Mr. Jesús María de Leizaola Sánchez was born on 7 September 1896 in Donostia to a wealthy family, José Zacarias Leizaola and Candida Sánchez, the third of seven brothers.
As a child, she knows war carists from her grandmother’s mouth, contact with famous people close to Sabino Arana and the first Basque nationalist groups in the family’s bookstore.
After graduating from high school and high school, he enrolled in law school at the University of Valladolid, finishing his degree quickly and successfully. In 1915, he began to work in the Gipuzkoa Forest as chief advocate of the Session Award and increased his connections and sympathy with the nationalist sectors which were gaining strength and presence in the Gipuzkoa society.
In 1919, he moved to Bilbao to become head of the Hall of Fame of the City of Bilbao. Relations with the Basque patriots have intensified, and he has been affiliated with the Basque community earlier this year, as the Basque Party was then called.
He begins intense cooperation with the Basque nationalist movement, publishing articles, public events, speeches, myths, etc.
On September 16, 1922, a demonstration was held in Gernika for the creation of the Basque University. It is not any demonstration: he and many other patriotic followers proclaim their proclamations before King Alfonso XIII. King Alfonso XIII. He went to the town to participate in the closure of Congress. He was immediately arrested along with the chairman of the newspaper, Euzkadi. The next day, handcuffed and under the watch of the Civil Guard, they marched from Gernika to Happiness, where they were released.
In 1923 he was appointed assistant secretary of the municipality of Bilbao, and the following year he accepted opposition to the first national membership of the secretaries of the Toki Administration. In 1924, he married Maria del Coro Loidi Zulaika in Donostia. In 1925 he was forced to leave his square at City Hall in Bilbao, where he was appointed director of liquidation in the defeat of Union Minera Credit by judicial orders.
The efficacy of liability allows him to serve for six years the position of legal councillor for the Union Credit of the Mining.
In the meantime, he continues to actively participate in Basque political life, publishing collaborations in the magazines and newspapers of the time, and the nationalists of the CNV and the EAJ who were previously created take part in the gaps that are made in unification from a split in the CNV.
On April 12, 1931, the Spanish II Corps was defeated. A few hours after the proclamation of the Republic, along with Jose Antonio Aguirre, Ramon Azkue and Juan Antonio Careaga, he launched a monarchist movement for the Basque Republic and autonomy. This is his first political act.
He was elected Deputy to Gipuzkoa on 28 July 1931 and participated in the writing of the 1931 Constitution. The cooperation continues to publish and lecture. In them, he praises the management of the Basque councillors and the mayor, who is one of the reasons why euskadi deserves autonomy. He continues to develop a life of political life, operating at different levels.
In January 1932, three Republicans were killed in Bilbao and a church was burned in Santurtzi. Jesus Maria blames the nationalists for all the violence and without any relief denounces the attacks committed by left-wing groups against members of Basque nationalism. It also calls for mutual understanding between all political parties in order to promote peaceful co-existence.
On 15 September this year, he raised the symbol and the Republican flag on the balcony of the Palace of the Aldund Forum in Gipuzkoa, where they had just signed the Autonomous State for Catalonia.
A few days later, Euzkaldunak (EBB), along with Aguirre and Basterrecha, appointed EAJ as a representative on the disgruntled committee for the new statutory project sponsored by the Basque regional management committee.
In March 1933, he declared that Euskara was the language of all Basques, not just nationalists, because of what was then called the “Idiakez question.” The courts were dissolved this year in 1933 and new elections took place at several campaign events. He was elected Deputy to Gipuzkoa in November. Between June and July, he accepted the opposition which led to his accession to the Secretariat of the Armed Forces of Gipuzkoa. Encouraged by the difficulties of carrying out the autonomy process for euskadi, he surrendered his Deputy Acts and returned to Donostia to fill the above-mentioned square.
In April 1935, the management committee appointed him as a representative of the Gipuzkoa Festival in Madrid to write the financial section of the Basque Autonomous State project.
In 1936, Mr. Jesús María de Leizaola, who is working on the project of the State of Madrid, attended the funeral service following the funeral of Calvo Sotelo, head of the Bloque Nacional Party. He was captured by the July 18 coup d’état in Donostia. During these difficult and confused days, shots fired from the Loyola barracks (Donostia). Leizaola has decided to defend the cause of the republic. He works with the Gipuzkoa Defense Commission, tries to maintain order in Donostia, and is about to be killed. It shall be responsible for the peaceful and orderly evacuation of the city. He left Donosti on September 12, 1936. He won’t step on his birthplace again until 40 years.
Jose Antonio Aguirre was elected president of the First Organisation on 7 October 1936. On the same day, Aguirre was appointed head of the Department of Justice and Culture of the Basque Country in Guernica, a concentration government headed by EAJ.
Leizaola is Aguirre’s trusted man. He oversees the good work of the other Department of Refugee Affairs as president of the Juridian Aholku Board and is responsible for the newspaper’s edition of the Subcommittee’s Day. He also represents the President at events where he cannot participate, is the Secretary of the Governing Council and a spokesman for the journalists.
