One of the less appreciated aspects of Basque history is their strong democratic tradition. So central has democracy been to the Basque Country that John Adams was impressed, noting how the Basque Country was “a republic; and one of the privileges they have most insisted on, is not to have a king.” Central to the Basque concept of democracy, at least in Bizkaia, is the elizate, where local heads of households would gather after church to discuss business that affected them and their neighborhood.

- The Basque term elizate – anteiglesia in Spanish – literally means “church door” (the Spanish anteiglesia means “in front of the church”). It was used to refer to local gatherings of the local heads of families – these could be either men or women – to discuss business affecting the area. They would gather after mass in the front of the church, in the atrium or near the main door. This put the local parish as the center of communal organization and naturally lead to towns being created around those churches. Indeed, the church atrium was the first town hall.
- Most common in Bizkaia (where the word elexate was used), the elizate also existed in other parts of the Basque Country. In Bizkaia, they primarily referred to the areas called Lur laua, or the Flat Lands. This was the part of Bizkaia that was comprised mostly of fields and baserria and consisted of some 105 villages. All of the people in the Lur Iaua were governed by the same laws. The Encartaciones and the Merindad de Durango were distinct political entities within Bizkaia, having their own fueros.
- Similarly, in Lapurdi, the people organized into parrokiak which were led by the auz-apezak, or neighborhood priests.
- Each elizate was led by the so-called fiel sindiko, a person who was chosen to lead for one year. Depending on the place, the fiel sindiko either rotated through all families or was nominated by the previous fiel sindiko or, in others, was the most recently married baserritarra.
- Each elizate would select representatives to attend the meeting of the merindades or even the Batzar Nagusiak or Great Meetings that covered the whole province.
- The elizate were further divided into cofradías that corresponded to neighborhoods within the elizate. At the same time, a group of elizates was a merindad.
- The elizate have their origin in medieval times. As cities were established by royal decree or by the Juntas, elizate were often absorbed into those cities. As one example, in the 14th century Tolosa, in Gipuzkoa, absorbed 23 neighboring elizate.
- With time, most elizate have disappeared, but this tradition is still practiced in the towns of Iurreta and Derio. In 1962, most of them were incorporated into existing cities as subdivisions or auzoak and thus lost a lot of their unique identity.
A full list of all of Buber’s Basque Facts of the Week can be found in the Archive.
Primary sources: Elizate, Wikipedia; Anteiglesia. Auñamendi Encyclopedia, 2025. Available at: https://aunamendi.eusko-ikaskuntza.eus/en/anteiglesia/ar-1312/; Anteiglesia, Wikipedia