Thursday, July 31, 2008

Solidarity With Scottish Teen

This note which highlights the solidarity of a Basque troupe of dancers and musicians comes to us thanks to The Edinburgh Paper:

Basque dancers to aid college dream

A FREE demonstration of dancing and music from the Basque country is being held to help raise funds to send a cerebral palsy sufferer to college.

Finola Forman, 16, was born with brain damage and cerebral palsy and hopes to attend Portland residential college in Nottingham when she finishes school.

Unfortunately, Scottish authorities can only provide a fraction of the cost, and so her friends and family have started work to raise the estimated £150,000 cost of the three-year course.

A group of Basque musicians, coming to Edinburgh to perform during the Festival, have agreed to put on two free demonstrations to help raise money for the teen.

The musical evenings are to be held in the Dalriada in Portobello, and collections will be held for Finola.

The events are being held on August 6 at 8pm and August 9 at 7 pm.


Is obvious that this note will not make the headlines in news papers around the world.

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Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Basque Books

This note comes to us thanks to Arbiter OnLine:

Albertsons Library receives Basque library collection

JENNIFER SAWMILLER

University of Idaho and Boise State University aren’t all about football rivalry.

Idaho, in conjunction with the Basque Museum and Cultural Center (located in Boise), recently presented Boise State’s Albertsons Library with a Basque library collection.

“It’s a wonderful collection of beautiful old books,” Lori Manning, curator of the Basque Museum and Cultural Center, said.

The center is undergoing remodeling and no longer has space to house the volumes that have been there on long-term loan from Idaho since 1995.

“We’re so glad that the universities got together and were able to work out an agreement,” Manning said. “It’s a win-win-win situation for all of us.”

The collection is comprised of more than 3,400 volumes and includes rare, antique books in Basque, Spanish and English.

“We have a book on Basque laws from the 1600s that’s hand printed, with beautiful scroll work and parchment-type pages,” Manning said.

She added that since Basque history and culture is a big part of the total story of both Boise and Idaho, the books will be a wonderful resource for anyone interested in learning more about the Basque heritage.

The Basque are an ethnic group from northern Spain and southern France who have clung to their own language and culture and resisted losing their identity to Spanish or French influences.

Many immigrated to the United States during the 19th and 20th centuries, with a large group settling in Idaho and contributing to various industries while preserving their dances, food, language and other cultural aspects.

Dean of the Vandals’ Library Lynn Baird said the Basque collection will support both Boise State’s growing Basque Studies Program as well as the large Basque community in and around Boise.

“Part of our stewardship in building collections for the University of Idaho Library is recognizing the regional impact of certain parts of our holdings,” Baird said.

Although the two university libraries do a lot of resource sharing, Baird said, an outright gift from one to the other, like this one, is unusual.

“We’re happy to have this collection, and it’s a great example of cooperation between the two universities,” Dean of the BSU Albertsons Library Marilyn Moody said.

Moody plans to enter the Basque collection into the library database, making it available for researchers and members of the community.

The more rare items will go into Special Collections on the second floor of the library.

“Only one or two libraries have some of these materials,” Moody said. “We found Basque dictionaries from the 1700s and 1800s. These are interesting, fairly unique books. There is Basque poetry and things that aren’t generally available.

That’s why we wanted to bring the collection here, to make many of the Basque materials in the United States available.”

BSU student and biology major J.D. Ward said although he probably won’t use the collection very much while studying biology, he is pleased the gift reflects Basque contributions to Boise.

“I think it’s really exciting because Boise is such a unique place because of the Basque community,” Ward said. “We should be proud of it and support it.”


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Saturday, July 26, 2008

Basque Pala

This note comes to us from Boise where the Basque festival is taking place, here it is:

Basque pala takes agility, strength

The cousin of racquetball is a centerpiece of the San Inazio Festival

Tucked behind a law office and Bar Gernika in the Basque Block is a spacious warehouse you might expect to be associated the phrase "back-room deal."

Instead, during the Basque community's San Inazio Festival this weekend there will be a mix of raw power and refined agility encapsulated in pala, a sport from the Basque country.

Think doubles racquetball, but with the wall on the right side replaced with an out-of-bounds line. Replace the racquet with a wooden paddle and a hollow rubber ball with a solid rubber ball. That's pretty much pala.

Spectators sit on narrow bleachers near the court's right boundary line, close enough to the ball zipping back and forth to keep you on your toes.

