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 […]
The Basques converted to Christianity relatively late compared to many of their neighbors, and before that they had a complex and fascinating mythology that involved a myriad of creatures and powerful beings that impacted the daily life of the people dotting the Basque coast. Much of what we know about that mythology – and Basque […]
Hey friends of Buber’s Basque Page! I got a query about Francisco Carriedo and if I knew anything about the man. He was a military officer who served as Capitan General of the Philippines back in early 1700s. He was the benefactor who supported the creation of Manila’s water system. But, that’s all I could […]
The New Yorker recently published the poem Reasons, by Basque poet Harkaitz Cano. Actually, they published the translation by Elizabeth Macklin, but on their site you can also find an audio clip of both reading the poem. I’m copying the translated version below. I admit, I’m not much of a poetry reader, not really having […]
How does an aristocrat – a man born into privilege and titles, the nephew of one of the most powerful leaders of Europe – become one of the most important researchers of the Basque language? Louis Lucien Bonaparte, Napoleon’s nephew, extensively studied the regional variations of Euskara, establishing a critical map of the dialects. While […]
Leading scientist – once president of the French Academy of Sciences – and key promoter and defender of the Basques. Anton Abadia was both. During his career, he won numerous scientific accolades while also founding the first festivals celebrating the Basque people and their culture. His impact was so great that, in 1997 – one […]
History is full of characters that, while not always highlighted in our text books, made seminal contributions that certainly impacted the course of events. In the early days of what would eventually become the United States of America, numerous Basque were behind the scenes, working in official capacities for France and Spain, aiding the American […]
