around is that regions like Navarre and the Basque Country drag a burden when they are joined to territories like Valencia, Murcia or Alicante. It is claimed, with no data, that this coexistence costs 'Celtic Spain several points of GDP'. The argument is dressed up as economic analysis, but it's pure mythology: the Goths were an elite spread across the whole peninsula, and the Celtic thing is more a romantic cliché than a genetic or productive reality.

GDP doesn't care about blue-eyed blondes

Wealth is generated where there is capital, industry, logistics and skilled labour, not where there are more fair-haired people. Elda was a shoe manufacturing hub; Baztan lives off rural tourism and public administration. The income gap is not explained by some supposed ethnic purity, but by investment, the Basque and Navarrese foral tax system (a special regional fiscal regime) and geographic location. That the Basque-Navarrese axis has a higher GDP per capita is a fact, but attributing it to a 'Gothic' inheritance is pure wishful thinking.

The paradox of Nuevo Baztan and the story of the agotes

As a curiosity, there is a village near Madrid called Nuevo Baztan, founded by a nobleman from the Baztan valley who wanted to be closer to the royal court. The palace stands in the middle of the Castilian plain. Ironies of history: those who today champion northern purity have their replica in the centre. And meanwhile, in the Navarrese Pyrenees, for more than 300 years the agotes, descendants of poor French immigrants, suffered a regime of semi-slavery, marginalised by the Basques themselves. The myth of a prosperous, united 'Celtic Spain' crumbles when you look inward.

In the end, the only fact that remains is that the real Spain is a mosaic in which each territory contributes and detracts depending on the policies applied. Does it make sense for Baztan and Elda to be in the same country? It makes about as much sense as asking whether Albacete and San Sebastián should split up. A country is made by its people, as one of the participants pointed out. And as long as they keep exchanging views on a forum, unity will remain an act of will, not of genetics.