Watching athletes who are built more like football players than tennis players dart, leap and lunge around a court 36 meters deep is a unique experience.

On Friday a series of matches - they play games to 35 points, which takes about 45 minutes - were held with players from a San Francisco club mixed in with local athletes.

On Saturday, the Boise and San Francisco will meet for the tournament finals at 4p .m.

Other festivities begin at 11 a.m. Saturday, including music, dance groups, band, weight lifting and a tug-of-war between Boise and Meridian police. On Sunday, there is a street dance from 7 to 11 p.m.


Source : Idaho Statesman

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Eusko Flickr : Untitled


IMG_7761
Originally uploaded by iMiNg@dEu

Friday, July 25, 2008

Basque DNA Research in Boise

This not comes to us via Idaho News Now:

Researchers gather DNA from Idaho Basques

by Ysabel Bilbao

BOISE -- Idaho’s largest ethnic group will be celebrating this weekend on Boise’s Basque block.

While a festival for some, it will be an experiment for others.

This block will fill with people for the annual San Inazio Basque Festival.

While Basques enjoy the celebration, two research students from the University of the Basque Country will be gathering DNA for medical research.

For many the Basque Center is a place to have a drink with friends, but this week it’s turned into part bar and part research lab.

Ph.D. students from the University of the Basque Country, Adrian Odriozola and Eneko Sanz, are taking DNA samples from local Basques as part of a worldwide research project.

The two have gathered samples from hundreds of Basques living in Idaho, Nevada, and California.

Each person gargles a liquid, which collects cells from the sides of people’s cheeks.

From the back of the bar their work is then transferred to a lab at Boise State University.

It's here under the guidance of Dr. Greg Hampikian, that Odriozola and his American counterpart Michael Davis extract DNA samples.

"We are trying to establish a collection of Basque Community DNA around the world. And in Boise there are a lot of Basque in Idaho, it's a strong DNA, Basque community," said Odriozola.

It's that strong community and strong genetic link to the old country that has drawn the researchers abroad. Dr. Hampikian says the best form of genetic research comes from twins separated at birth. Studying their DNA helps researchers know if disease or illness comes from nature or nurture.

Studying the Basque here and in their homeland provides that on a much larger scale.

"Finding two populations that have the same genetics that are located in different places is a huge benefit to all of humanity," said Hampikian.

The research students are focusing their studies on Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, but their research will include a variety of illnesses, including heart disease, cancer and diabetes.

"We want to establish a strong collection about the Basque community, not only for use in DNA Bank, we want to offer this to the scientific community," said Odriozola.

"These types of studies are ongoing, not just with Europeans or the Basques, but really a worldwide phenomena," said Michael Davis, BSU graduate student.

The Basque researchers will leave Boise next week and head back to the Basque country to input data.

Afterward, they will continue traveling to Central and South America to collect DNA samples from Basques living there.


My only question is, are you to do this before or after your first kalimotxo?

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The Language Issue

The page Monsters and Critics features an article regarding the initiative by an extreme right group to launch a campaign against Euskara, Catalan an Galizan in Spain.

Here you have the text:

Europe News

World language Spanish threatened in Spain, campaign claims

By Sinikka Tarvainen
Jul 25, 2008, 2:08 GMT

Madrid - While Spanish is consolidating its position as one of the world's most international languages, a debate is raging in Spain on whether it is under attack in the country where it was born.

A group of intellectuals, some media outlets and citizens' associations have launched a campaign in 'defence' of Spanish which they see as being endangered in regions promoting their own languages in the country with a plural identity.

The debate focuses on whether parents wanting to educate their children only or mainly in Spanish should be able to do so in Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, the Basque region and Galicia, which want pupils to learn Catalan, Basque or Galician alongside Spanish.

The pro-Spanish campaigners stress the role of Spanish - known in Spain as Castilian, language of the region of Castile - as the only language common to all Spaniards and as one of the cornerstones of the national identity.

The idea that a language spoken by 500 million people worldwide could be threatened by minority languages is nothing short of ridiculous, regionalists hit back.

Spoken in most of Latin America, Spanish is the second most important language in the United States.

It is also studied increasingly worldwide, making it the most widely used language after Mandarin Chinese, Hindi and English, according to Culture Minister Cesar Antonio Molina.

In Spain itself, however, regional governments are questioning the domination of Spanish in an attempt to promote regional languages.

