Thursday, May 30, 2002

Boise's Basque Voice

This article appeared at the Idaho Statesman a couple of weeks before I started blogging.

I reproduce it here because it is quite important, it shows the international community that the Basque quest for self determination has many sides.

Here you have it:

Sunday, November 4, 2001

Ambassador's visit brings Basque question home

In 1979, when the first Spanish ambassador to visit Boise was in town, he was not permitted to meet at the Basque Center. On Saturday, Ambassador Javier Ruperez got inside what locals call the "House of the Basques." But deep differences remain between Spain and Idaho Basques, who represent the largest population outside the homeland and who continue to press for a referendum on Basque independence.

After a closed-door lunch that lasted an hour longer than planned, Sen. Larry Craig was the first to emerge from the meeting, looking a bit shellshocked. "We got into a very spirited discussion," said Craig, who had met Ruperez on a trip to Spain and arranged his visit to Idaho.

"It got pretty heated, unexpectedly so," said Roy Eiguren, an influential Boise Basque and Spain's honorary vice consul in Idaho. The nut of the conflict is this: Ruperez and his boss, Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, see the issue of Basque self-determination not as a political problem but as a matter of crushing the separatist terrorist group ETA, which has killed 900 people in 30 years. The government rejects proposals for talks with ETA's political arm, Idaho Secretary of State Pete Cenarrusa's call for a brokered peace like that engineered in Northern Ireland by George Mitchell, and for an independence referendum in the four Basque provinces. "It is the overall conviction of the Spanish people that we don't have a political crisis," Ruperez said in an interview. "It should be solved mainly through the law enforcement agencies."

To put a referendum on independence to the people would be akin to letting an American state break away, Ruperez said. "We have one single country. We don't consider the possibility of splitting it up."

Aznar has characterized Basque nationalism, both violent and non-violent, as a "Nazi ideology." Ruperez offered his own bit of hot rhetoric: "I don't really care about the foment of Basque independence. What we do care about is violence." His passion is understandable. In 1979, the year Ruperez was elected to the Spanish Parliament, he was kidnapped by ETA and held for a month. Though he says that has no influence on his views, his voice betrayed bitterness when he said, "Those who kidnapped me, they are back on the streets, and not only back in the streets, but in the Basque Parliament."

Cenarrusa, who has been working on improving the lot of the Basque homeland for 30 years, wound up getting into what diplomats like to call "a frank and open" discussion. I wasn't in the meeting, but hearing it described afterward, it sounded rough and tumble.

Sitting around the same table after the lunch, I spoke with several of the principals, including Cenarrusa, Eiguren, Rep. David Bieter, D-Boise, Deputy Secretary of State Ben Ysursa and Gloria Totoricaguena, a Basque academic who lives in Boise.

"The ambassador gave his spiel but he didn't say anything about what the problems are over there," Cenarrusa said. "He talked about ETA, but I said, 'Where did ETA start?' It started with (Fascist Dictator Francisco) Franco suppressing Basque culture and assassinating people. Our end is to get rid of ETA, and he shares that goal," Cenarrusa said.

"But our other end is to allow the Basques self-determination," said Beiter, "and we don't share that goal." Ruperez rejects as a model two votes on separation in Canada's French-speaking Quebec, calling such a move "whimsy," and an attack at the "indivisibility" of Spain.

Beiter plans a memorial in the next Legislature urging Congress to back a referendum on Basque independence. "It's not whimsy. It's thousands of years of differences of language and culture. Quebec is the parallel. They got to vote."

That sentiment is gaining ground in Europe, where nationalist movements in Scotland and Wales may one day secure elections on independence. In September, the British magazine The Economist said Spain fuels terrorist sentiment: "Mr. Aznar's obduracy on the political front is playing into the extremists' hands – by pointlessly antagonizing the non-violent Basque majority." The Economist predicted independence would be rejected by voters, just as it was in Canada, a view Ruperez shares. But until his government changes, perhaps with Aznar's retirement in 2004, movement on resolving the Basque question seems unlikely.


