If you are interested in finding out more about your Basque surname or your Basque ancestry, an excellent resource is the group basque-genealogy. For many years, the group has been hosted by Yahoo Groups. However, with their change in service conditions, the group owner, Cecilia Puchulutegui, is moving it to Groups.io. If you’ve never checked […]
Alan King has been busy, posting some great Basque content on his website. He has added new stories to his Basque Story collection. The first, The Begging Siren, collects three different stories from Iparraldea, the Northern Basque Country, about the lamiak, mythological creatures that lured humans with their beauty. The second story, Kidnapped by the […]
Anyone who has visited the Basque Country knows how important cheese is to the cuisine of the Basques. Idiazabal might be the most famous, but cheese is everywhere in Euskadi. Meals often end with a plate of cheese and membrillo. Basque cheese was central to more than one of my visits to the Basque Country. […]
Gure Esku Dago is an effort to provide the Basque Country the right to decide its own future. The goal is to hold a referendum on independence. A signature hallmark of the movement is the long human chains that have extended across Euskadi to promote the goals of Gure Esku Dago. This website provides a […]
A film about the bombing of Gernika, appropriately entitled Gernika, is currently being shot in Bilbao. As opposed to other films about the Spanish Civil War, this one focuses entirely on the city of Gernika and that fateful day in April. Likely you’ve heard about the Basque presence on the eastern Canadian coast. Red Bay […]
Here are a couple of links to online Basque artists, both of which specialize in traditional art. If you are looking for something special for that old friend you’re going to see at Jaialdi, these might be the places to start. Irrintzi specializes in wood, clay and steel, with items that highlight the Guggenheim Museum […]
Basque history is full of colorful figures, and Catalina de Erauso is no exception. Born in San Sebastian in 1592, Catalina was born into a world where the prospects for women were very limited. The convent was one of the few options, and she was enrolled in one at the age of 4, but by the […]
This article originally appeared in Spanish and Basque on Kondaira’s Facebook page. It is translated and posted here with permission. The Basque-Algonquian language is a pidgin that arose for intercommunication between the members of the Mi’kmaq tribe, Innu and other Amerindians with the Basque whalers, cod fishermen, and merchants in Newfoundland, Quebec, the Labrador Peninsula, […]
I’m a man of simple tastes, seemingly from a long line of Uberuagas with similar levels of refinement. My dad would rather make sure he get his dollar’s worth at an all-you-can-eat buffet. And when I took my aunts, who grew up in rural Bizkaia, to the Guggenheim in Bilbao, and I asked them what […]
In 1987, attending my first (and everyone’s first) Jaialdi, I got my first taste of rural Basque sport. There were the aizkolaris and the sukatira, but probably the most impressive were the harrijasotzaileak, or the stone lifters. Men like Inaki Perurena were enormous celebrities in the Basque Country (after he retired, Inaki was a TV star as well, […]