These include Catalan, spoken widely in Catalonia, a north-eastern region of 7 million residents, and on the Balearic Islands; Basque, spoken by about a quarter of the region's 2.1 million residents; and Galician, the first language of more than 60 per cent of the region's 2.8 million inhabitants.

Catalan and Galician are Romance languages related to Spanish, while Basque or Euskera is not known to be related to any other language and is much more difficult for Spanish-speakers to learn.

Dictator Francisco Franco, who ruled from 1939 to 1975, repressed the use of regional languages which could often not even be spoken in public.

Franco's death in 1975 turned the tide. The constitution now establishes the coexistence of regional languages with Spanish. Regions enjoy wide measures of autonomy including the right to teach regional languages in schools.

Some now see the decentralization as having gone too far, with Catalonia and Galicia having made bilingual education compulsory and the Basque region preparing to adopt a similar policy.

Policies to promote regional languages are the most extensive in Catalonia, where the regional government is sparking controversy with plans to cut down the number of Spanish classes from three to two a week in primary school.

Even children of immigrants from Latin America or Africa now speak Catalan, a language without the knowledge of which it is often difficult to find a job in the region.

Educational and other measures to popularize regional languages sparked a 'manifesto for the common language' launched by some 20 journalists, philosophers, historians and authors including Mario Vargas Llosa of Peru.

Parents' associations have also sprung up in several regions, demanding the right to educate children in Spanish.

The most vocal critics include representatives of the opposition conservative People's Party (PP), which has also accused Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's Socialists of endangering national unity by granting regions more self-government.

Madrid media close to the PP accuse Zapatero of allowing regionalists to 'persecute' the national language, something that the government firmly denies.

The coexistence of Spanish with other languages was 'the richest, most open and most democratic' way, the premier said.

The government has done a lot to make Spanish more popular in the world, establishing dozens of new Cervantes Institutes to spread it, Molina said.

Some experts worry that Catalan or Basque children will speak poor Spanish after learning it mainly from television and stress the right of parents to make educational choices for their children.

Children in some Catalan schools reportedly have trouble expressing themselves in Spanish.

Overall, however, there are few signs that teaching regional languages would have undermined the Catalans', Basques' or Galicians' knowledge of Spanish and regionalists dismiss such arguments as absurd.

'If any language is threatened, it is not Spanish, but Catalan,' Catalan politician Josep Antoni Duran y Lleida said, attributing the language row to underlying political power struggles.


After reading the article it is pretty clear that only people with a Francisco Franco mind set would either forward or support this kind of initiative. Can you imagine the international uproar that an proposal like this one would cause if the country was Germany for example?

Now, this Vargas Llosa character once called for Peru to wipe out all indigenous languages, and he fancies himself as an intellectual.

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Solidarity With Palestine

This information comes to us thanks to the Palestine News Network:

Basque delegation shows artistic solidarity in Gaza

25.07.08 - 10:54

Gaza / PNN - A joint project between Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and an international delegation resulted in the creation of an artistic mural in Gaza City.

The Palestinian Progressive Youth Union (PPYU) and the Progressive Student Action Front (PSAF) collaborated to organize a project with a group of young artists from the Al Aqsa University of Fine Arts and a delegation from the International Basque Foundation, an organization from the Basque region of northern Spain.

Young Palestinians, artists and members of the Basque delegation created a mural on the headquarters of the Legislative Council in Gaza City to show their solidarity with Palestine.

At the conclusion of the work, the PPYU and the PSAF hosted a meeting in which they reiterated the importance of such visits in order to expose the repressive practices against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, as well as in the West Bank.

The Basque delegation learned about the problems facing young Palestinians in Gaza and the particular difficulties experienced by university students.

Both sides affirmed in the meeting the need to plan for future visits and joint events, and expand the cooperation between the parties involved.


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Thursday, July 24, 2008

San Inazio Festival in Boise

This information comes to us via "The Idaho Statesman":

Weekend of festivities kicks off on the Basque Block Friday

BY KATY MOELLER
Edition Date: 07/24/08

A pala tournament and a good, old-fashioned tug-of-war between the Boise and Meridian police departments are two new features of the Boise Basque community's San Inazio Festival, which will be rocking the Basque Block this weekend.

The annual festival honors Saint Ignatius of Loyola, patron saint of the Basques and founder of the Jesuit religious order.

