Monday, April 29, 2002

Legarreta : The Basque Refugee Children

In the article you're about to read you'll learn about one of the issues that those who call the shots in Madrid would like for you never to find out.

Without further intro, here you have it:

After Gernika: The Basque Refugee Children, 1937–Present

by Dorothy Legarreta

Dorothy Legarreta, Adjunct Professor of the Basque Studies Program, is currently in Vizcaya on a post-doctoral fellowship to interview Basques who were child refugees.

During the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), the Basque provinces – particularly Bizkaia – became the proving ground where modern war technology was to be tested. Thus it happened that incendiary saturation bombing and strafing were used for the first time against an “open” or non-military city, Gernika, in 1937. This historic and beloved center of Basque freedom was the target chosen by Franco’s airforce of the newest German Condor Legion planes. After four hours of continuous aerial attack, most of the city was a burning ruin, and many old people, women and children, lay wounded or dead.

The rebel forces continued to blockade and bomb Bilbao and other nearby towns; even outlying caseríos were strafed. Various humanitarian groups formed to help the civilian population, especially the children. The fledgling Basque Republic, through its major political parties, quickly organized the largest evacuation of children in modern times. Beginning in May, 1937, nearly fifteen thousand children, aged three to fifteen, sailed away from their parents and country to France (5,305), England (3,805), Belgium (3,128), Russia (1,489), and Mexico (456 – but in this group were many Catalans). In each country, education and housing were provided, using facilities ranging from private homes in Belgium, group homes in France and England, to large-scale institutions in Russia and Mexico. Basque teachers, aides, priests*, and sometimes even cooks, went with the children and helped them to adjust to their new life as refugees in a strange land. Whenever possible, entire classrooms and political party youth groups went together. Money for the care of the Basque children poured in from humanitarian, labor, political and religious groups all over the world…an international cause célèbre. In a few months, however, this concern for the Basque child refugees was overshadowed by Hitler’s activities in Central Europe.

Shortly after the Spanish Republic collapsed in 1939, World War II began, and France, England, Belgium, and Russia had to fight to survive themselves. Already, many Basque refugee children had been repatriated. Large numbers stayed on, however, especially in France, and there rejoined their families, now themselves refugees. Basques were shot or imprisoned. Families were frequently fatherless. Some remained in the French-Basque provinces; others emigrated to more hospitable Latin-American countries: Venezuela, Argentina and Mexico. The Basque children in both Russia and Mexico stayed or there, since neither Stalin nor Cardenas recognized the Franco regime in Spain.

Surprisingly, this mass exodus of children, some of whom have been in exile for 42 years, has been almost unreported since 1937. One notable exception is “El Otro Arbol de Gernika,” Luis de Castraesana’s fictionalized account of his experiences as a child refugee in Belgium, which was recently televised in Spain.

In order to recover and reconstruct this significant chapter of Basque history, therefore, it has been necessary to use the techniques of oral history, e.g., extended interviews with those who experienced the event. Fortunately, Basques are a very cohesive group, and family ties are maintained in spite of wars, emigration and repression. Furthermore, whenever Basques find themselves far from their homeland, they seek out other Basques and hold informal reunions.

From such family and club sources in Spain, Mexico and England, nearly 100 Basques who were child refugees, or teachers, priests or cooks, have been interviewed thus far. The original plan of the study was to focus on four major issues in the interview.

1. How did the refugees, as children, cope with separation from parents, home and country?

2. Were they able to maintain their Basque ethnic identity and culture while away and later in life?

3. How did the refugee experience affect their lives – general satisfaction with life, economic well-being, marriage, and parenting?

4. How do you think the trauma of child refugees could be lessened, e.g., what would they insist on if their own children (or grandchildren) had to be evacuated?

In addition, many remarkable insights and anecdotes have spontaneously emerged during the interviews, which are well worth reporting.