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Thursday, May 23, 2002

Basque Refugees in England

This article comes to us via Guardian Unlimited:

Torn roots

After the bombing of Guernica, many Basque children were evacuated to the UK. Sixty-five years on speak about their experiences

Peter Lennon
Guardian

Wednesday May 22, 2002

Sixty-five years ago today, the luxury liner Habana steamed into Southampton harbour with 3,800 half-starved Basque children crammed into a vessel which normally accommodated 400. The British government's policy of strict non-intervention in the Spanish civil war had been severely tested when Guernica, the ancient capital of the Basques, was bombed mercilessly by planes of the Nazi Condor Legion on April 26, 1937, making a mockery of Germany's official stance of non-intervention.

The images of women and children in the burning ruins of this small town of no military significance so inflamed public opinion here that the Conservative government was obliged at least to permit the entry of child refugees. But the terms were inflexible: the refugee committees which organised the exodus had to guarantee they would be responsible for the upkeep of the children for the entire length of their stay.

On May 21, the evacuation began from besieged Bilbao. The crossing of the storm-lashed Bay of Biscay, under the reluctant escort of the Royal Navy, was nightmarish.

Helvecia Hidalgo, now 79, was 14 when she sailed on the Habana with her 10-year-old brother and eight-year-old sister. "When we arrived in Southampton, the Salvation Army were waiting for us, throwing sweets at us," she recalls. "We thought the English always dressed up like that.

"We were sent to a camp at North Stoneham, outside Southampton, where we lived 10 to a tent. When we first came in the camp, they gave us tea. I couldn't bear tea. 'Oh no', we said, 'in Spain we only have it for medicine'. I wouldn't touch it for years.

"But we had lovely white bread; we had rationing in Bilbao, where gradually the bread got darker and darker. We used to say they swept the floor to make it. It tasted horrible, so when we arrived here it tasted so delicious some children got ill from eating too much white bread."

Hermino Martinez, now 72, came from a small mining village outside Bilbao. "My mother had five other children, so they sent me, aged seven, and my 11-year-old brother to England," he says. "All 3,800 of us were put in tents at Stoneham. The committee had only a few days to prepare for 2,000 children, but double that number came. Later it rained and rained; there were bog conditions - appalling. The latrines were just an open trench thrown up by volunteers."

The scene at Stoneham camp on June 15, when Bilbao fell to Franco's forces, was described at the time by Yvonne Cloud, a member of the Basque Children's Committee. "A priest announced the news from a loudspeaker van," she wrote. "The impulse to destroy the bearer of evil news was swift. From the wailing and weeping crowd of children, swaying rhythmically in an abandonment of grief, a little knot sprang forward, rushing the van in an impotent attempt to vent feelings of aggression."

One group of children wrote a letter to the prime minister, adding with a precocious understanding of the realities of politics "or whoever most rules England", asking for "some big boat... to defend our mothers and brothers and grandfathers and our invalids". But the government never budged on its policy of non-intervention and never gave a penny towards the welfare of the children.

Adrian Bell, author of Only for Three Months: the Basque Children in Exile, comments: "When I was writing that book [in 1996], there was this report about stranded Bosnian child refugees. It was winter and there was this busload of children, coming to England, stuck on a mountain pass because the Home Office could not get their act together to provide entry visas. Just like 1937."

The Basque children began to be dispersed throughout Britain, the intention of never separating siblings often having to be abandoned by the hard-pressed refugee committees.

"In August, I was sent to a colony in Carshalton," Hidalgo remembers, "where they would take whole families. A lovely big farm called the Oaks and it had a mansion. They put us in the servants' quarters: the rest of the place was open to visitors on Sundays, but we were not supposed to go there. We had a matron who spoke Spanish. We all had jobs on a rota and looked after the younger ones."

But such comfort was rare. "I was sent all over the country," Martinez says. "To Swansea, to Tynemouth, to Brampton, near Carlisle. The worst place was Margate. It was that terrible winter of 1939 and there was no heating. The place was so bad it had to be closed down. I was sent to live with a family in Leicester. I was very happy with them - we still keep in touch. But by that time, I was separated from my brother".

With the outbreak of war, financial support for the Basque children diminished and their survival depended often on the generosity of working people. "The miners were marvellous," Martinez says. "They gave even when they could ill afford it.

"There was constant pressure from Franco's government to have us sent back. They claimed my parents had signed a document, but it had been falsified. The fact is my father was in jail, only allowed out when he became partly paralysed when they used machine oil for cooking. My mother was terribly poor and only too willing for us to be taken away from hunger."