Traditional Basque food, music and dance are always highlights of the three-day festival, most of which occurs on the Basque Block along Grove Street between 6th and Capitol.

"This is the big weekend for us," said Tony Eiguren, co-owner of The Basque Market with his wife, Tara McElhose-Eiguren.

Visitors to The Basque Market can buy gift baskets this weekend that have paella rice, chocolate, tuna, olives and other items from the Basque region in Spain and France.

"A lot of what we sell is wine," Tony Eiguren said of the shop's Basque wines, which sell for about $7-$73 a bottle. Lan Rioja is one of the most popular, he said.

Jill Aldape, former dance director and president of the Oinkari Basque Dancers, encourages festival newcomers to try a cool drink called kalimotxo, which is red wine and cola on ice. Aldape will be singing in the Basque rock band, Amuma Says No (Grandmother Says No).

Her brother, John, president of the Boise Basque club Euzkaldunak, says you can't go wrong with a solomo sandwich.

"It's marinated pork with pimentos, served on bread. There's also chorizo (pork sausage)," he said. "We'll be selling them outside the Basque Center in a food booth."

The festivities kick off Friday morning with a pala tournament. Pala is game played on a three-walled court; players hit a rubber ball with wooden paddles.

Pala players from San Francisco and Chino, Calif., will play with Boise-area players. The court is between the Basque Museum and Gernika Basque Pub & Eatery.

The games, organized by Eusko Kirolak - or Basque Sports - will be broadcast on closed-circuit television in the Basque Center's bar and dance hall.

FESTIVAL DETAILS

The San Inazio Festival will rock Downtown Boise this weekend. Most of these activities will be on the Basque Block along Grove Street, between 6th Street and Capitol Boulevard.

Friday

9 a.m.-7 p.m., pala tournament (pala is a game akin to racquetball and squash). Players are from San Francisco, Chino, Calif., and the Boise area.

5 p.m.- midnight, no-host bar.

Saturday

11 a.m.-noon, local Basque musicians

Noon-1 p.m., Boiseko Gazteak, youth dance group

1-1:30 p.m., Txantxangorriak, a band that features accordions and tambourines.

1:30-2:30 p.m., weight-lifting exhibition

2:30-3:30 p.m., Oinkari Basque Dancers

3:30-4 p.m., Sokatira (tug-of-war) between Boise Police Department and Meridian Police Department; Txinga (weightlifting) exhibition.

4-5:30 p.m., Pala championship games.

7-8:30 p.m., San Inazio Mass at St. John's Cathedral. Onati Dantza Taldea dancers will dance at Mass.

Sunday

7-11 p.m., street dance.

8-11 p.m., Basque rock band Amuma Says No.

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Sixty Percent

This note comes to us thanks to EITb:

Eustat data

Sixty percent of the Basques have some knowledge of Basque

07/23/2008

Basque speakers increased by 118,000 people with respect to 2001 in the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country. Gipuzkoa was the first territory in terms of the population speaking Basque, (52.9%).

Six out of every ten residents in the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country understand or can speak Basque well or with an occasional difficulty, according to data elaborated by Eustat, the Basque Statistics Office.

In this population group, a distinction is made in terms of their level of knowledge between: 775.000 Basque speakers –who understand and speak Basque well– and 459.000 almost-Basque-speakers, with a good or medium level of comprehension but with difficulties when speaking.

Basque speakers increased by 118,000 people with respect to 2001, whereas the number of almost-Basque speakers decreased by 11,000.

Per territory

If an analysis is made of Basque speakers per territory, Gipuzkoa maintains itself in 2006 as the first territory with a majority of the population speaking Basque, totalling 52.9%, followed by Bizkaia with 31,3% and Alava with 25.1%.

On the other hand, with respect to 2001, Alava turned out to be the territory with the biggest increase in Basque speakers, 8.9%, followed by Bizkaia with 6.4% and Gipuzkoa with 1.5%.

Profile of Basque speaker

36.3% of the residents of Gipuzkoa has Basque as their maternal language and one out of every four only speaks Basque at home. This percentage increases to 40% if you are those whose beak of Spanish and Basque at home.

In Bizkaia, Basque as the maternal language amounts to 13.1% and in Alava this reaches 4% whereas, as a spoken language, it reaches 6% in Bizkaia and 3.7% in Alava, and 15% and 6% if you add those who speak both Basque and Spanish.