In general, the Basque children coped quite well with the trauma of separation from parents and home, particularly if they were at least ten or eleven years old when evacuated. They all remembered widely the seasickness (and, often, head lice) suffered on shipboard, the horrible vaccinations, and sometimes quarantine or delousing upon arrival; but also, the white bread and chocolate (after a diet of garbanzos and rice in Spain), and the warm welcomes in England, Belgium, Russia, and Mexico – less warm in France. Their all-important mentors – Basque teachers, aides, priests, and cooks – gave them affection and counsel, and helped them keep alive Basque culture, language, and traditions. All such staff interviewed commented on the infrequency of stealing among the children (though local apple and pear orchards suffered minor poaching), as well as little bed-wetting, in marked contrast to reports on later groups from the Spanish Civil War, the adjustment to a collective life was less smooth.

Published reports on the health of the Basque children upon their arrival in England praise their fine physical condition and their passion for watching everything in sight, including younger brothers and sisters! Fortunately, in France, England, and Belgium, great effort was made to keep family groups together in dispersion to schools and group homes. And in all countries, visits and letters were encouraged among siblings. And, very frequently, the eldest child had been expressly told to take care of the younger ones, and staunchly refused to permit separation even if, as in one family with a paralytic sister, the three children had to live – but together – in an institution for handicapped Belgian children. Another, the eldest, refused a place in a fine English private school in order to look after her three younger sisters.

One event all the Basque refugees remark upon is the fall of Bilbao, which caused near-hysteria among the children. Some of the hundred-odd Basque girls on the Isle of Wight recall their spontaneous pilgrimage, on their knees, to a nearby hill (Mt. Tennyson) to pray that Bilbao would not fall. That day, they even refused the candy given to comfort them!

The role of community volunteers and foster parents was encouraged in England and Belgium and proved very important to the Basque children sent there. Ties remain to this day, with letters, photos, and visits exchanged with “my English/Belgian family.” In France, Russia, and Mexico, greater separation from the host community seemed to occur.

Basque culture, particularly the songs, dances, language, and holidays, went to each host country (except Mexico) with the children and staff. Public programs were put on frequently by the children by England with a small entrance fee collected to help defray the children’s keep. In other countries, there were Basque choral groups and dancers, trained by their priests and teachers. One important side-effect of those presentations was to educate the host communities to the fact that Basques are different from Spaniards.

Educational experiences for the children varied widely, with Russia providing the most thorough technical and professional training. Dolores Ibarruri (La Pasionaria) saw to it that the Basque children did not serve in the military during World War II, and some Basques recall that during the war, their bread ration was 700 grams daily, while Soviet children only received 450 grams!

The great majority of Basque refugees interviewed, including those sent to Russia and Mexico, have maintained some ties with their families in Spain. Cultural ties of the expatriate group vary, but many display the Basque flag, the family heraldic emblem, etc. A minority married Basques. Of those repatriated, all married Basques and are culturally strongly Basque. Some commented that they first learned to speak Basque in the host country, since its use had been discouraged at that time in the Basque Country.

When asked about their general satisfaction with life, most seem relatively content, and all those with families have enjoyed being parents, though they were parentless, themselves, for at least part of their childhoods. Almost without exception, those sent to England, Belgium, and Russia describe their refugee experience as having had mostly positive effects: learning another culture and language, helping them become self-reliant and mature. Those sent to France and Mexico express more negative feelings, and frequently comment that false propaganda, saying Basques were “Red Separatists,” preceded their arrival and prejudiced the host community.

The role of the Catholic Church in the mass evacuation was complex and deserves mention. Though Franco and his rebel forces were the official defenders of the Catholic faith in Spain, the Basque clergy were largely faithful to the nationalist aspirations of the Basque Republic. This caused untold consternation in the official Catholic hierarchy and press, solidly pro-Franco in France, England and Belgium, but obliged, given ordinary Christian charity, to help the very Catholic Basque refugee children.

When the affected Basque parents are asked to discuss the experience of being a refugee child, responses vary widely. Some say their children should have been disposed to die with them – it would have been better than evacuation. Others note that relocation with families having children of their own was best; others, that no child younger than twelve should have gone; most, that the presence of Basque personnel was essential in the readjustment of the refugee children. All say that more love and affection should have been shown to the children: “It’s more important than food, clothes, or a rich foster family.” Some children cried themselves to sleep for weeks; all had a long-standing terror of airplanes; one vomited for months. Few, however, expressed any anger at their own parents for sending them far away, realizing it was necessary at the time.

