In 2012, Elena Arzak was named the Best Female Chef in the world. Arzak, the restaurant she runs with her father, was named the 8th best restaurant in the world in 2014 by Restaurant Magazine. The New York Times took a brief look into her world and this video provides a glimpse inside the kitchen of renowned chef, Elena Arzak.
A Basque Costume Party: A Traditional Fiesta of Demons, Chain Wielding Tigers, and Bell Carriers
The International Business Times has some fascinating photos of costumed revelers at fiestas in Zubieta and Ituren. Some of them wear bells to make noise and scare away evil spirits. The noise also wakes up the land, getting it ready to produce for the next farming/harvesting cycle. See the link for more photos.
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Gure Esku Dago — It’s in Our Hands
Back in June, right after I visited the Basque Country, citizens across the region held a peaceful demonstration in support of greater autonomy for the Basque people. The demonstration, called Gure Esku Dago, or It’s in Our Hands, consisted of around 150,000 people holding hands in a chain that extended from Durango to Pamplona, roughly 76 miles long. The goal is to demonstrate the desire of the Basque people for greater autonomy and more control over their own destiny. In particular, the participants support the right of the Basque region to decide their future, a referendum on self-determination.
It was inspired by a similar event that drew over 1 million people in Catalunya in September as well as even older events. These human chains have been a peaceful way of demonstrating since at least the 1980s. In 1986, possibly the longest chain, with 5 million people, was formed in the United States to raise awareness for hunger.
In Munitibar, where my dad is from, the local residents created a short video to promote the event. It features various people in Munitibar (my cousin appears around the 2:20 mark) waving and showing their hand to the camera.
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A Visual Tour of Euskal Herria
Here is a nice little video highlighting some of the visual splendor of the Basque Country.
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Keeping Euskara Alive and My Own Adventure in Learning Euskara
In 1991, I traveled, for the first time, to the Basque Country. Though my dad was born there, and my mom’s grandparents as well, we’d never made a family trek as it simply was beyond our resources. My dad himself only went back a handful of times during the first 30 years he was in the United States. However, I was determined to learn Euskara, the language of my ancestors, the language of my dad. Because my mom doesn’t speak Euskara, and the fact that my dad was on the road a lot, we didn’t learn any at home. My dad would speak it when he was with friends. He didn’t have to choose to be Basque, he simply was and that showed itself whenever he was with his friends, bullshitting in Basque with the very frequent Spanish tacos thrown in. For me, though, it was a conscious choice to try to learn a bit of this language, to make my own connection to my heritage.
I did this even though my mom’s dad, who, though born in the US, was fluent in Euskara, having been raised by two native Basques, and even my own dad suggested that concentrating on Spanish would be of greater value as more people in the world spoke Spanish. Basque was only useful in a very remote corner of the world and, even there, not always. For me, though, it wasn’t about practicality. It was about connection, about immersing myself into their world, into the way that they thought. Language shapes how we view the world, and I wanted at least a glimpse into theirs.
I went to Donostia as part of the University Studies Abroad Consortium, which had an intensive Basque language course for students with no knowledge of Basque. There were three of us — myself, a woman from Idaho who was trying to make the same connections to her heritage that I was, and a woman from England, who had no connection to anything Basque beyond an interest in the people and culture. Our teacher, Nekane, was an Euskaldun Berri, a new Basque speaker, who had learned Basque as an adult and decided to become part of the effort to ensure Euskara’s survival. She was an extremely pleasant and patient teacher, especially to a student of science like myself who questioned the why of everything, in particular the logic of the language (why this construct as opposed to this one). Little did I recognize, at the time, that my own language of English has so little logic behind it!
During the weekends, I would travel to visit my dad’s family in Bizkaia. This proved somewhat frustrating in that they all spoke a different dialect of Euskara. I was learning Batua in Donostia, but in Bizkaia they spoke the Bizkaian dialect, which was different enough that I struggled to communicate. Even my rudimentary Spanish, learned in high school, was a better communication tool. Compounded by the fact that I spent many evenings not with locals but with fellow Americans, playing foosball, drinking beer and cider, and, critically, speaking English, my Euskara never got very good.
