It seemed that he was not going to get into the rag when, to the first question, Eneko Andueza answered by assuring that he would not waste "a second" to pronounce on Aitor Esteban's words accusing him of "saying nonsense". However, in the end, the leader of the PSE has issued a warning to navigators: "No one is going to cover the mouth of the Basque Socialist General Secretary."

It has been the last chapter of a public dispute between the PNV and the PSE that has its origin in some unfortunate words of Joseba Egibar, president of the PNV in Guipúzcoa, a week ago. The nationalist leader insinuated that Basque was what “made” the residents of the autonomous community Basque.

Despite the fact that the words were nuanced by the Basque Government, by nationalist leaders, and even by the aforementioned himself, Andueza reproached the PNV for "continuing with their rattles about whether we are more or less Basque for speaking Basque."

The socialist leader did not stop there. He also reproached the party, with which it maintains government pacts in all the important institutions of the Basque Country, that despite its nationalist discourse "many surnames" of its leaders "were part" of Francoism. He even accused the PNV and EH Bildu of "flirting with the extreme right" to discredit Pedro Sánchez.

Aitor Esteban could not contain himself and, in an interview granted on Monday on a local radio station in the Basque Country, accused the socialist leader of saying "a lot of nonsense." He framed his reproach in the fact that the socialist leader wanted to "mark a profile" because he thought "that he is an unknown and will have some complex." "Let's see if we're all going to get tired," he warned before asking her to "be calmer."

Since Andueza's arrival at the leadership of the Basque Socialists, the tension between the two government partners has only grown. PNV and PSE have had friction over the labor reform and the Socialists even threatened to drop the educational pact if their amendments were not included.

However, they had never reached a public dialectical exchange like the one experienced in the last few hours. And although the mutual reproaches have somewhat strained the relationship between the two parties, it is most likely that it will not have far-reaching consequences. Both Eneko Andueza and Aitor Esteban have no positions in the Basque institutions. In addition, neither the PNV nor the PSE have the intention of modifying the government pact that allows them to govern without excessive shocks in the Basque Government, the Provincial Councils and the municipalities of the three capitals.