Many of the spontaneous anecdotes are valuable. Most speak of the terrible years after repatriation, beginning in the concentration camps near the French border; the continuous food shortage during the 1940s when tuberculosis soared in Euzkadi and children stole food from the horses’ nosebags to survive. They tell stories of the repression of all things Basque under Franco. One woman, a child refugee in France, was denounced in 1943 for not wishing to carry the Spanish flag in a parochial school musical presentation and spent six months in jail at age 17. Many express surprise that no one has been interested in the long history of the Basque people.
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Friday, April 26, 2002

Gernika Remembered

Today, Basques all over Euskal Herria and the world, commemorate the fascist attack on the heart of our nation, Gernika.

Gernikako arbola de bedeincatuba,
euskaldunen artean guztiz maitatuba.
Eman ta zabalzazu munduban frutuba
adoratzen zaitugu arbola santuba

~Jose Maria Iparraguirre

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Thursday, April 25, 2002

Learning From the Past


In April 26 1937, after months of fighting the Basques during the invasion of the newly formed Basque Republic, Francisco Franco, desperate to deliver what he promised to his master Adolph Hilter, asked from Wolfram von Richtoffen to bomb the town of Gernika, the very heart of the Basque Country, here is what happened that afternoon.

This is what the Times reported a day later.

This is Colleen Corraldi's "Guernica" inspired both by the events and Picasso's painting.

This is all what the History Channel has to say about it, what a shame:

Guernica

Guernica, town (1981 pop. 17,836), in the Basque prov. of Vizcaya, N Spain. The Guernica oak, under which the diet of Vizcaya met, symbolizes the Basques' lost liberty. One of Picasso's greatest paintings commemorates the 1937 destruction of Guernica by German bombers aiding Franco during the Spanish civil war.

This is the German Goverment official apology for what happened that day:

Herzog's statement on 60th anniversary of Guernica bombing.

This weekend the small Basque town of Guernica remembered the bombing by German fighters sixty years ago. In a statement read out at the commemoration ceremony on Saturday morning, President Herzog addressed the descendants of the victims. He said "I want to take full responsibility for the past and expressly acknowledge the blame of the German aircraft involved." On April 26th 1937 the German Condor legion bombed Guernica, destroying three-quarters of the town. Up to 1700 people were killed. The air strike against the strategically unimportant town served to demonstrate the Nazi's support for the future dictator, General Franco, and also tested the strength of the Luftwaffe.

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Wednesday, April 17, 2002

No Peace on Sight

Going against many treaties and conventions, and in total disregard to the US peace efforts, Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is now an all out rogue fascist and colonialist war monger. While in the Netherlands the whole goverment crumbles under the weight of the guilt for doing little or nothing to stop the massacre of muslim bosnians in the UN haven of Srebrenica at the hands of the Serbian Bosnian army where 8,000 men and boys were murdered, in Palestine, a country illegaly invaded and colonized by Israel, Israeli forces are destroying the whole infraestructure of an already empoverished land.

But they show no signs of remorse, why? Because they think that what Hitler did to them allows them to do whatever they want. And God forbid that you decide to side with the Palestinians, or not even side with the Palestinians, is enough if you to show simpathy towards the Palestinians, for the Jews and Israelis to call you anti-Semitic.

Well, I got news for them, the Palestinians are also a semitic people that speaks a semitic language, and therefore, if I say that I am concerned over the well being of inocent civilians in Palestine, I DO NOT become an anti-Semitic, since I am showing concern over the well being of a semitic group of people, the Palestinians.

They should stop and reconsider on what Hitler did to them, they got a country because people around the world thought it was necessary to provide them with their own land so things like that wouldn't happen again (beats me why people around the world does not use the same criteria when it comes to the Basques, who were also attacked by Hitler and fought him and the Nazi Army from 1936 up to 1945), so it is sad to see that today, the Israeli Army is doing exactly the same in Palestine, and the Jews are the ones that go around saying "Never Again".

