The Basque Country, straddling the border of France and Spain, played a key role during World War II, serving as a conduit for Allied prisoners and Jewish refugees to escape the horrors of the war. Numerous Basques played an important part in helping those people cross the border. In the past, I’ve highlighted Florentino Goikoetxea, […]
By Blake Allmendinger From the 1920s through the 1950s, Hollywood studios converted ordinary young men and women into “stars.” Teaching them to sing and dance, giving them deportment and elocution lessons, and altering the manner in which they dressed, studios changed the names and identities of such aspiring actors as Marion Morrison (John Wayne) and Lucille […]
By John Etulain Like many other Basques before and after him, my father, Miguel “Mike” Etulain, came to the United States and made a notable life for himself and his family. In 1952, he arrived in the United States where he worked for his Uncle Juan Etulain in Sunnyside, Washington. Juan was getting out of the sheep […]
The French Revolution and the subsequent reign of Napoleon was a tumultuous time that led to significant changes in and to the Basque Country. Before, the three provinces of Iparralde – Lapurdi, Zubero, and Nafarroa Beherea – had enjoyed some level of self-governance. For example, Lapurdi had the Biltzar, which was effectively a local parliament. […]
Despite its relatively small size, the Basque Country seems to produce a disproportionate number of leaders and innovators. A prime example is the world of fashion, where two world-renowned designers – Cristóbal Balenciaga and Paco Rabanne – got their start. Rabanne, who’s mother worked for Balenciaga, viewed himself as a disciple of the more senior designer. […]
Sometimes during my foraging of the Internet for interesting stories about Basque culture, I come across a cool tidbit like this week’s fact about Yolande Betbeze. Almost all references to her note her Basque ancestry. However, this is a case where I can’t really confirm her Basque heritage – it seems that her first immigrant […]
No Basque has won the Nobel Prize for literature. If there was ever a strong candidate, it might have been Pío Baroja y Nessi. He was a prolific writer whose influence extended to Nobel Prize winners such as Ernest Hemingway. However, he simply didn’t have the desire for self-promotion. He just wanted to write. His […]
“My father was a sheepherder, and his home was the hills.” The opening to Robert Laxalt’s Sweet Promised Land resonates with so many of us, capturing not only the sheepherder life of his own father, but the experience of many Basque immigrants who made new homes in the American West. I discovered Laxalt’s books when […]
Sometimes, it seems that the very idea of being Basque is inherently full of contradictions. Perhaps this is a consequence of not having their own country, of being split into two different regimes with two different external cultures influencing them. Miguel de Unamuno is perhaps one of the most important Basque intellectuals, certainly of the […]
It hasn’t been all that long that Basque studies started delving into Basque prehistory and the myths and legends that shaped the Basque world view. José Miguel de Barandiaran Ayerbe was a pioneer in these efforts, but he didn’t work alone and his student, Julio Caro Baroja – the nephew of one of the greatest […]
