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 […]
Singing is such a part of Basque culture. More than once, I’ve been in a restaurant where everyone broke into song. Christmas is a time when singing abounds. Leave it to the Basques to then create unique traditions around songs and Christmas. The Marijesiak is a group of singers that roam the streets of primarily […]
We don’t know much about the early history of the Basques. While discoveries such as the Hand of Irulegi reveal more than ever, there is still a lot that is shadowed in the mists of time. The Basques have never recorded their own history – what we know is typically from the pens of neighbors […]
Nearly none of the young men and women who immigrated to the United States from the Basque County to herd sheep in the American West had any knowledge of English. This wasn’t much of a problem as they typically worked with other Basques. However, encounters with the dominant language of their new home were unavoidable […]
I spent the 1991-92 school year in the Basque Country, trying to learn Basque and learning a bit more Spanish. It was my first time to the Basque Country and it really opened my eyes as to what life was like in the Basque Country. I had learned something about the traditional culture, primarily dance, […]
It is always cool to see Basque names on the big screen. Whenever we sit through the credits of a movie, I tend to scan the names to see if any Basque names pop out to me. So, it’s even cooler when the Basque name is also the star of the movie. Jacob Elordi has […]
The Basque Country has a long association with bears. Indeed, research by people like Roslyn Frank indicates that the Basques may have worshipped bears at one time and that Basques believed that humans were descended from bears. The importance of bears to Basque culture is reflected in their role in carnivals in various towns. However, […]
“There are at least two things that can clearly be attributed to Basque ingenuity: the Society of Jesus and the Republic of Chile.” – Miguel de Unamuno When we think about Basque emigration and the Basque diaspora, places like Argentina and Idaho are the first to come to mind. But, as I recently learned, Chile […]
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 […]
It is amazing how fast technology has changed over my lifetime. When my dad first came to the United States, he rarely called back home in the Basque Country. He’d call maybe at Christmas. It was just too expensive. However, at the end of his life, he was constantly on his cell phone talking to […]
