Alternative Left (Spain)

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Alternative Left
Izquierda Alternativa
Founded 1991 (1991)
Dissolved 1993 (1993) [1]
Merger of Revolutionary Communist League
Communist Movement
Newspaper Página Abierta
Viento Sur
Ideology Socialism
Marxism
Sovereignism
Feminism
Antimilitarism
Ecologism
Republicanism
Political position Left-wing to far-left
Town councillors in Spain (1991-1993)
10 / 66,308

7 elected as Batzarre, 2 as EMK-LKI and 1 as MCG

Alternative Left (Spanish language: Izquierda Alternativa, IA) was a Spanish political party with a socialist ideology formed by the union of the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR) and the Communist Movement (MC) in 1991.

Spanish language Romance language

Spanish or Castilian, is a Western Romance language that originated in the Castile region of Spain and today has hundreds of millions of native speakers in the Americas and Spain. It is a global language and the world's second-most spoken native language, after Mandarin Chinese.

Socialism is a range of economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production and workers' self-management, as well as the political theories and movements associated with them. Social ownership can be public, collective or cooperative ownership, or citizen ownership of equity. There are many varieties of socialism and there is no single definition encapsulating all of them, with social ownership being the common element shared by its various forms.

Revolutionary Communist League (Spain) Spain (1971-1991)

Revolutionary Communist League was a political party in Spain. It was founded in 1971 by members of the Catalan group Comunisme, a split of the Popular Liberation Front (FLP). The LCR had a trotskyist ideology, adopting more heterodox political positions in the 1980s.

Contents

History

Foundation

The merger in 1989 of the respective territorial organizations of the MC and the LCR in the Basque Country; Euskadiko Mugimendu Komunista (EMK) and Liga Komunista Iraultzailea (LKI), as Batzarre in Navarre and Zutik in the Basque Autonomous Community, led to calls for a rethinking of the new conditions for unity between the two parties. Finally, an agreed was reached in March 1991 to the unification of the two groups, which was made effective on November 1991. [2] The new organization had a joint leadership of 50 members from the LCR and 50 from the MC. [3] IA had a confederal structure, being formed by the following confederated organizations:

Communist Movement political party

Communist Movement was a political party in Spain. It was founded in 1972 as Movimiento Comunista de España (MCE).

Batzarre political party

Batzarre is a political party in Navarre, Spain. It has a branch in the Basque Autonomous Community known as Zutik. It bids to win the political space to the left of the Basque nationalists and the Spanish socialists, the latter eroded for their long-running collusion with the conservative UPN government. It formed on 29 January 2011 the coalition Izquierda-Ezkerra along with Izquierda Unida de Navarra (IUN) and local Socialist figures disillusioned with the party's regional alliances.

Navarre Autonomous community and province of Spain

Navarre ; officially the Chartered Community of Navarre, is an autonomous community and province in northern Spain, bordering the Basque Autonomous Community, La Rioja, and Aragon in Spain and Nouvelle-Aquitaine in France. The capital city is Pamplona.

Madrid Capital of Spain

Madrid is the capital of Spain and the largest municipality in both the Community of Madrid and Spain as a whole. The city has almost 3.3 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.5 million. It is the third-largest city in the European Union (EU), smaller than only London and Berlin, and its monocentric metropolitan area is the third-largest in the EU, smaller only than those of London and Paris. The municipality covers 604.3 km2 (233.3 sq mi).

Catalonia Autonomous area of northeastern Spain

Catalonia is an autonomous community in Spain on the northeastern corner of the Iberian Peninsula, designated as a nationality by its Statute of Autonomy. Catalonia consists of four provinces: Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona. The capital and largest city is Barcelona, the second-most populated municipality in Spain and the core of the sixth most populous urban area in the European Union. It comprises most of the territory of the former Principality of Catalonia. It is bordered by France (Occitanie) and Andorra to the north, the Mediterranean Sea to the east, and the Spanish autonomous communities of Aragon to the west and Valencia to the south. The official languages are Catalan, Spanish, and the Aranese dialect of Occitan.

Andalusia Autonomous community of Spain

Andalusia is an autonomous community in southern Spain. It is the most populous and the second largest autonomous community in the country. The Andalusian autonomous community is officially recognised as a "historical nationality". The territory is divided into eight provinces: Almería, Cádiz, Córdoba, Granada, Huelva, Jaén, Málaga and Seville. Its capital is the city of Seville.

Dissolution

IA had a very short life because of the different "styles", culture and political objectives that existed in the two parties. The MC sector planned to evolve to a "non-political party" social collective, that would push for society self-organization, while the LCR defended a classic political party project. Also, the former members of the LCR feared being swallowed by the larger MC.

Finally, Alternative Left split into two nationwide: the LCR group stayed with the name, later to integrate with Jaime Pastor as their main leader, in the United Left in November 1993 (though in the process of infighting the organization lost up to a third of its membership) and the MC group stayed with the name of some of the territorial organizations of IA. The merger, however, survived in Asturias as Lliberación (dissolved in 2010), in Galiza with the name of Inzar (integrated into the BNG and dissolved in 2012), in the Basque Country as Zutik (dissolved in 2011), and in Navarre as Batzarre (integrated in Izquierda-Ezkerra).

United Left (Spain) political coalition in Spain

United Left is a political coalition that was organized in 1986, bringing together several left-wing and far-left political organizations.

Asturias Autonomous community and province of Spain

Asturias, officially the Principality of Asturias, is an autonomous community in north-west Spain. It is coextensive with the province of Asturias, and contains some of the territory that was part of the larger Kingdom of Asturias in the Middle Ages. Divided into eight comarcas (counties), the autonomous community of Asturias is bordered by Cantabria to the east, by Castile and León to the south, by Galicia to the west, and by the Bay of Biscay to the north.

Inzar was a political group created with the union of the Communist Movement of Galicia and the Revolutionary Communist League of Galicia. It was constituted as political party in 1991 linked to Izquierda Alternativa. In 1993 it was integrated in the Galician Nationalist Bloc (BNG), having always little political weight in the bloc.

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References

  1. LCR members left the federation and joined United Left. In some territories the organization was kept together, like Zutik in the Basque Country, Batzarre in Navarre or Inzar in Galiza.
  2. El nuevo topo. El País. 2 NOV 1991
  3. Nace Izquierda Alternativa, resultado de la unificación del MC y la Liga Comunista. El País, 4 NOV 1991.