Do they mean never again as in never again or as in never again to them?

They (the Israelis) are abusing their military power, they are colonizing a land that is not theirs and going against UN resolutions by doing so, they are also stomping on the Geneva treaty of which they are co-signers since it says that an occupying power can not displace its own civilian population into the occupied country. The Israelis have illegally taken over 59% of what the press likes to call the West Bank but that actually is Palestine.

And do not, I repeat, DO NOT give me the "God gave them that land", because every single deity in every single mithology has given "that land" to every single human group.

I know that the Arab nations around them have harbored terrorists and attempted over running Israel three times, but from the very moment the Jews decided to "buy" half of Palestine from England, they knew the Arab nations were going to do everything they could to expell them from that land. The Arab nations in that area are not my favorite cup of tea, trust me, I know that they are a bunch of pitiful dictators that have no regards for their people or for peace and democracy. On top, a very sick religious extremism engulfes the area, the educational systems are backward, and there is almost non existent democratic institutions.

I don't forsee peace coming to the area any time soon, not as long as ruthless "leaders" like Ariel Sharon and Saddam Hussein decide to forget about their own people in order to win their pathetic piss contest.

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Saturday, April 13, 2002

Human Rights Violations

Yesterday I was reading the news looking for information regarding the Tour d'Euskadi since it was the first time in 12 years that a Basque would win it. I found the information, not only a Basque won it, Basques actually took 1st, 2nd and 3rd places, so, I was happy. But then, right there, on first page there was the story about a college student that after a meeting to push for more classes in Basque at college level in Nafarroa (Navarre), proceeded to yell "Gora Euskal Herria Askatuta!", that means "Long live a free Basque Country!", well, the police detained her, and accused her of being a terrorist, for yelling that, and if it hasn't been for her having a good lawyer, she would be in Madrid right now held on terrorism charges.

Just to give you and idea, after September 11, the Basque community in the USA posted a picture of a group of Basque American children with an American and a Basque flags, and the name of the picture is "Gora Amerika!", "Long Live America". Now you tell me if someone should be incarcerated for yelling those words.

On the same paper, they were talking about a young man that was detained by the Guardia Civil last September accused of belonging to ETA, he was transfered from his hometown, Gazteiz to Madrid, where he has tortured in order to extract a confession, they hurt him so bad that he ended up in the Hospital, and once he was in stable conditions, the Guardia Civil got him again and tortured him a second time, and he ended up in the hospital again.

The judge in charge of that case dismissed it because the Guardia Civil couldn't prove that he was a terrorist, so they had to let him go; yesterday, his parents filed a law suit against the Guardia Civil, and they showed the pictures taken to him in the hospital on his second visit to the public, I will spare you from seeing them, but if you have ever seen the pictures of Rodney King, you can get an idea, this is three times worst.

Then, in a related story, the Gestora por la Paz (A Gesture for Peace) demanded from a judge in Madrid to rewrite the statement done in regards to the tortures committed against yet another Basque youngster, since the statement leaves out the worst part oh this human rights violations, it only talks about an illegal privation of liberty, but skips the torture.

Well, that is nothing new in the Basque Country, news like those you can read almost every day, and I know that a lot of people think that the Basques are stupid and crazy for longing for a free country, people think that the Basques should accept their fate and remain a Spanish and French colony. And that is ok with me, people easily forget other people's struggle when they themselves are living an easy life were their language, culture and freedom of speech is not threatened by a fascist centralist power.

What enraged me yesterday is that the mastermind behind these human rights violations, Spain's Attorney General, Mr. Baltasar Garzón, member of the political party that was founded by Franco's ex-ministers, the same Franco that was installed in Spain by Hitler, was nominated yesterday for the Peace Nobel Prize. Well, if he wins, the world will be giving one of the surviving heirs of European fascism a prize that is supposed to be given to people that works towards improving the whole of humankind.

And someone said once "Never Again".