The predominant profile of the Basque speakers is different pending on the territory. In Bizkaia (12.7%) and Alava (12%), this is a person aged below 35 who understands, speaks, reads and writes well in Basque, where as his or her maternal and spoken language is Spanish.


Too bad we are missing how things are in Nafarroa, Lapurdi and Zuberoa.

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Basque Students in Ireland

While the Spaniards complaint about the effort by the Basque society to strengthen the use of Euskara some Basque parents make sure that their kids learn their own language plus Spanish... and English.

This article published at Mid Ulster Mail talks about it:

Basque-ing in Maghera!

Published Date: 24 July 2008
By Staff reporter

EVERY year now for the past 12 years a group of young people from the Basque Country have spent the month of July in or around Maghera.

More often than not the weather is never kind to them but a warmer welcome they couldn’ t possibly find.

The pupils are aged from 13 to 17 and attend bilingual schools in the Basque Country. Although they are taught through Basque and Spanish, from as early as the age of 4 they start to learn English and many of them end up doing the Social Sciences course in 4th and 5th year through the medium of English.

So, naturally many of the children spend part of their summer holidays improving English. One of the options for the childreen over this year was Malta, another was Dublin and another was the USA but these children chose to come to Maghera.

In fact, for one of the young people, Jon Martinez, this will be his fifth time in as many years.

The pupils stay with local people and are now very much a part of the local July scenery.

They go on various trips, the highlight of which is two nights spent in Donegal, and this year they have done lots of sporting activities such as paintballing and adventure water sports.

But they are also quite happy doing set dancing or playing football and volley-ball in Maghera itself.

Of course, all this would not be possible without the help of members of the Carntogher Community Association who every year very kindly help to organize the trip.

The pupils leave on Saturday but not before having a farewell party followed by a special edition of the Slaughtneill disco this Friday evening.


I pity those Spaniard parents being used by Madrid to boycott the bilingual education efforts put forward by Euskal Herria, Catalunya and Galiza.


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Looking for Basque Sheepherders

Thanks to Bakersfield.com for this article about the Basque presence in the West:

Where have all the Basque sheepherders gone?

BY HERB BENHAM, Californian staff writer

They taste good, you can wear them and, if sleep eludes you, count them as they jump over low fences.

Maybe that’s why sheep and sheepherders have always occupied a romantic niche in our imaginations. They are as much a part of the Kern County landscape as is the bone-dry river bed, Merle Haggard’s twang or the foot of the Grapevine covered with lupines in the spring.

The only thing missing from this reverie are Basque sheepherders. There are no more in Kern County, from what I’ve been told. Sad? I was. It shook me out of my reverie like a 4.5 earthquake.

Of the 2,000 estimated sheepherders in the Western states, most of them are Peruvians, Chileans, Bolivians, Mexicans and Mongolians.

Don’t ask about the Mongolians. I had no idea they were so big in the sheepherder scene.

The point is, the Basques don’t herd sheep anymore (they stopped 15-20 years ago). They own the sheep. They’ve moved up the food chain and, as it happens, someone has filled in behind them.

The only reason we’re even talking about sheepherders, Mongolian or otherwise, was last month’s 71st annual Sheepmen's Picnic at the Basque Club which I missed completely but which 400 people did not.

It reminded me once again of where we live. That there’s plenty to like here. Much to be interested in. We have strands of all these cultures. Okies, Mexicans, the people who go to the fair and the Basques.

“We’re seeing a renewed interest in all things Basque,” said Dominique Minaberrigarai, president of the Kern County Woolgrowers Association.

“In the ’80s and ’90s, there didn’t seem to be a lot of interest in the Basque culture,” Minaberrigarai said. “But now that’s changing. I think the younger people are learning from the older generation and there is more emphasis on speaking Basque.”

The Basque sheepherders aren’t what they used to be but neither is the sheep business. Not long ago, there were 300,000 sheep in Kern County. Now, there are close to 70,000, but who’s counting.

The changes can be measured through the shifting landscape. When there wasn’t much west of Oak Street, or east of Mount Vernon, the great herds owned by families such as Iturriria, Ansolabehere, Bidart and Etcheverry, it was easy for the families to graze their herds there in the fall and winter before moving them to Mojave in the spring and then the high country around Bridgeport, Lee Vining and Mono Lake in the summer.

Maybe that’s another reason we feel affinity for sheep. We admire their schedule. Live here when it’s cool, in the desert when it’s in bloom and in the high country when it’s hot.