Hidalgo married a Catalan she met when working at the Spanish Institute in London where she still lives. Martinez married a Swiss woman he met when she came to Britain on holiday in the 1950s. He got a degree going to night school, taught at a comprehensive and retired as head of a large technical department of a school in Barnet, north London, near his present home. Over the years, the majority of the children were reunited with their parents, but often in foreign countries to which Basque families had fled - typically, France or South America. "I went back for the first time in 1959," Martinez says. "What first shocked me was the fear of the people under Franco.

"Meeting my family was not a very joyful experience. We were such strangers. They had suffered so much and they thought that in England I had had a very comfortable life, which was anything but the case. They were still very, very poor working people, struggling to survive. My parents were illiterate and I had managed to get an honours degree. They realised I was educated. It was heartbreaking."

"I did not see my mother for 12 years," Hidalgo says. "Thinking very, very closely and considering we had a much better life than we would have had in Spain, even so I sometimes think that the children should be left with their parents. It's never the same after; a bond is broken."

Martinez adds: "When Labour took over [in Britain] in 1945, we had great hopes, following the defeat of fascism in Europe, that Spain would be dealt with. But of course it was not to be. The US saw fit to keep Franco in power. We had terrible fascism in Spain long after it had been defeated in Europe."

For more information you can also read the post about Dorothy Legarreta's book titled "The Gernika Generation".

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Wednesday, May 22, 2002

Ireland and Euskal Herria : Political Conflicts

In the article you are about to read you'll be able to understand why the peace process in Northern Ireland continues forward while Spain clamps down on Basque nationalism.

Here you have it is, it was published by CNN:

Similar conflicts, different paths

May 21, 2002 Posted: 9:13 AM EDT (1313 GMT)

By CNN's Alison Daniels

LONDON, England (CNN) -- The conflict in the Basque region bears some resemblance to that in Northern Ireland. In both, divisions are deeply entrenched.

But unlike the situation in Spain, major strides have been made in Northern Ireland towards a peaceful solution.

The Basque separatist group ETA watched closely as the Irish Republican Army declared a cease-fire in 1994 after 25 years of violence, and all sides in the Northern Ireland conflict began peace talks in earnest.

In 1998, ETA declared its own cease-fire. One of the leading figures in the Irish peace process, the republican Sinn Fein party leader Gerry Adams, visited the Basque town of Bilbao in September 1998 advocating peace talks.

"There is bound to be distrust here. People have been hurt, people have been killed. There is bound to be suspicion. There is bound to be hatred. There is bound to be fear," Adams said. "And the way to resolve that is to seize that opportunity and build on that opportunity and widen the space which has been created."

But 14 months after it began, the Basque cease-fire was over.

"When ETA announced the truce in September 1998, it was a response to something called the Irish Forum -- meetings of Basque political parties to come to common conclusions about what was happening in Northern Ireland," said Inigo Gurruchaga, London correspondent for the Spanish daily newspaper El Correo.

"The influence was massive, but with the passing of time it has decreased. ... During the truce the Spanish government behaved without any political convergence," Gurruchaga said.

"And while they maintained clandestine direct dialogue with ETA, they always refused to maintain any type of political dialogue with their political representatives."

However, Spanish historian Anthony Gooch of the London School of Economics says the Basque nationalist party Herri Batasuna, despite its closeness to Sinn Fein, was also reluctant to be influenced by the Northern Ireland peace process.

"The Basques take what they like of the Irish experience ... and they leave what don't like, so they're very selective," Gooch said. "So you can't say Basques have followed the Sinn Fein model or ETA has followed the IRA model."

Dialogue and demographics

British Prime Minister Tony Blair has made it clear that dialogue is the only option in Northern Ireland.

"There is every reason to proceed with it and push it forward, and ... I've satisfied myself clearly that the political will exists to do that," Blair said in January 2001. "We've just got to find a way of getting over these remaining problems."

Blair's counterpart in Spain, Jose Maria Aznar, holds a very different view.

"The only possible position on terrorism is to wipe it out. We will stamp it out wherever we find it," said the Spanish prime minister.

For some, Aznar's stance -- and the equally hard-line position of ETA -- offers little opportunity for Northern Ireland-style negotiations.