Our chief inspiration again expresses the importance of education for him as the essential means of preparing the people of euskadi and the survival of the Basque and our older cultural roots. Although he was a leading figure in the Basque University demonstration in 1922, the Department of Culture organizes him at all levels of teaching. He finally realized his dream when he founded the first public Basque University when he opened the Medical Center at the Basque Hospital in Bilbao. This experience would last only a few months before the franchise troops entered the city, but it was a frontier in Basque history. It was the first time that the Basque had been in high training at the official level.
Leizaola doesn’t rest. It also organizes the operation of justice, does everything in its power to maintain order and ensure the quality of life of the prisoners, as a result of the severe Civil War which is taking place at the time. He takes part in various exchanges of prisoners.
In 1937, Germany denounced the bombing in Gernika and went to Valencia to seek air support and military assistance. He does not, however, obtain the protection required to enforce the Bilbao defences, and is appointed as the head of the Commission responsible for the evacuation of the city. Jesus Maria remained in Bilbao until a few hours before the city fell into the hands of the royal vanguard.
The days of Leaving are bitter. Try to negotiate the surrender of Basque fighters and evacuate as many citizens as possible. But there are many who are left behind and whose future remains in the hands of the francist troops is uncertain. Jesus takes up residence in Maria Santander in Barcelona, then in Barcelona, and from 1939 onwards, he will visit France, several of the American countries.
In exile, he actively works to establish thousands of Basque and republican organizations after the cruelties of Civil War, publishing a variety of publications, receiving the Award for Excellence when Aguirre disappeared on Belgian soil,
II. The Great World and the defeat of the Armed Forces give hope to the Leagues and Republicans that General Franco’s dictatorship also had its days. But the Allied forces would not attack the fascist regime established on 18 July 1936. The most melancholy stage will begin, without knowing when he will tread his country, euskadi.
Leizaola continues to write articles, books, journals, and publications, visits the Basque festivals which she enthusiastically encourages, and actively participates in her party, which is now in exile.
On 28 March 1960, José Antonio Aguirre died. At his funeral in Donibane Lodge, he took the oath of president of the Basque community.
He actively takes part in the Vatican and the United States bombing, which was called the Burgos case in 1969. In the presence of the Holy See, diplomatic representatives of the chief powers and other institutions extend details of the tortures which the francist police made in order to obtain confessions from the prisoners. In all this, a great deal of curiosity was aroused about this case, the foreign journalists were allowed to attend the Inspection Room, and Franco, in the face of the many international pressures, was obliged to acquit the condemned to death.
In 1974, he crushed the southern region again, 37 years after Bilbo was evacuated. He has arrived in Gernika to celebrate the Day of the Father. He also visits the Basilica of Begoña, gives a clandestine press conference in Bilbao and pays homage to Sabino Arana in the cemetery of Pedernales. After fifteen minutes in Guernica, Donibane returns to Lohizun.
They are the sewers of Frankism. Five years later, on 15 December 1979, democracy was restored and returned from exile for over 40 years. One of the most exciting events of his life is that same day on the San Mames football field in Bilbao, and thousands of people receive him with a warm homage. The next day, at a symbolic event, and as an extension of the first Basque government democratically elected by the people, Carlos Garaikoetxea was given all his powers to the president and EAJ member of the General Basque Council.
In 1980, aiming to bring together a variety of tendencies within the EAJ, it was accidentally introduced into the list of candidates for the first presidential election in the EAJ. On the 9th of March he was elected a member of the legislature, and shortly afterwards, when Carlos de Gaulle was elected president, he was affectionately known as “The Warden.”
But Leizaola thinks it’s the time of the young values of Basque politics. Therefore, he retires from political life for ever, renounces his seat, and writes lectures and various works. He goes to homage, gives interviews to journalists and historians, eager to know and expand that part of our past that the dictatorship refused us for more than forty years.
His last acts were the funeral of Juan Astigarrabía, the former head of the Basque department, and the homage of José Antonio Agirreri at Donibane Lodge. Shortly after taking part in these public events, on March 16, 1989, at the age of 92, he suffered a miocardian infection. His heart remains forever.
Funeral services are to be held at St. Mary’s Basilica in Donostia, where the bishop of Donostia refuses to hold the funeral in the Catedral of the Good Shepherd. The chapel Horduna sits in the Hall of the Aldund Forum of Gipuzkoa, where the citizens pay their last homage. Mauro Elizondo, a friend of Abad Mitrado of the Established Shrine, and of the deceased, performs funeral services for José Antonio Ardanza, then president.
On 20 March, his bodies were buried in the pantheon of the family at Polloe cemetery in Donostia.
Thus ends the life and work of one of our most remarkable figures in our most recent history. But his work, his efforts, his sacrifices have not been vain. His memory remains alive and present amongst us, and we wish to compensate him for all our daily activities and occupations. And with him we want to remember all these anonymous or forgotten heroes who, for years, had dedicated their lives to the defense of their land, their people. The seed they sowed bore fruit.
“Guk euskaldunak, gure oraingo lurretan beti bizi izandako gizonen ondorengoak gerala uste izan degu aintziña aintziñatik” (Jesus Maria Leizola)