Editing Basques (section)

===Political and administrative divisions===
[[File:Ekialderantz Urkulutik.JPG|thumb|Mountains of the Basque Country]]
[[File:Leitza.JPG|thumb|[[Leitza]], in Navarre, Basque Country]]

The Basque region is divided into at least three administrative units, namely the [[Basque Autonomous Community]] and [[Navarre]] in Spain, and the [[Arrondissements of France|arrondissement]] of [[Bayonne]] and the [[cantons of France|cantons]] of [[Mauléon-Licharre]] and [[Tardets-Sorholus]] in the ''[[département]]'' of [[Pyrénées Atlantiques]], France.

The autonomous community (a concept established in the [[Spanish Constitution of 1978]]) known as ''Euskal Autonomia Erkidegoa'' or EAE in Basque and as ''Comunidad Autónoma Vasca'' or CAV in Spanish (in English: ''Basque Autonomous Community'' or BAC),<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www1.euskadi.net/euskalterm/ |title=See EUSKALTERM, the Basque Public Term Bank, maintained by the Basque Government for these and other terms and their common translations |publisher=.euskadi.net |access-date=2010-08-22 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100510193253/http://www1.euskadi.net/euskalterm/ |archive-date=10 May 2010 }}</ref> is made up of the three Spanish provinces of [[Álava]], [[Biscay]] and [[Gipuzkoa]]. The corresponding Basque names of these territories are ''Araba'', ''Bizkaia'' and ''Gipuzkoa'', and their Spanish names are ''Álava'', ''Vizcaya'' and ''Guipúzcoa''.

The BAC only includes three of the seven provinces of the currently called historical territories. It is sometimes referred to simply as "the Basque Country" (or ''Euskadi'') by writers and public agencies only considering those three western provinces, but also on occasions merely as a convenient abbreviation when this does not lead to confusion in the context. Others reject this usage as inaccurate and are careful to specify the BAC (or an equivalent expression such as "the three provinces", up to 1978 referred to as "Provincias Vascongadas" in Spanish) when referring to this entity or region. Likewise, terms such as "the Basque Government" for "the government of the BAC" are commonly though not universally employed. In particular in common usage the French term ''Pays Basque'' ("Basque Country"), in the absence of further qualification, refers either to the whole [[Basque Country (greater region)|Basque Country]] ("Euskal Herria" in Basque), or not infrequently to the [[Northern Basque Country|northern (or "French") Basque Country]] specifically.

Under Spain's present constitution, Navarre (''Nafarroa'' in present-day Basque, ''Navarra'' historically in Spanish) constitutes a separate entity, called in present-day Basque ''Nafarroako Foru Erkidegoa'', in Spanish ''Comunidad Foral de Navarra'' (the autonomous community of Navarre). The government of this autonomous community is the Government of Navarre. In historical contexts Navarre may refer to a wider area, and that the present-day northern Basque province of [[Lower Navarre]] may also be referred to as (part of) ''Nafarroa'', while the term "High Navarre" (''Nafarroa Garaia'' in Basque, ''Alta Navarra'' in Spanish) is also encountered as a way of referring to the territory of the present-day autonomous community.

There are three other historic provinces parts of the Basque Country: [[Labourd]], [[Lower Navarre]] and [[Soule]] (''Lapurdi, Nafarroa Beherea'' and ''Zuberoa'' in Basque; ''Labourd, Basse-Navarre'' and ''Soule'' in French), devoid of official status within France's present-day political and administrative territorial organization, and only minor political support to the Basque nationalists. A large number of regional and local nationalist and non-nationalist representatives have waged a campaign for years advocating for the creation of a separate Basque [[département]], while these demands have gone unheard by the French administration.