The term
lehendakari is a 20th-century coinage, from the Basque
lehendabizi ("first") and the
suffix -
ari which indicates a profession. Before the establishment of
Standard Basque in the 1970s, it was spelled
Euzko Jaurlaritzaren Lendakari. Both
lendakari (president) and
jaurlaritza (government) are Basque
neologisms created by members of the
Basque Nationalist Party. The generic Basque words for "
president" 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. 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 as the title of the Irish
head of government in English. Lehendakaris elected for the
PNV have sworn office following a ritual established by Aguirre: next to the
Guernica Tree, 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 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 rather than on a Bible. ==See also==