Grazing land has shrunk. The land has houses and buildings on it, the west side has farms and two-thirds of the desert is closed to grazing because of stricter environmental regulations.

Couple that with the price of lamb and wool being the same as it was 10 years ago, and it’s taken the starch right out these wool pants.

In 1981, the Kern County Woolgrowers had 45 to 50 members; now it has 20.

The old Basque sheepherders would hardly recognize the business. Not only are the sheep moved in trucks, but the herders no longer drink red wine on the job because of liability issues. The Basque sheepherders drank wine breakfast and lunch and dinner without missing a beat or a sheep.

The de-facto museums for sheep and sheepherders can be found on the walls at Wool Growers and the Noriega Hotel, and in some of the other Basque restaurants. It’s a pleasant way to relive some colorful history.

The cold red wine isn’t bad either.


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Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

How Trees Protect Themselves

This article about some recent research conducted in the Basque Country regarding how trees (and plants in general) protect themselves during harsh times comes to us thanks to Basque Research:

Measuring the stress of forested areas

Plants undergo stress because of lack of water, due to the heat or the cold or to excess of light. A research team from the University of the Basque Country have analysed the substances that are triggered in plants to protect themselves, with the goal of choosing the species that is best suited to the environment during reforestation under adverse environmental conditions.

Droughts, extreme temperatures, contamination, and so on – all are harmful to plants. On occasions, the damage is caused by humans. For example, as a consequence of cutting down trees, plants used to shady conditions may be exposed to an excess of light. However, in most cases it is nature itself that causes the stress. In spring, plants have sufficient average humidity and temperatures, i.e. what scientists deem ‘optimum conditions’. But in winter they have to withstand considerable cold and in summer, on the other hand, high temperatures and droughts: adverse environmental factors that generate stress situations. Thus, in winter and in summer, the light which under normal conditions would be a source of energy becomes excessive, given that the metabolism of the plants under these conditions is not able to assimilate it. This process is known as photo-oxidative stress.

Some plants are incapable of withstanding this stress – unable to dissipate the excess energy, generating a chain reaction by which they deteriorate and die. Other species, on the other hand, undergo processes of acclimatising themselves to the new situation and trigger chemical compounds that act to protect them. These species are the object of interest of a research team from the Department of Plant Biology and Ecology at the Faculty of Science and Technology of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). The members of this team – called EKOFISKO and led by Dr. Txema Becerril – are studying the plants’ defence mechanisms in order to predict damage before it is produced. They measure the photo-protector substances created by the plants and analyse their behaviour, using them as biosensors of photo-oxidative stress.

Amongst all these plants, they have been studying trees and other forest species, given that they are long-cycle species and it is important that they acclimatize correctly to the environment before reforestation is embarked upon. The autochthonous species of the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country (CAPV), especially the southern part thereof, being where the two climatic regions - the Atlantic and the Mediterranean – meet, would be the first to suffer the consequences of climate change. The study mainly involves species with ecological, economic or landscape interest, and analyses both the deciduous species and the perennial varieties; particularly the latter as they withstand the cold winter temperatures without shedding their leaves.
On the trail of the box tree

The box is a model species and a good example for analysing the defence mechanisms of plants: it is capable of withstanding quite different environments (both dry and sunny climes as well as damp and shaded conditions), thanks to its resistance and adaptability. When it is under stress, the leaves go red, as other species do in autumn, but its peculiarity is that it is able to convert its chromoplasts (where the red pigments accumulate) into chloroplasts (with green pigments) and once again capture energy when the stress conditions disappear.

In order to measure the biomarkers of photo-oxidative stress the research team also simulated the winter or summer conditions in the greenhouse and in the growing rooms at the Faculty of Science and Technology, i.e. they artificially induced in the plants the conditions which they would have to be subjected. This makes it possible to isolate each one of the stress agents and to study its consequences, leaving aside the rest of the variables found in nature.

According to what the research team at the UPV/EHU have shown, the secret to being the most adaptable species lies in accumulating antioxidants, such as vitamin E and special carotenoids (carotenes and xantophylls); precisely the substances that provide colour to plants. On receiving too much light, the VAZ cycle is triggered and the balance between three xantophylls (corresponding to these 3 initials) is altered so that the excess energy does not harm the plants. The human body, for example, is not capable of creating these highly important substances itself and it has to ingest vegetables in order to obtain antioxidants (from plants). Besides studying the VAZ cycle, Mr Txema Becerril’s team has contributed to the discovery of a new cycle (the lutein epoxide cycle), present in many forest species such as beech, laurel, holm oak or oak and the team is currently studying what exactly is its protective function.