I have some basic understanding of the grammar, but a relatively horrible vocabulary. I can’t carry on any real conversation and have a hard time even with pleasantries. That said, I certainly take some pride in understanding the opening of Negu Gorriak’s song Lehenbiziko Bala:
BASERRIAN JAIO NINTZEN
ARBASO ZAHARREN ETXEAN.
UDABERRIA AURREAN.
NEGU GORRIA ATZEAN.
I do wish I had better command of the language. However, beyond that intensive year in Donostia, I have not really devoted significant time to learning Euskara any further. Other priorities have taken precedent. I still have dreams, but I’m not sure when or if I will make the time to realize them.
Of course, I’m not alone in this desire, this drive, to learn the language of my ancestors. Many people have done the same, and those in the diaspora have had a particularly important role in ensuring the health of the language. Especially during Franco’s time, when speaking the language was forbidden, efforts in places like Idaho helped in promoting the language. In particular, she describes a radio program in Idaho by Espy Alegria that was famous because she was speaking a language, Euskara, that was outlawed in Spain. Now, modern technology, which at the same time threatens to homogenize our world, plays its own part in keeping the language alive. In a very interesting article on the Blue Review, Kattalina Berriochoa describes the role that both the diaspora and technology have had in contributing to the survival of Euskara.
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Juan Uberuaga, the Lion of Oiz
In a recent post, I mentioned my dad’s uncle, Juan Uberuaga, who was renown for his strength. He was called “Oizko Lehoia,” or the Lion of Oiz, the mountain peak very near Munitibar. I was recently in the Basque Country and had dinner with his son, who had seen my post, and provided me with a lot more information. It turns out that, like for most of us, once you did a little deeper, there are some fascinating stories waiting to be told.
One story involved a contest between Juan and another strong-man, Gandiaga. In February of 1957, Gandiaga had carried the txingas for “8 1/4 clavos y 5.25 metros”, according to Lucio Doncel Recas in his book Deportes tradicionales de fuerza en España. A clavo is about 28 meters, so this is 236.25 meters, or about 775 feet. This was a competition in Abadiño, where Gandiaga was the winner out of 7 contestants. A few months later, in May, Juan and Gandiaga had a “dual” of sorts in Durango. Gandiaga could only muster 119 meters this time, while Juan won the day with 261 meters. The very next day, Juan left for America to become a sheepherder, where he joined his brother, Jose, who had already been there a few years.
(A funny aside regarding Tio Joe, as we call him. My dad would simply call him Tio. Well, my mom, when she addressed my uncles on her side, would always call them by their name, so I always thought Tio Joe’s name was Tio, so we called him Uncle Tio. Funny how kids think.)
In the United States, Juan continued his feats of strength. The book The Super-Athletes, by David P. Willoughby, mentions that, in 1958 in Boise, Juan “carried two 103-pound stones equipped with handles a distance of 240 yards.” That’s nearly two and a half football fields, effectively carrying two “suitcases” that each weigh about 100 pounds.
When he returned to Euskadi, Juan entered more txinga contests. In 1977, twenty years after his battle with Gandiaga, Juan won a contest in Mallabia, where he was first out of thirteen contestants, carrying the txingas for a distance of 281 meters.
Juan, the Lion of Oiz, was the txinga champion of Bizkaia, at least once. It was in recognition of his skill and excellence in the sport that they threw that homage to him I mentioned last time, the sporting exhibition in which he was a guest of honor. By that time, Juan had had a stroke that left him in a wheelchair and he was no longer the paragon of strength he had been his whole life, but it was a touching moment to remember one of the old great ones. Juan was also a champion in the US, in 1961.
It is interesting that, in the time of Juan, the longest distances were about 10 or so clavos but, in the 1980s and later, the distances doubled or tripled. This is because, as pointed out here, the txingas used by athletes such as Juan had thick rings to hold and they swayed a lot, making carrying them much more difficult. The basic design changed in the 80s and gave the athlete more control and made carrying the txingas much easier. Today, the best carry 100 pound weights in each hand for over a kilometer, or more than half a mile! I wonder how far Juan might have carried the new fangled txingas?
