The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know about Basque culture. When she accepted her award for her dedication to Basque culture at the Zortziak Bat symposium, Meggan Laxalt Mackey emphasized the role of auzolan – community work or more broadly collaboration – in her work. I hadn’t heard of that concept before, but it is central to Basque culture. It embodies the collective spirit, of working together to make your community better.

• Auzolan, or the related Bizkaian concept of lorra, is the concept of communal work, or performing work that benefits the community. In the Basque Country, this has manifested itself in many ways, from the building of churches to the maintenance of forest trails. While the concept of auzolan was defined by custom in the Basque Country, in more recent times it has been codified into law in some places.
• Auzolan promotes community solidarity and cohesion. As described by Prof. Xabier Barandiaran, the concept of auzolan reflects “the individual’s responsibility to the community and their service to others, fostering solidarity and forms of social organisation that prioritize community interests over individual ones.”
• To decide what work the neighborhood would focus on, either the town council or a simple local meeting would convene. Two types of auzolan could be planned: big or small, reflecting what tools would be needed to do the work: just hoes and shovels for a small job or carts and the like for a bigger job.
• Often, auzolan would happen in September though a special auzolan might also happen in the spring. The committee would alert everyone in the neighborhood as to the time and place of the work and, if they couldn’t participate, they had to send an alternate. If the work was on public land, the city would provide food and supplies while if it was on private land, the owner would. People weren’t paid for their time – participating in the auzolan was viewed as an obligation of living in the community; it was mandatory.
• The actual work associated with auzolan was often a community improvement effort, to construct or maintain roads, parks, fountains, or other things that would benefit the community as a whole. However, in some cases it could be directed to specific people that needed extra help, such as a widow or sick farmer.
• Today, the concept has expanded to include collaboration more broadly, especially collaboration carried out freely and voluntarily, and to actions that benefit a neighborhood, town, or region voluntarily without receiving money.
• The idea of communal work for the benefit of the community is not unique to the Basque Country and was common in medieval European societies. Indeed, the Asturians have a similar concept called andecha. Modern ideas associated with crowdsourcing certainly have a similar spirit. The Mondragon cooperative is one example originating from the concept of auzolan.

A full list of all of Buber’s Basque Facts of the Week can be found in the Archive.

Primary sources: Estornés Zubizarreta, Idoia; Garmendia Larrañaga, Juan. Auzolan. Auñamendi Encyclopedia, 2025. Available at: https://aunamendi.eusko-ikaskuntza.eus/en/auzolan/ar-16620/; Auzolán, Wikipedia; Auzolan, Wikipedia;