I personally dedicate this post to Keith Johnson and his claim that the Basques were unable to conduct any such research because they were being educated in Euskera.

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Sunday, July 20, 2008

Art Imitates Life?



This is one case in which you can't tell if life imitates art or if it is the other way around.

The current Spanish government, an alleged democracy that never really broke clean from Franco's regime (numerous Francoist ministers continued with business as usual after the death of their leader) keeps Basque political prisoners in jail long after they have completed their sentences.

So what can we expect from the request by the Basque society to change the location of the painting that depicts one of the darkest hours in their history? Nothing but excuses, absurd excuses.

This is the must recent chapter in the saga of a painting that has been abducted by the very same government that ordered the bombing of Gernika, a government that even today refuses to acknowledge Spain's part in this war crime, let alone apologize. Two media outlets have reported the note so far, here you have the version by The Telegraph from England:

Pablo Picasso's Guernica 'too fragile to move'

By Fiona Govan, Madrid Correspondent

Last Updated: 9:33PM BST 20/07/2008

Pablo Picasso's famous masterpiece Guernica is in a "stable but serious" condition, art experts have concluded after an exhaustive study.

The monochrome canvas that epitomises the horror of modern warfare had "suffered a lot and requires special care," said the head of restoration at Madrid's modern art museum.

The conclusions made following the first detailed examination of the artwork in ten years will disappoint those in the Basque country who hoped that the iconic artwork would one day be returned to its spiritual home.

Officials in the Basque country have long argued that the piece which depicts the destruction of the Basque village of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War should be displayed in the region.

But curators have declared that its state is so fragile that any attempt to move it from its current location at Madrid's Reina Sofia would be impossible.

Even more restoration on the canvas would risk further damage.

Picasso was inspired to create the work after reading reports of the atrocity carried out by German bombers supporting the Right-wing forces of Gen Francisco Franco.

The attack on April 26, 1937, levelled the historic town during a busy market day causing an estimated 1,650 deaths.

The painting also symbolises the struggle for democracy in Spain. Picasso arranged for the Museum of Modern Art in New York to keep the work for as long as Franco was in power.

The black and white canvas, which is 11ft tall and 26ft wide, was finally moved to Spain in 1981, six years after the death of the dictator, and has remained in Madrid moving to its current location at the Renia Sofia in 1992.


So let me get this straight, Spaniards order the bombing, Spaniards cover up the crime and Spaniards decide the Guernica should not be moved to Euskal Herria. Whoa, that is what I call fair and square.

Oh, by the way, did you know that it was Francisco Franco who ushered Sophia to her position as queen of the Spaniards? Yes, that is where the museum gets its name, from the wife of Juan Carlos, Francisco Franco's king, the one in charge of keeping things "tied, neatly tied".

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Friday, July 18, 2008

Pilota Cheese

That is one weird name for a cheese, find out about it reading this article from the San Francisco Chronicle:

Under the mold, Pilota smells like a winner

Janet Fletcher

Friday, July 18, 2008

The letter "k" is uncommon in French, so a French firm named Onetik readily reveals its Basque origins. Onetik is a medium-size dairy in the French Pyrenees, producing cow's and sheep's milk cheeses in roughly equal volume, plus a small amount of goat's milk cheese. The company created a sheep's milk blue cheese I have written about in the past - the mellow Bleu des Basques - and a cheese I have sonly recently discovered: the mixed-milk Pilota, a blend of pasteurized sheep's and cow's milk.

A wheel of Pilota weighs about 9 pounds and has a natural rind with some external mold growth. I am always happy to see that mold, because it suggests that the dairy has not used a mold inhibitor to keep the rind pristine. Mold inhibitors aren't harmful, but they prevent the cheese from developing naturally. Admittedly, nature doesn't always take a wheel of cheese in a desirable direction, but inhibiting external mold growth guarantees that there won't be any positive flavor contribution from mold.

