Basque referendum, 2008

The proposed 2008 referendum was a poll intended to occur in the Basque Country in that year, but prevented by the Supreme Court of Spain at the instigation of the Spanish Government.

The poll was to be a consultative referendum, in which two questions were put to the electorate, concerning self-determination from Spain. It was scheduled for 25 October 2008 but the Spanish government challenged the decision to hold the vote in the Constitutional Court of Spain, which ruled on 11 September 2008 that the referendum could not go ahead. In turn, the PNV (Basque Nationalist Party) appealed against this ruling, to the European Court of Human Rights, which later upheld the Spanish Constitutional Court ruling in February 2010.

The 2008 referendum was proposed by former lehendakari (president of the Basque country autonomous community) Juan José Ibarretxe. The first question was to concern whether to engage in talks with ETA; the second was to be on whether there should be a political debate on the "right to decide about the Basque people", a coded reference to the issue of whether the Basque Country should remain in Spain.

The referendum-like vote was announced on 28 September 2007 by Juan José Ibarretxe, with the support of the three-party coalition that made up his government: the Basque Nationalist Party (Ibarretxe's own), Eusko Alkartasuna and Ezker Batua Berdeak. The lone Aralar MP also supported the call while the Basque branches of both Spanish Socialist Workers' Party and conservative People's Party rejected it. This made a 33-33 tie at the Basque regional Parliament.

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