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Two Basque History Lessons: Anaiak Danok and Refugee Children in Bristol
Here are two articles that provide some interesting Basque history, both outside of the Basque Country.
The first, an article at the Blue Review by Kyle Eidson and Dave Lachiondo, describes an interesting period in the history of the Basque diaspora in Boise. During the middle of the 1950s, when new Basques were immigrating to the United States from Franco’s Spain, there was much more political awareness of what was occurring back in Spain than had been true of the previous generations. Many of these Basques had experienced life under Franco’s rule, and were interested in what they could do against it. This lead to the formation of the group Anaiak Denok (All Brothers), which brought together like-minded Basques who discussed these issues. The most prominent member, Pete Cenarrusa, was of course also heavily involved in Idaho politics, and his two passions often overlapped. Dave and Kyle describe how, in the end, it was different views of ETA that ultimately lead to the end of the group.
Also related to the after-effects of the Spanish Civil War, the second article, published on the Bristol Post’s website, delves into the role that the city of Bristol played in adopting 4000 Basque refugee children escaping the ravages of the War. These children, ranging in age from 5-15 years old, were originally expected to spend only about 3 months in the UK before being returned to the Basque Country. Things didn’t turn out quite like that.
There is a funny little anecdote that the children misunderstood and thought that the straw that was being used for their bedding was what they were meant to eat for dinner.
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Athletic Bilbao coming to Boise?
File this in the simply awesome category! The Basque Studies Foundation, in Boise, is trying to bring Athletic Bilbao to play a friendly against a Major League Soccer team! This is going to be in the stadium on the Boise State campus (you know the one, the one with the blue field). They are still working out details, but Athletic Bilbao will likely play either the Seattle, Portland or Salt Lake team.
Argia Beristain, who was part of the Seattle club back when I lived there, is the game’s organizer.
You can find out a little more in this Idaho Statesman article.
I’ve only seen one professional soccer game. The Colorado Rapids had a Basque appreciation night when they brought over a play from Athletic Bilbao, Aitor Karanka. It was pretty cool. Though the crowd was small, especially for such a large stadium, it was still full of energy.
I’m excited to see my second professional game, even if it is a friendly. Great job, BSF and Argia!
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A Fairytale Visit to Butron Castle
Roughly about 20 years ago, during my second visit to the Basque Country, a friend of mine, Xabier Ormaetxea, who has been a frequent contributor to these pages particularly with the Basque surname research he used to do for visitors, took me to Butron Castle (Butroi in Basque). Not far from Bilbao, in the heart of Bizkaia, el Castillo Butron was pretty magnificent, especially to an American who is not used to seeing castles around every corner. The castle was all decorated inside, with people in period costume, trying to recreate the feel of ancient times. I remember Xabier lamenting the fact that everything had to be Disneyfied, that a castle couldn’t simply be, it had to be made into some sort of spectacle.
Last month, my wife, daughter and I were in the Basque Country visiting my dad’s family and I thought Butron would be a nice place to take them. My wife hadn’t seen it and I thought that my daughter, being a young girl who is into princesses (how do they know every Disney princess without ever watching the movies?) and castles (one of our favorite activities together it to draw castles and fill them with dragons, knights and, of course, princesses), would really enjoy seeing her first castle.
B
utron is a real castle, with towers, arrowslits, and a large front gate. It took us a while to find it since, though there are signs pointing in the general direction, they aren’t very clear. We ended up going down a dirt road along side a river, having turned just a little too early, passing by various gated houses until we ended up at a dead end. We eventually found the castle, and maybe understood why it was so hard to find.
The spectacle that bothered Xabier was certainly no longer an issue. In fact, the castle is closed. No one is there. When we pulled up (by-passing the parking lot because, well, no one was there), there was one other car of tourists taking their picture in front of the castle. While we were there, a bicyclists and a woman on a horse rode by, but that was the extent of the people we saw.
