The President of the Basque Government (, ), usually known in the Basque language as the Lehendakari (, ), is the

head of government In the Executive (government), executive branch, the head of government is the highest or the second-highest official of a sovereign state, a federated state, or a self-governing colony, autonomous region, or other government who often presid ...

of the

Basque Autonomous Community Basque may refer to: * Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France * Basque language, their language Places * Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France * Basque Country (autonomous com ...

. The lehendakari leads the

executive branch The executive branch is the part of government which executes or enforces the law. Function The scope of executive power varies greatly depending on the political context in which it emerges, and it can change over time in a given country. In ...

of the regional government. The current lehendakari is

Imanol Pradales Imanol Pradales Gil (born in Santurtzi on 21 April 1975) is a Basque sociologist, university teacher and politician from Spain, member of the Basque Nationalist Party (EAJ-PNV). He serves as Lehendakari of the Basque Government from 2024. He ser ...

, of the

Basque Nationalist Party The Basque Nationalist Party ( , EAJ; , PNV; , PNB; EAJ-PNV), officially the Basque National Party in English, is a Basque nationalist and regionalist political party. The party is located in the centre of the political spectrum. It has been de ...

. The Basque noun ''lehendakari'' means "president" and can refer to the president of any country, club, association etc.

History of the term

The term ''lehendakari'' is a 20th-century coinage, from the Basque ''lehendabizi'' ("first") and the

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns and adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can ca ...

-''ari'' which indicates a profession. Before the establishment of

Standard Basque Standard Basque () is a standardised version of the Basque language, developed by the Basque Language Academy in the late 1960s, which nowadays is the most widely and commonly spoken Basque-language version throughout the Basque Country. Heavil ...

in the 1970s, it was spelled ''Euzko Jaurlaritzaren Lendakari''. Both ''lendakari'' (president) and ''jaurlaritza'' (government) are Basque

neologism In linguistics, a neologism (; also known as a coinage) is any newly formed word, term, or phrase that has achieved popular or institutional recognition and is becoming accepted into mainstream language. Most definitively, a word can be considered ...

s created by members of the

. The generic Basque words for "

president President most commonly refers to: *President (corporate title) * President (education), a leader of a college or university *President (government title) President may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Film and television *'' Præsident ...

" and "government" are both ''lehendakari(a)'' and ''presidente(a)'' for the former, and ''gobernu(a)'' for the latter, being ''presidente(a)'' and ''gobernu(a)'' words loaned from

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

. Since the very moment when the noun ''lehendakari'' was coined, both ''lehendakari(a)'' and ''presidente(a)'' have been used as perfect synonyms to refer to the head of any public or private government organ. So ''lehendakari'', in Basque language, is not only the name of the president of the Basque autonomous community, but also the name officially used to refer to the head of the Chartered Community of Navarre, the head of a parliament, the head of a rugby club, the head of a hiring board, the head of a board of directors, etcetera. On the other hand, the word ''lehendakari'' is commonly used in Spanish, both in and outside the Basque region, to refer exclusively to the Basque president, comparable to the use of

Taoiseach The Taoiseach (, ) is the head of government or prime minister of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. The office is appointed by the President of Ireland upon nomination by Dáil Éireann (the lower house of the Oireachtas, Ireland's national legisl ...

as the title of the Irish

in English. Lehendakaris elected for the PNV have sworn office following a ritual established by Aguirre: next to the

Guernica Tree ''Gernikako Arbola'' ('the Tree of Gernika' in Basque) is an oak tree that symbolizes traditional freedoms for the Biscayan people, and by extension for the Basque people as a whole. It is located in Gernika, Biscay, Basque Country, Spain. Th ...

, on a Bible in Basque, using a symbolic formula which reads "before God, prostrated, standing on Basque land, remembering the ancestors, under the Guernica Tree and before you, representatives of the Basque people, I swear thus, to fulfill the mandate granted to me as Lehendakari, and will thus be duly protecting and respective of the laws of this land". Former lehendakari

Patxi López Francisco Javier "Patxi" López Álvarez (; born 4 October 1959) is a Spanish politician serving as Member of the Congress of Deputies and chair of the Constitutional Committee. He has only completed secondary education but never graduated fro ...

used a similar formula in the same place, but also included visible changes to it by suppressing the "before God, prostrated" part and the fact that he sworn on a

Basque Statute of Autonomy The Statute of Autonomy of the Basque Country of 1979 (; ), widely known as the Statute of Gernika (; {{langx, es, Estatuto de Guernica), is the legal document organizing the political system of the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country' ( ...

rather than on a Bible.«López promete el cargo en Gernika sin humillarse ante dios»
''Publico'', 7 May 2009.

References

{{Authority control Titles of national or ethnic leadership

History of the term

See also

References