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Thursday, April 11, 2002

Osa Wins Ice Cold Stage

The Tour of the Basque Country is taking place these days, here you have an article from Velo News about local competitor Aitor Osa's stage win:

Osa shivers his way to Basque country stage win

By Andrew Hood
Posted Apr. 10, 2002

Aitor Osa was about the only guy smiling at the finish line of Wednesday's brutally cold third stage of the Vuelta Ciclista a Pais Vasco.

After all, he won the stage and took the overall lead. But even the iBanesto.com rider was shivering as he slipped across the line ahead of Cofidis' Bingen Fernandez.

"I've never been so cold on the bike," said a disappointed Fernandez, shivering from the front seat of the team car after Osa held him off for the stage-win and the leader's jersey. "I had no strength at the end to fight Aitor. I simply wanted the stage to be over."

Don't believe those post cards from Spain showing topless honeys cavorting on sunny beaches. That's not Basque Country in those pictures. Cold wind and peppered the peloton from the start in Vitoria, typically the coldest major city in Spain. Racers also woke up to blood tests. All riders tested from Alessio, AG2R, iBanesto.com, Kelme, Lampre, Lotto, Saeco and Telekom were cleared.

As the peloton climbed the category-one Alto de Opakua, the rain turned to freezing rain and snow. Soaked riders shivered as they crossed the finish line in Alsasua some 170 kilometers later.

"Today was miserable from the get-go. I couldn't see anyone enjoying today's race," said CSC-Tiscali's Michael Rasmussen. When a Dane says the weather sucks, you know it's got to be bad. "It was just impossible to stay warm."

Things warmed up early, at least as far as the racing went, when several riders tried to escape early. Nothing stuck until halfway through the race when a group of 15 riders pulled away from the main bunch for good.

The group included Bram de Groot (Rabobank), Dario Cioni (Mapei), Osa, David Latasa and Francisco Vila, all iBanesto.com, Fernandez (Cofidis), Abraham Olano (ONCE), Pietro Cauuchioli (Alessio), Danny Jonasson (CSC), Unai Etxebarria (Euskaltel), Igor Astarloa (Saeco), Aitor Garmendia (Coast), Jose Manuel Maestre (Relax) and Gustavo Toledo (Jazztel).

Osa, Fernandez and Garmendia were the only riders of the top-29 who all started the stage with the same time as race-leader Beat Zberg of Rabobank.

Extebarria and Toledo attacked off the group and the peloton's more than 5 minutes back at the 100-km mark.

Osa and Fernandez pounced off the front of the group, reeled in Etxebarria, and cleared the day's final climb - the category-three Alto de la Cadena at 150 km - with an 11-second gap over the break and 4 minutes on the peloton.

The group disintegrated over the final kilometers while the peloton tried in vain to narrow the gap. Zberg came across the line 3:45 back with the main peloton, but it's too late. The Swiss rider conceded his lead to Osa and dropped to sixth overall.

"On a race like today, when the racers are practically frozen, it's hard to respond to changes in the race. We took a chance today and it paid off," said iBanesto.com's director Eusebio Unzue. "It was important to fight for the stage. With the weather like it was today, we knew we had an opportunity."

The Vuelta a Pais Vasco continues Thursday with the fourth stage, featuring five rated climbs on 154 kms from Alsasua to Villabona. Everyone is hoping for better weather, but forecasts are calling for more of the same.


By the way, the first city mentioned in the article is called Gazteiz, not Vitoria.

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Friday, April 05, 2002

Sabino Arana

By now you have seen his name mentioned a couple of times at this blog.

Well, it is time you learn a bit more about this renown Basque nationalist.

For that, we are back at Reference.com:

Sabino Arana y Goiri



Sabino Arana Goiri, self-styled as Arana ta Goiri'taŕ Sabin (January 26, 1865 – November 25, 1903), founder of the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) and a creator of Basque nationalism. Author of several books and numerous articles arguing in favour of Basque nationalism based on the idea of the Basques as a special race with a land of their own, the "purity" of which must be preserved.

