The transformation of political behavior in the Basque Country: Nationalism and politics in Bermeo, 1898-1936

This article studies the transformation of political behavior, from a system based on personal attachment or clientelist exchange into one dominated by the support of a particular ideology or political party. In Spain this transformation, which occurred during the last years of the nineteenth and the first third of the twentieth centuries, has traditionally been based in the country's large cities, with the rest of the country consigned to socio-political backwardness via the electoral control of caciques. Analysis of the propaganda activity (meetings, conferences, rallies theater, political festivals, etc.) carried out by the Basque Nationalist Party in the town of Bermeo (Biscay) between 1898 and 1936 make sit possible to claim that a similar transformation process (although with a different intensity) occurred in a small urban municipality.