Basques Don't Exist

Have you ever had someone putting off a cigarrete on the palms of your hands? It hurts even more when they do it on your gums. Well, that is exactly what I feel when a dumbnuts with a blank look on his or her eyes asks me why is it that the Basques want their independence?

Read, then you can laugh or weep, but read, and you will understand, if your IQ is above 50 of course.

And maybe, just maybe, you will beging to understand why the Subcomandante Marcos said that in Euskara (Basque) the concept "dignity" translates into "Euskal Herria".

The note appeared today at Berria:

Basque Autonomous Community Government attacks Urkijo for denying the “very existence of us Basques”

The representative of Spain has been told that he will have to start by banning the Encyclopaedia Britannica

Editorial Staff – BILBO

Miren Azkarate, the spokesperson for the Basque Government, has attacked Carlos Urkijo, the Spanish Government’s representative in the BAC ( Basque Autonomous Community) for denying “the very existence of us Basques”. “He has denied the existence not only of our citizens, but also of our culture, our language and our history. So, we Basques do not exist, as far as Mr. Urkijo is concerned,” she said.

This is what the spokesperson said after the cabinet meeting of the Basque Government yesterday. It was her response to the order contained in a letter sent by the representative of the Spanish authorities to Ibarretxe, the Lehendakari (President): to delete and remove the concept of Euskal Herria, the Basque Country, from school textbooks.

Azkarate stuck to the irony to give the Basque Government’s response: “If Urkijo were consistent with what he is saying, he would have to ask the producers of the Encyclopaedia Britannica to remove the articles on the Basque people and the Basque Country, and at the same time he would have to ban the use and consultation of the encyclopaedia in the education system”.

And it does not end there. If one was going to start banning things, Azkarate suggested that the representative of Spain should also ban Axular, Leizarraga and Joanes Etxeberri “who were the great exponents of Basque literature,” and all the dialectological analysis conducted at university based on the research of the Luis Lucien Bonaparte, and the book Euskal Herria written by the Pio Baroja. After making this final reference Azkarate wanted to show the journalists the “splendid map” of the Basque Country that appears at the end of the book.

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