He died in Sukarrieta at the age of 38 after falling ill with Addison's disease during time spent in prison. He had been charged with treason for attempting to send a telegram to President Theodore Roosevelt, in which he praised America for helping Cuba gain independence from Spain.

Background

The Third Carlist War had substituted the Ancient Regime system of Basque Fueros by a limited autonomy. The Basque Country and Navarre were integrated into the Spanish customs system. Basque industrialists profitted from the Spanish captive market with the iron ore and the Bessemer converter and Biscay became "the iron California". Workers from all of Spain were attracted to the area as labourers for the burgeoning industry.

Arana was born in Abando, a neighbourhood that had been recently incorporated into the city of Bilbao as the new extension for the growth of the industrial era.

He claimed that he had a quasi-religious revelation on Whitsunday, that he communicated to his brother Luis Arana. From then on he devoted himself to the nationalist cause of Biscay, later extended to the Basque Country.
Ideology

He was an early defender of the use of the Basque language in all areas of society, to avoid its increasing marginalization in the face of the dominant Spanish. He learnt the language as a young man, but was ready to contest for a professor position at the Instituto de Bilbao, competing against Miguel de Unamuno and the winner, Resurrección María de Azkue, who became an erudite scholar of the language. He made a strong effort to establish an agreed orthography for the Basque language, and proposed several neologisms to replace words of Spanish origin. Some of this innovations like the characters ĺ and ŕ were not accepted for the standardization efforts for the Basque language of the 1970s.

His first published work was Bizkaya por su independencia ("Independence for Biscay"), composed of a mix of historical and pseudo mythical stories and fabrications of earlier battles of the ancient people of Biscay.

In 1894 he founded the first center for the new nationalist party (Partido Nacionalista Vasco) to provide a place for gathering and proselitizing.

Sabino Arana, like many Europeans of his time, believed that the essence of a country was defined by its blood, and was disturbed that the immigration into Biscay of many workers from central Spain during the industrial revolution, into a small territory with little political power, would result in the disappearance of the pure Basque race.

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Another essential part of his ideology was devout Catholicism; he considered this to be an essential part of the Basque identity. However his Basque nationalism kept him away from Carlism that was the dominant ultra-Catholic and conservative movement in the area and the ideology of his father.

Despite his religious integrism and his extreme xenophobic and racist views, he is considered by many Basques to be the gadfly that sparked the movement for the cultural revival of the Basques, and for the freedom of his people. The party he created has moved on from his most controversial ideas to an inclusive concept of the Basque essence, based not on bloodline but rather on culture and convivence.

He was a prolific writer, with over 600 journalism articles, most of them with a propaganda purpose. He liked to shock and provoke, in order to get attention from a society that he deemed unaware of its fate. Overall he was in favour of an ethnic cleansing that would eliminate any trace of Spanish blood in order to restore the imaginary pureness of the Basque race.

There are three key aspects of Sabino Arana's political figure:

~He was an innovator, being the first to proclaim that the Basques are a separate race.

~He was not a conventional conservative; he strongly opposed slavery (legal in Spanish-held Cuba until ten years before its independence) and defended the right of South African Zulus to their land.

~He was an infatigable worker, taking action in many areas; he learned the Basque language as an adult, undertook a number of activities to promote the Basque language and culture, created a political movement, and designed the symbols (flag, anthem, country name) used to this day by Basque nationalists.

During his time in prison he proposed the foundation of a "League of pro-Spain Basques", which would have been in favor of Basque autonomy within Spain. It is still unclear whether he had sincerely changed his views or he was trying to improve the conditions of his imprisonment. His death left the question unanswered and neither his brother Luis nor the party followed through with his proposal.

The mixed influence of Sabino Arana in the Basque society

Sabino Arana's ideas are considered to have spawned the democratic nationalist movement that currently is supported by about 60% of Basques.

Today, he is viewed as a controversial figure by many people in Europe, who call him racist for his xenophobia and ethnocentrism and his ideas of a pure race.

