José Antonio Ardanza Garro (10 June 1941 – 8 April 2024) was a Spanish politician who became the second elected Lehendakari (President of the Basque Autonomous Community, Spain) after the approval of the Statute of Autonomy. He was in office between 1985 and 1999.

He was a member of the Basque Nationalist Party (EAJ/PNV). During his mandate, which was the longest for a lehendakari in democracy, he achieved the development of the Statute of Autonomy, the reindustrialization of the territory, the maintenance of good relations with Navarra, the territorial deployment of the Ertzaintza and promoted the Ajuria Enea pact in 1988, which at that time became the broadest political agreement to confront the terrorist group ETA and pacify the Basque Country, which during Ardanza's mandate the group killed more than three hundred people and which in 1998 announced the unsuccessful indefinite truce after the Estella pact.^[1][2]

Ardanza was born in Elorrio, Biscay, on 10 June 1941 and as a child he studied at the Diocesan Seminary in Derio and later at the Jesuit School in Durango.^[1] He later got a degree in Law at the University of Deusto and between 1969 and 1983 he worked as a legal advisor at Caja Laboral.^[1] Ardanza joined in 1961 the youth wing of the EAJ/PNV, the Euzko Gaztedi.^[1][3] In January 1965, at the local festivals of a town, a group of young people including Ardanza were arrested for playing the txistu and the drum, instruments typical of Basque folklore that represented an opposition to the Franco regime.^[3] Ardanza managed to flee and members of the EAJ/PNV ordered him to hide to prevent his arrest from leading to the dismantling of the youth organization.^[3] First, he hid for a month in the home of a relative who was a member of Congregation of the Passion of Jesus Christ, who facilitated him hiding in the Passionist convent of Euba for another month.^[3]

As a member of Euzko Gaztedi and its board, Ardanza had to deal with the internal crisis from which one of the parties led to the subsequent creation of ETA and the Basque National Liberation Movement, with Ardanza maintaining a conciliatory position between the radical positions that emerged.^[4]

After the death of Francisco Franco and the beginning of the Spanish transition to democracy, Ardanza was elected mayor of Mondragón in the first democratic local elections of 1979 as an independent on the EAJ/PNV list, position which he left in 1983 after he was elected member of the General Assemblies of Gipuzkoa.^[1]

After leaving politics, in 1999, Ardanza was named president of the telecommunications company Euskaltel, a position he held until 2011. That year, he presented his memoirs "Pasión por Euskadi".^[1]

Ardanza died on 8 April 2024, at the age of 82 in his home in Biscay, from cancer.^{[12][13][14][15][16]}

• Cross of the Tree of Gernika (Government of the Basque Country, 2012)^[17][1]