In the absence of a specific date for the Basque elections next spring being decided, EH Bildu has just cleared up the penultimate unknown pending to be revealed: the name of its bet to try to overrule the PNV. This is Pello Otxandiano, a 40-year-old doctor in Telecommunications Engineering and until now Program Director of the Abertzale coalition.
The decision was announced this morning by Arnaldo Otegi, general coordinator of EH Bildu. The nationalist leader has also announced that the coalition will propose to its bases two other names to serve as spokesperson in the Basque Parliament and to preside over this institution. From there, the bases must decide whether to ratify the proposal of the coalition's political table.
The decision has caused some surprise, since it had been speculated that the nationalist coalition would once again opt for a woman to be the head of the list, as it did in the three previous elections to the Basque Parliament (2020, 2016 and 2012). In any case, Otegi had already dropped in recent weeks that “the important thing is that she is a feminist person,” downplaying gender, a statement that is better understood today.
Pello Otxandiano (born in Otxandio in 1983) is, in any case, a relatively well-known face in Basque politics, who has been gaining weight in recent years.
His role in the coalition's organizational chart was that of program coordinator, a role he previously held at Sortu. However, his role was not limited to internal work in the design of the political line of the formation, but he has had a relevant role in the media.
The nationalist coalition has sent the media a profile of Otxandiano that is eloquent of the image they want to convey about the probable candidate for lehendakari - the bases must ratify it - and of the ideas that permeate his political thinking.
Firstly, EH Bildu wants to convey an image of solvency and it is evident that based on its training and Otxandiano's interventions in the media, it will not be difficult for them.
According to the coalition, Otxandiano has a doctorate in Telecommunications Engineering, after presenting a doctoral thesis in 2012 resulting from “four years of research at the University of Mondragón and one at Chalmers University of Technology in the Swedish city of Göteborg.”
Precisely, EH Bildu wanted to link those years in Sweden with his political thinking. “During that doctoral stay he had the opportunity to get to know the Nordic countries up close, their social and economic characteristics and their public policies,” he points out. It is a way of highlighting the social model that the nationalist coalition wants to claim and that, evidently, looks to Nordic social democracy and the environmentalism of the Scandinavian countries.
The abertzale coalition, however, also wanted to make it clear that Otxandiano is a cradle abertzale. He “he has grown up in a nationalist family closely linked to the promotion of Basque. The bombing of his hometown on July 22, 1936 by the Condor Legion, in which his great-grandfather and two brothers of his maternal grandmother were killed, constituted a founding moment for his family, something that has marked the future and vision. of the next two generations,” they indicate.
Along these lines, the coalition points out that “the social and family environment” of Otxandiano is “very politically committed to the process of national and social construction of Euskal Herria”, something that influenced him “from a very young age”.
“The image of Lehendakari Agirre in the living room of his grandmother's house, the echoes of the anti-Franco resistance, the story of the first Korrika in whose organization his maternal uncle had a prominent role or the commitment to Basque culture and municipalist politics of his parents influenced his thinking and life,” they indicate.
In this way, EH Bildu is committed, first of all, to giving way to an evident generational change and placing a generation freed from the backpack of violence on the political front line.
Secondly, place as a candidate a prepared person who can convey an image of solvency. Otxandiano is not exactly a manager, but rather an ideologue who has coordinated the coalition's programs around the energy transition or the reform of Basque education, but he can allow the coalition to offer that image that, in the case of who came to power, would manage with solvency.
Likewise, EH Bildu proposes a profile that represents a left that looks more to northern Europe than to Venezuela, an engineer who reads Mariana Mazuccato or Paul Mason and not so much to the currents of the revolutionary left or the Marxist revival, which in Euskadi has acquired a certain echo.
The nationalist coalition, in any case, emphasizes that Otxandiano is a deeply rooted nationalist, a profile linked to Sortu and familiarly linked to the independence movement.
It is evident that the election of a man for the candidacy has caused disappointment in a part of the bases of EH Bildu, something that the abertzale coalition tries to counteract by alluding to the fact that in the May elections its main candidates were women or to the precedents in the previous elections to the Basque Parliament.
Likewise, EH Bildu will also propose two other people to serve as spokesperson in the Basque Parliament and to preside over this institution. It is expected that both will be women, so it will probably influence the fact that they propose a team for the elections and, as they did in 2016, even on the electoral poster they will use the image of three people, so that two of them would be women.
With this poster, EH Bildu will seek a confrontation of ideas with the PNV, which has opted for generational change at the hands of Imanol Pradales, a 48-year-old doctor in Sociology and Political Science. The PSE, for its part, will aspire to the lehendakaritza with Eneko Andueza (44-year-old graduate in Political Science) and the PP will present Javier de Andrés (56-year-old journalist). In the case of Podemos, Miren Gorrotxategi (56-year-old university professor of Constitutional Law) will probably be the candidate, although she will depend on the agreement that can be reached, or not, with Sumar.
Unless the PSE changes its alliance policy, it is difficult for EH Bildu to achieve the presidency. The objective of the nationalist coalition, however, is to surpass the PNV in votes and seats, and make it impossible for the sum of jeltzales and socialists to reach 38, so that they would also need the votes of the PP to govern and, in the end, they would place to those of Andoni Ortuzar in a complicated situation.