During the Spanish Civil War, the Basque society was profoundly polarized between the Carlist (the Carlists fought on Franco's side) and the Partido Nacionalista Vasco (heirs of Arana) who chose in the last minute to fight alongside the Republican government. In the 1950s, there was a schism between the traditional PNV (most of them into exile, including the lehendakari) and a new group called EKIN (which later on, became ETA). Even though both parties refer to Sabino Arana as the ideologist and pater patriae of the Basque Country (Euskal Herria), the PNV dissociates itself from violence. ETA still thinks of itself as the "National Liberation Front", and even refers to itself as izquierda abertzale (or leftist nationalists), a clear reference to the revolutionary movements of the 1960s.

The Partido Nacionalista Vasco, holders of the intellectual property of his works, has chosen not to reprint them since 1976, keeping only the more "moderate" part of his message in their charter. On the other hand, some Basques still revere him as the father of the nationalist movement, who managed to start the turnaround of the decay of the Basque language and culture. Many Basque cities name streets after him.

The estate of his Abando home is now Sabin-Etxea ("Sabino-House"), the EAJ-PNV headquarters.

Jon Juaristi has remarked that perhaps the most influential part of his heritage is the neologistic list of Basque versions of names in his Deun-Ixendegi Euzkotarra ("Basque saint-name collection", published in 1910). Instead of the traditional adaptations of Romance names, he proposed others that in his opinion were truer to the originals and adapted to the Basque phonology. For example, his brother Luis became Koldobika, from Frankish Hlodwig. The traditional Peru, Pello or Piarres ("Peter") became Kepa from Aramaic כיפא (Kepha). He believed that the suffix -[n]e was inherently feminine, and new names like Nekane ("pain"+ne,"Dolores") or Garbine ("clean"+ne, "Immaculate [Conception]") are frequent among Basque females. Even the name of the son-in-law of the king of Spain is Iñaki Urdangarin, Iñaki being an Arana alternative for Ignatius instead of the traditional Inazio.

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Monday, April 01, 2002

Aberri Eguna

As we cant tell for the little news coverage and the lack of enthusiasm for other people to share this important day with us, the problem with our valid yearn for freedom is not only having to deal with colonialist powers clinging to past glories, but with an international community that can care less about authentic freedom and peace seekers.

But that is ok, we were there thousands of years ago, no one could conquer us and destroy our language or culture, invasion after invasion, and it was just because of Hitler medling in our issues that the current conflict exists.

Gora Euskal Herria Askatuta!

On our own we stand, forever!

We are a land!

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Gipuzkoa

We already shared some information about Araba and Bizkaia, it is time now to pay a visit to Gipuzkoa.

Gipuzkoa is a province of Euskal Herria. It is bordered by the provinces of Bizkaia and Araba (on the W and SW respectively), Nafarroa (SE), the province of Lapurdi (E) and the Bay of Biscay.

Its area of 1,980 km2 (764 sq mi) makes it the smallest province in Hegoalde. The province numbers 88 municipalities, about a quarter of its population live in the capital, Donostia. Other important towns are Irun, Errenteria, Zarautz, Arrasate, Oñati (with an old university), Eibar, Tolosa (during a short time capital of the province), Beasain, Pasaia (the main port), Hondarribia (an old fort town).

Gipuzkoa stands out as a region of hilly and green landscape linking mountain and sea, besides being heavily populated with numerous urban nuclei that dot the whole territory. The conspicuous presence of hills and rugged terrain has added to a especial leaning towards hiking, nature and mountains on the part of Gipuzkoans. Some mountains steeped in tradition hold an iconic and emblematic significance, their summits being often topped with crosses, memorials and mountaineer postboxes. In addition, pilgrimages (which have gradually lost their former religious zeal and taken on a more secular slant) are sometimes held to their summits. Some renown and iconic mountains to mention but a few are Aiako Harria, Hernio, Txindoki, Aizkorri, Izarraitz, etc.

Gipuzkera is a dialect of the Basque language spoken in most of the region as well as neighbouring areas of Navarre, which shows a considerable vitality and holds a prominent position among other dialects. The province's patron saints are Ignatius of Loyola, who was born in the neighborhood of Loyola in the town of Azpeitia, and Our Lady of Arantzazu.

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