"One has the impression that the IRA is more or less getting what it wants along the lines that are being followed, whereas ETA is not getting what it wants and it can't possibly get what it wants," Gooch said.

Another difference between the two situations is that shifting demographics are shaping events in Northern Ireland.

"The inevitability of a future Northern Ireland integrated into the Republic of Ireland is due to demographics, to the growing number of Catholic families," Gurruchaga said.

"This is not happening in the Basque country. ... The political divisions in the Basque remain stable."

It was almost 10 years ago that No. 10 Downing Street, the home of Britain's prime minister, was the target of an IRA mortar attack. But by the end of the decade, after years of exhaustive diplomacy that included visits to Downing Street by Adams, the political landscape was unrecognisable.

It was inevitable that comparisons with Northern Ireland would be made when ETA declared its cease-fire in 1998.

But with the resumption of violence in Spain, it has become clear that the path taken in London and Belfast is a route many in Madrid and San Sebastian do not seem inclined to follow.


Amazingly enough, this so called "Spanish historian" by the name of Anthony Gooch blames Aznar and Madrid's shortcomings on Batasuna. Something tells me Gooch is not to happy that peace is at reach for the Irish.

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Thursday, May 09, 2002

Bono the "Radical Chic Artist"

This article published by The Phoenix tells us what Fermin Muguruza thinks of Bono, the lead man for Irish band U2:

Basque planet

Fermin Muguruza takes Bono to task

BY JOSH KUN

On the opening night of the World Economic Forum last January, Bono introduced Jean-Paul Messier, the CEO of Vivendi-Universal, by calling him a " corporate motherfucker. " Far from an insult, it was an elbow nudge between millionaires and a sign of just how empty Bono’s merger of pop and politics has become. Even before Angélique Kidjo and Ravi Shankar took the stage to do a post–September 11 version of " we are the world, " the script’s finale had been written and performed: corporatized rebellion had triumphed, and the international audience of business executives and world leaders gathered to " address global issues " and to engage the forum’s " corporate members in global citizenship " had been assured that dissent can be bought.

As post-punk Basque singer/songwriter Fermin Muguruza reminds us on his 2000 album of cheery agit-ska, FM 99.00 Dub Manifest (newly available in the United States on Piranha), this was not the first time Bono had embarrassed himself in the presence of world leadership. In " Radical Chic, " Muguruza blasts Bono for calling the pope a " funky pontiff. " Bono’s blur of trans-national politics into corporate handshakes and wanna-be cool poses represents everything Muguruza — who since the 1980s has been a leading musical voice for Basque nationalist independence — is against.

Bono is what Muguruza calls a " radical chic artist " : someone who in trying to make rebellion cool sacrifices the true purpose of art: to be dangerous, to tell the truth, to upset the social balance. Just look at the yellow crime-scene tape bearing the slogan " Artist Line Do Not Cross " that adorns FM’s liner notes. At Muguruza’s world economic forum, the musician is not an entertainer but a people’s cop who protects and serves the non-corporate members of the global citizenry. The Basques are the oldest indigenous ethnic group in Europe, and for the past three decades many of them — the car-bombing separatist group Euskadi Ta Askatasuna ( " Basque homeland and freedom " ) being the most extreme example — have been struggling to be recognized as an autonomous people and region.

On FM’s opening track, Muguruza — who sings in Euskera, the Basque language — bills himself as the " commander " of a musical army armed with " dissident thinking against just one memory. " On " Nazio Ibilitaria Naiz, " a song from another Muguruza album now available, Brigadistak Sound System (Piranha), he calls himself " a wandering nation, " does a Public Enemy " fear of a Basque planet " riff, and then outlines a " strategy of symbolic resistance to linguistic domination, to the structured division of society. " He wants to keep modernization from becoming synonymous with cultural homogeneity — as he sings on " Big Benat and Korrika 2001: Reunite the World! " , he wants to be both a Basque and a citizen of the world, without having to sacrifice one for the other.

