*2.1. Informing and*/*or Involving Rome*

Even though most of the peace effort was performed by local civil society, the parties involved in the conflict also tried to involve transnational actors in conflict transformation, including religious actors. A first strategy consisted of Basque institutions and peace movements involving the Holy See itself. One of the most sustained efforts came from the Basque autonomous government. There were reasons for this strategy, starting with historical ones. Established in 1980 during the democratic transition, the Basque governmen<sup>t</sup> was thereafter controlled, except between 2009 and 2012, by the PNV, either alone or in coalitions. Even though the party officially gave up its denominational identity when it was legalized in 1977, the PNV, itself one of the oldest political parties in Europe (founded in 1895), had its roots in Christian democracy and was one of the founding members of the International Christian Democracy (Gilmour 2005). Due to this legacy, the PNV and the Basque governmen<sup>t</sup> continued to attach importance to their relations with the Catholic Church, at both the local and global scales. The relationship between this sector of Basque nationalism and Rome was influenced by the former connection between Basque nationalism and Catholicism but was also tainted with mutual distrust given the support of the Vatican for Franco's regime. Despite this ambivalent memory, after 1980, the Basque governmen<sup>t</sup> carried out political work in order, at the very least, to inform the Holy See about the conflict and, at the most, to involve it in the peace process.

Formally speaking, this strategy did not produce much of a result. The end of the armed struggle in 2011 was a conjunction of many causes—in particular, the loss of social support for violence and internal changes in the independentist left strategy—including the peace work performed by the *local* church, but the Holy See probably did not play a crucial role here. Roman institutions remained cautious about the Basque question, and no official mediation by Vatican officers was performed, at least publicly, during the violent years. Among other causes, pressure from the Spanish government, state-level political parties, associations of victims, and the Spanish Catholic hierarchy itself, prevented any formal involvement of Rome. However, despite this apparent failure, the political work undertaken by representatives of the Basque governmen<sup>t</sup> alongside the Holy See testified to an enduring political effort with multiple dimensions.

In that respect, the conceptualization of political work by Smith (2016) may be helpful. According to this approach, political work refers to the strategies undertaken by actors to maintain or to change institutions, and it encompasses three interrelated aspects: the making of public problems, the construction of policy instruments, and the legitimization of both actors and instruments. The politics of the Basque governmen<sup>t</sup> with respect to the Vatican did not manage to, or perhaps did not even aim to, involve the Holy See in direct mediation for conflict resolution/transformation/amelioration (McCall 2013). Nevertheless, the two remaining dimensions were crucial ones. The Basque governmen<sup>t</sup> strove to report its reading of the Basque situation—i.e., an alternative reading to both the narrative of the Spanish governmen<sup>t</sup> and that of the Basque independentist left. By doing so, the Basque governmen<sup>t</sup> and the PNV sought to appear as the "owners" of the Basque "public problem" (Gusfield 1981), and their representatives worked to convey their interpretation to the Vatican.
