All posts by buber

Basque Fact of the Week, Folklore, History

Basque Fact of the Week: Sorginak, the Basque Witches

1 Comment

To me, one of the fascinating aspects of Basque history relates to witches. The Basque witch trials are infamous for how indiscriminate they were but also because they reveal how mob mentality can easily turn neighbors into enemies and outcasts into villains. Witches in the Basque Country represent this interesting transition between the autochthonous religion […]

Food

Basque Restaurants in the United States

4 Comments

When Buber’s Basque Page was still an internet toddler, cobbled together with broken HTML and hosted on the University of Washington’s servers, Charles Shaffer sent me his list of Basque restaurants. Charles was an aficionado of Basque cuisine and he made a point of visiting as many Basque restaurants as he could, curating a list […]

Basque Fact of the Week, Folklore

Basque Fact of the Week: The New Waters of the New Year

Leave a comment

Happy New Year! Urte Berri On! Around the world, the new year is ushered in with various customs. In the Basque Country, there has been a tradition associating the new year with water, particularly “new water,” water that represents a fresh start, a new beginning. While this tradition has disappeared from much of Euskal Herria, […]

Folklore

Eusko-Folklore by José Miguel de Barandiaran. Series 3, Part 4: Traditions and Legends: Lurpeko Eremuetan/Subterranean Regions

Leave a comment

Over 100 years ago, in 1921, José Miguel de Barandiaran began publishing a series of articles under the banner of Eusko-Folklore. His work was interrupted by the Spanish Civil War but in 1954 he resumed publishing what he then called his third series of articles. These appeared in the journal Munibre, Natural Sciences Supplement of […]

Basque Fact of the Week, Euskadi, People

Basque Fact of the Week: Architect Frank Gehry

Leave a comment

Even as recently as the early 1990s, when I lived in Donostia for a year, Bilbao seemed this dirty place that wasn’t really worth a visit. I think in that whole year, I only visited a couple of times at most. However, the city transformed itself from a relic of industry to a modern and […]

Basque Proverb of the Week

Basque Proverb of the Week: Proverb #44

Leave a comment

Begi bat aski du saldunak, ehun ez ditu sobera erostunak. The seller needs but one eye, whereas for the buyer a hundred eyes are nevertoo many.