But, no matter. It was still a magnificent sight! My daughter was very excited, peaking into any hole she could find, wondering if a princess might have looked down from this tower or that tower. We speculated which hole might be a window into the dungeon and if there had been a lot of bad guys kept there. My wife and I enjoyed watching our daughter fantasize about what must be inside the castle as we also did our best to peak in wherever we could, circling the castle, looking for any better view of the interior.
I 
t turns out (you gotta love Wikipedia) that while the castle is old, the current structure was built in the late 1800s. It was remodeled to mimic the castles of Bavaria. It is now the largest existing medieval castle in the world (according to Wikipedia). When I visited, it had beenrenovated and opened to the public, but it failed to generate enough revenue to keep up operations and has since been closed to visitors. In 2005, a group purchased the building, but have yet to do anything with it. It was a pity we couldn’t tour the inside, but my daughter still loved her first visit to a real castle.
And she isn’t the only one who fantasizes about Butron. Again according to Wikipedia, it seems Kate Middleton (yes that one) dreamed of being married in this castle. I guess she found an even fancier one to get married in.
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Basque-ing in play by Begoña Echeverria
In this guest article, Professor Begoña Echeverria, a professor of education at the University of California, Riverside, describes how she uses songs to teach basic concepts of the Basque language to adults, focusing not on grammatical aspects, but rather conversation.
Eskerrik asko, Begoña!
Basque-ing in play: Using song to teach Basque in the American diaspora
Begoña Echeverria
Associate Professor and Associate Dean
Graduate School of Education
University of California
Riverside, CA 92521-0128
Introduction
Efforts to revitalize Basque (Euskera) focus on showing its “equality” to dominant languages, emphasizing grammar and “correctness” in the classroom. But while the number of Basque speakers has risen in the last few decades, Euskera is still endangered. Basque speakers will switch to another language (usually Spanish or French, but English in the diaspora) when only one non-Basque speaker is among them and speakers do not speak the Euskera they know: by 2001, one-quarter of the population in the Basque Autonomous Community spoke Basque, but only 14% used in publicly (Urla, 2013: 133). Standardization has increased native speakers’ insecurities so that “’the creative capacity of the Basque speaker is being lost, the capacity to play with and enjoy the language. And when that is lost, the language itself is on the way to being lost’” (Urla, 2013: 108, quoting Zuazo 2000: 132).
I took these lessons to heart when I taught a Basque class to adults between 2006-2010 for a Basque club in southern California. The class was part of a larger effort through the North American Basque Organization, composed of Basque clubs in the United States and Canada, to promote the language (www.nabasque.us). I was asked to take over the class by one of its students when the first volunteer teacher was unable to continue. I agreed to take on the class so long as it focused on conversational skills—and not grammatical “correctness”—in part, because I am not a trained foreign language teacher, but also because the research I have done in the Basque Country itself suggested that focusing on teaching “correct” Basque was problematic to the extent that it made many Basque learners (and sometimes native speakers) too self-conscious to actually speak Basque outside the classroom (Echeverria 2003).
In this sense, my work corroborates that of scholars in other minority language communities. That is, while attempts to revitalize languages often focus on standardizing and modernizing their languages so that they become more instrumentally useful and more able to challenge dominant language hegemony, such strategies do not guarantee that the prestige and use of that language will increase. Eckert (1983) demonstrates that minority language standardization can just as easily alienate native speakers as empower them; Wong (1999) shows that native speakers might reject the standard imposed on them altogether. Gal (1979) and Milroy (1987) suggest that, because of the association often found between vernaculars and solidarity, some speakers will continue to speak vernaculars even if they are not instrumentally advantageous.
But another reason for my insistence on the class focusing on informal conversation rather formal grammatical rules or conventions was that I knew that in order for the experience to be worthwhile for me—it was on a volunteer basis, after all—it had to be fun. And that meant using songs and games as much as possible to teach the language. In this paper, I focus on the songs I used and wrote to convey some of the basic vocabulary needed for conversation in Basque, and to illustrate some the features of the language that most challenged my English-speaking students.