Although both albums were released more than two years ago, it’s hard to listen to either FM or Brigadistak without hearing them through the ears of Passover massacres and Jenin border attacks. Both albums come from a world of bombs exploding on city streets and of people so wedded to the land they call their own that they are willing to saturate it with their own blood. On FM’s " Ekhi Eder, " Muguruza laments that " the right to live in the place of birth appears to be on sale. "

Ever since the Franco dictatorship that Muguruza was born into suppressed Basque culture with death squads and political imprisonment, the violent tug-of-war between the Basques and the Spanish has had its echoes of the Middle East conflict, complete with political assassinations, ethnic separatism, and anti-state violence committed in the name of future state formation. Throughout Brigadistak — where Muguruza’s " musical army " is backed up by a global crew of " fellow travelers " that includes Mexican border punks Tijuana No and peripatetic Franco-Spanish agitator Manu Chao — he sings of language as if it were a weapon of war, of occupation as a way of life, and of culture as a military battlefield. He pays homage to his favorite Arabic bar while " remembering the words we have in common " ; he equates the US bombing of Iraq with " Madrid fascists " killing Basques.

You could see this as a shortsighted, even irresponsible, conflation of very different political situations. Or you could see it the way Muguruza does, as a brand of global thinking that instead of merging economies and linking national interests to international markets merges oppressions and links struggles. In short, one that calls Jean-Paul Messier a corporate motherfucker and doesn’t expect a laugh.

Issue Date: May 9 - 16, 2002

By the way, Manu Chao is Basque too, his mother is Basque, not Spaniard.

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Wednesday, May 01, 2002

Letter About Basque Language

This letter was published back in November of 2001.

Better late than never, so, here it goes:

Euskal Editoreen Elkartea, the Association of Basque Publishers, is an organisation formed by 20 publishing houses that has been working towards promoting, structuring and strengthening the production of books in the Basque language since 1984. There are many different types of publishing houses operating in the Basque Country today, variety being one of our sector's principal characteristics, as regards both production and focus.

Nevertheless, we are all united in our conviction that our activities play a vital role in our country's cultural development. As in all modern societies, the publishing industry is a key factor in cultural and economic development, providing the tools required for the development of ideas and philosophies, as well as for the fundamental areas of research, education and training.

In the Basque Country, this is doubly true. Basque culture, including the Basque language, is a fundamental component of the society we are currently in the process of building, and the development of the publishing sector is vital to its evolution and normalisation.

This link, however, works both ways, and the difficulties and obstacles encountered by culture and language are often directly reflected in the literary and publishing sectors.

One characteristic of the publishing houses that make up the Association of Basque Publishers is that we are all involved in the publication of books in a minority language that is also one of Europe's oldest tongues. The Basque language, spoken in seven territories divided between France and Spain (Lapurdi, Nafarroa Beherea, Zuberoa, Araba, Bizkaia, Gipuzkoa and Nafarroa Garaia), has, since Roman times, been subject to numerous trials and tribulations.

Nowadays, however, the Basque language is well on the road to normalisation, a circumstance that has had a profound influence on our particular sector, since the number of Basque speakers necessarily limits the expansion of the Basque literary market. Nevertheless, although the number of people capable of reading and writing in the Basque language has risen over recent years, the number of Basque speakers still accounts for only 26.6% of the population, and furthermore, we cannot assume that all Basque speakers are necessarily potential consumers in our field. In absolute terms, we are talking about only 800,000 people. Within this context, the Basque publishing industry produces around 1,400 new titles every year, more than half of which are original works rather than translations. The number of books currently on the market, however, is much greater, over 3,000,000 to be exact. As we mentioned earlier, the number of Basque speakers has a direct influence on production, and on average, each edition published runs to around only 2,000 copies.

This limitation is one of the main reasons why it is often so difficult to market Basque books and strengthen our industry's infrastructures through strategic investments.

In spite of these obstacles however, our industry has embarked on a process of professionalisation that has enabled it to rise to the challenge posed by this situation, an effort in which it has been supported by a number of Basque organisations.

The dynamism generated by professionalism is, therefore, one of the characteristics that best defines the Basque publishing sector. Dynamism implies movement and development, and these are indeed the tools used by all of us at the Association of Basque Publishers in our efforts to foster literary creation and publication, safeguard and expand our heritage, promote books and reading, strengthen the Basque literary market and disseminate our cultural wealth throughout the world. These activities, which are firmly based on the principles of variety and freedom, are a source of cultural and linguistic wealth in today's new Europe.

Indeed,there are currently 40 million minority language speakers throughout the European Union. Nevertheless, with regard to our sector in particular, it seems that some factions within Spain have set in motion a media strategy designed specifically to undermine our efforts and activities.

