At this time, Irujo promoted a Basque National Council inspired by the exile governments and committees forming among European refugees in Britain. Expecting that Francoist Spain would join the Axis in the war, Irujo bet on an Allied victory and tried to establish a provisional authority capable of negotiating a new status for the Basque Country with the British government, the Free French and the eventual Spanish government. He established an alliance with Catalan nationalists in Britain who had formed their own Catalan National Council. He planned to have the south of the Pyrenees divided between a Basque state and a Catalan one and so presented a joint declaration on 18 January 1941 before the British Minister of State. He redacted a "foreproject for a Constitution of the Basque Republic". It would be an independent state as a democratic republic. Its territory would cover that of the Kingdom of Navarre under Sancho the Greater, excluding the French Basque country to gain the support of Charles de Gaulle. Its limits would be: This would include areas of Burgos, Cantabria, Rioja and Aragon whose Basqueness was at most historic and where Basque nationalism was inexistent. The Basque state would be relatively interventionist, protectionist and paternalist, following the social doctrine of the Catholic Church as assumed by the Basque Nationalist Party. Article 52 of Title V marked the requirements for the President of the Republic: An additional chapter opened a chance to join other territories: Irujo would later try to negotiate with the Free French the creation of a Basque Battalion, dissolved formally on 23 May 1942.
Criticism
In October 1942, the news of the safe arrival of Aguirre in Uruguay reached London. At the Basque World Congress of Paris, he would thank the labour of the Basque National Council, but his politics would not follow Irujo's Constitution. It would be the Socialist Indalecio Prieto who would harshly criticize Irujo's irredentism. He remarks that the Cantabrian ports of Castro-Urdiales, Laredo, and Santoña, along with the industry of Reinosa, would be part of Euzkadi. He likens Irujo's map to Hitler's and shows his surprise because Laburdi and Zuberoa, areas of the French Basses Pyrenees where Basque is spoken, are left out of the new state. In the same Mexican newspaper, Julio Jauregui denies the accusations of separatism, interpreting Irujo's foreproject as a confederal blueprint. Jauregui remarks that the democratic will of the newly annexed citizens would be necessary, just as some people in Logroño are showing interest in the Basque autonomy projects. After the dissolution of the BNC by Aguirre, Irujo would dedicate himself to literature and a project for an Iberian Community of Nations, including Portugal, that did not have much echo.