This is no mere series of isolated cases. Over the last few years, a number of different sections of the media have published a succession of extremely serious and totally unsubstantiated accusations, whose only possible explanation is a deep-seated desire to weaken the position of the Basque publishing industry and, by association, Basque culture and language also. In the singular sociopolitical climate of the Basque Country, it seems that certain factions wish to define the mere fact of working in favour of the Basque language and culture as somehow suspect, whereas in Europe and the rest of the world, the presence of minority languages and cultures is seen as both natural and enriching.

Over the last few weeks, for example, 21 Basque publishing houses have been accused by certain sections of the media as having links with 'ETA's financial network', despite the fact that no legal charges have ever been brought against them. The Basque publishing houses have reiterated time and time again, on the last occasion in conjunction with the Basque Ministry of Culture, that our activities are strictly confined to the creation and fostering of Basque culture, and we are not prepared to stand by and watch our good name and reputation be sullied by this underhand campaign of defamation.

Our everyday sales and publication activities provide our only source of income, and the subsidies we receive from certain Basque government institutions are granted solely on the basis of the special circumstances under which our language exists. As we at the Association of Basque Publishers have reiterated on countless occasions, we are still very much in need of industrial and fiscal assistance if we are to strengthen our infrastructures and succeed in making the Basque publishing sector a strong, competitive industry. The policy of granting subsidies to the publishing sector is not unique to the Basque Country. Many European countries (including Finland, Iceland and Norway, among others) have also implemented similar policies over recent years, but what is considered a model in those countries, is deemed highly suspect in the Basque Country.

Within this context, and in light of the extremely serious and totally unfounded accusations levelled at us by certain sections of the media, we believe that it is important for us to inform the international community (albeit briefly and somewhat superficially) of our true objectives and activities, as well as, of course, the attack under which we currently find ourselves, since the Basque publishing sector is gravely in need of the help and support of all cultural workers both in Europe and throughout the world.

Thank you for your time and interest, and please do not hesitate to contact us at the address printed below if you would like any further details or clarifications. We would also be very interested in hearing your thoughts and comments.

Euskal Editoreen Elkartea
Zurriola pasealekua 14, 1. ezk

20002 DONOSTIA (SAN SEBASTIAN)
Tel.: 34 43 292349
Fax.: 34 43 277288
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Lapurdi

Time to travel north of the Pirinioak to Iparralde and more specifically to the Basque province of Lapurdi. So far I have posted information about three provinces located in Hegoalde (Araba, Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa).

Lapurdi is historically one of the seven provinces of the historical Basque Country. Lapurdi extends from the Pyrenees to the river Aturri, along the Bay of Biscay. To the south is Gipuzkoa and Nafarroa, to the east is Nafarroa Behera, to the north are the Landas. It has an area of almost 900 km² and a population of over 200,000 which makes it the most populous of the three provinces of Iparralde. Over 25% of the inhabitants speak Basque (17% in the Baiona-Anglet-Biarritz zone, 43% in the rest). Lapurdi has also long had a Gascon-speaking tradition, noticeably next to the banks of the river Aturri but also more diffusedly throughout the whole viscounty (about 20% in Baiona-Anglet-Biarritz).

The main town of Lapurdi is Baiona, although the capital, where local Basque leaders assembled, is Ustaritz, 13 km away. Other important towns are Biarritz, Anglet (between Baiona and Biarritz), Hendaia, Ziburu and Donibane Lohitzune along the coast, and Hazparne inland. The area is famous for the five-day Fêtes de Bayonne and the red peppers of Ezpeleta. Many tourists come to the coast, especially at Biarritz, and the hills and mountains of the interior for walking and agri-tourism. Larrun, a 900m high hill, lies south of Donibane Lohitzune on the border with Hegoalde. The hill is a Basque symbol, with spectacular views from its peak.

The traditional buildings of Lapurdi have a low roof, half-timbered features, stone lintels and painted in red, white and green. The house of Edmond Rostand, Villa Arnaga at Kanbo, is such a house and is now a museum dedicated to the author of Cyrano de Bergerac and to Basque traditions.

Lapurdian (Lapurtera) is a dialect of the Basque language spoken in the region.

History

Ancient Lapurdi was inhabited by the Tarbelas, an Aquitanian tribe. They had the port of Lapurdum, that eventually would become modern Baiona, and give its name to the region.

In the Middle Ages it formed part of the Duchy of Vasconia or Wasconia, that eventually came to be called Gascony. In the year 844 Viking raiders conquered Baiona where they established a base for their incursions. They were only expelled in 986, leaving a legacy of naval expertise in Lapurdi and all the coastal Basque Country.

In 1020 Duke Santxo VI ceded the jurisdiction over Lapurdi and what came to be known as Nafarroa Behera, to King Santxo III the Great of Iruñea. This monarch made it officially a Viscounty in 1023, naming as Viscount certain Lupo Sancho, a relative of the Duke of Gascony. This territory included all modern Lapurdi and possibly some parts of modern Nafarroa north of the Bidasoa river.

C. 1125, Baiona was chartered by Duke William IX of Aquitaine. In 1130-31, King Alfonso the Battler of Aragon and Navarre attacked Baiona over a dispute on jurisdictions with the Duke of Aquitaine, William X the Saint.

Lapurdi was ruled directly, between 1169 and 1199, by Richard Lionheart, who gave a second charter to Baiona c. 1174 and, c. 1175, gave to the merchants of this city the return of the duties they paid in the tolls of Poitou, Aquitaine and Gascony. This caused an uprising of Gascons and Basques (including Labourtines from outside Baiona) but Richard defeated all the cities that had sublevated.

Richard married Navarrese princess Berenguela in 1191, which favored the trade between Nafarroa and Baiona (and England). This marriage also induced a juridisctional transaction that shaped the borders of the Northern Basque Country: Nafarroa Behera was definitively annexed to Nafarroa, while Lapurdi and Zuberoa remained as parts of Angevine Aquitaine. This pact was formalized in 1193 in form of the sale of their rights by the legitimate viscounts of Lapurdi, who had established their seat in Ustaritz. Ustaritz was since then the capital of Lapurdi instead of Baiona, until the suppression of the province in 1798.

John I of England, gave to Baiona the Municipal Law, that created the figures of mayor, 12 jurors, 12 counsilors and 75 advisors.

Lapurdi passed to French hands in 1451, just before the end of the Hundred Years' War. Since then and until the French Revolution, Lapurdi was largely self-ruled as an autonomous French province.

In 1610, Lapurdi suffered a major witch-hunt at the hands of judge Pierre de Lancre, that ended with some 70 supposed sorginak burnt at the stake.

In 1798, the newly born French Republic, with its centralizing Jacobin ideals, suppressed the historical provinces, including Lapurdi, incorporating them into the newly created département of Basses-Pyrénées, together with Bearn.

In the last decades there have been repeated petitions asking for the spearation from Bearn and the creation of a Basque département, together with the other two historical Basque provinces of Nafarroa Behera and Zuberoa. Though these petitions have almost universal support inside Lapurdi and the rest of the Pays Basque, they have been ignored by successive French governments

Mariner activities

Lapurdi, like the other coastal territories of the Basque Country, played an important role in early European exploitation of the Atlantic Ocean.

The earliest document (a bill) that mentions the whale oil or blubber dates from 670. In 1059, Labourdin whalers already gave to the viscount the oil of the first captured animal. It seems that Basques disliked the taste of whales but made good business selling their meat and oil to the French, Castilian and Flemish. Basque whalers used for this activity the longboats known as traineras, that only allowed whaling near the coast or based in a larger ship.

It seems that it was this industry, along with cod-fishing, is what brought Basque sailors to the North Sea and eventually to Newfoundland. Basque whaling in Newfoundland and Labrador began in the 1530s. By at least the early 17th century Basque whalers had reached Iceland.

The development of rudder in Europe seems also a Basque and specifically Labourdine development. Three masted ships appear in a fresco of Estella (Nafarroa), dating to the 12th century, seals preserved in the Navarrese and Parisian historical archives also show similar ships. Rudder itself is first mentioned as steer "a la Navarraise" or "a la Bayonaise".

After Nafarroa lost Donostia and Hondarribia to Castile in 1200, it signed a treaty with Baiona that made it the "port of Navarre" for nearly three centuries. Role that extended also into the Early Modern Age, after Nafarroa had been annexed by Castile (but both provinces remained autonomous).

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