Once you breach that natural rind, with its generous dappling of white and gray mold, you will find a butter-colored interior, or paste, with many small eyes the size of peppercorns. Pilota smells of nuts and sizzling melted butter; its aroma reminds me of a grilled cheese sandwich. The texture is semifirm to firm, yet more moist than you might expect from a wheel that has been aged more than 90 days,

Pilota has a mellow, sweet, cultured-milk taste, with enough salt to balance its sweetness. It doesn't have a challenging flavor profile and is likely to appeal to consumers who shy away from sharp or smelly cheeses. I don't know the proporation of sheep's milk to cow's milk, but neither character dominates.

Look for Pilota at Rainbow Grocery, 24th Street Cheese and Say Cheese in San Francisco; Woodlands Market in Kentfield; and Oxbow Cheese Merchant in Napa.

Serve Pilota before dinner with toasted almonds, green olives and some chilled fino sherry. Or put it on a cheese board at the end of a meal and open a bottle of medium-weight red wine. I enjoyed it with the 2004 Robert Sinskey Vandal Vineyard Los Carneros Pinot Noir, a generous Pinot with lots of spice and fruit intensity.

Next up: Ibores, a Spanish goat's milk cheese.

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Wednesday, July 16, 2008

And Now... Belgium

The Spaniards and the French would like you to believe that the Basques are the only lunatics pushing for sovereignty and independence in Europe.

Well, this article demolishes their sand castle built on lies and deception, it comes to us thanks to Financial Times:

Belgium struggles to maintain cohesion

By Tony Barber

Published: July 16 2008 19:21 | Last updated: July 16 2008 19:21

Another wet Belgian summer, another government crisis. Bad weather and political disarray appear to be inseparable in the small, flat country that hosts the headquarters of the European Union and Nato.

Black clouds were hanging over the coalition government of Yves Leterme, Belgium’s prime minister, long before he tendered his resignation to King Albert II on Monday night. Now the clouds have burst, exposing Mr Leterme’s inability to broker a deal on the complex disputes between Dutch and French speakers that lie at the heart of Belgium’s woes.

Mr Leterme’s short-term political future is, however, a different question from whether this week’s storm will turn into a cyclone that sweeps away Belgium as a state. With every crisis Belgium appears to edge a little closer to the precipice, without ever falling off.

Would it matter if it did? The boundaries of Europe’s nation states are hardly immutable. Over the past century they have changed more, and more often, than is sometimes recognised. Germany in its present form did not exist until 1990. Poland was not a state 100 years ago and its border today lies far to the west of where it was between 1918 and 1939. Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia have disappeared. Since the Berlin wall came down in 1989, a rash of micro-states has broken out across Europe, the latest being Kosovo, which declared in­dependence in February.

From Scotland to Spain’s Basque country, from the Bosnian Serb sub-state of Republika Srpska to the breakaway region of Transdniestria in Moldova, dreams of independence in small, often ethnically based political units refuse to die.

In Belgium’s case, some say that its membership of Nato, the EU and the 15-nation eurozone, plus a political culture on both sides of the language divide that abhors violence, guarantee that the country’s break-up could be managed peacefully and without a descent into economic instability. But, at least as far as the economy is concerned, this view may be a touch too sanguine.

Consider Belgium’s public debt, which amounts to 85 per cent of gross domestic product. Padhraic Garvey, the head of investment-grade debt strategy at ING, the Dutch financial group, says: “If Belgium were to split, there would be a huge debate about who owns the debt, with associated risks for coupon and redemption payments.”

The difference in yield between Belgium’s 10-year government bonds and those of Germany, although small, has tripled over the past 12 months, a period of exceptional political turmoil. The latest bout of uncertainty will not appeal to foreign investors, who play a massive role in Belgium’s highly open economy, with US, French and other companies accounting for more than 10 per cent of total employment.

Meanwhile, sensitive and high-profile appointments in Belgium’s state administration and business world may be delayed or gummed up. With Mr Leterme’s government adrift, it may be harder to find a replacement for Didier Bellens, chief executive of Belgacom, the country’s dominant telecommunications company. The state has a 50 per cent shareholding in Belgacom and business people say Mr Leterme’s government wanted a fresh face in charge.

Such complications are trifling, however, in comparison with the task of solving “the Brussels question” if Belgium’s political classes really decided to abolish their 177-year-old state. Brussels, Belgium’s capital and the home of the EU’s most important institutions, is a mainly French-speaking island in the Dutch-speaking sea of Flanders, which forms the northern half of Belgium. Apart from Wallonia, the French-speaking south, there is also a tiny German-speaking enclave in the east.

If Belgium, a federal state that has become increasingly decentralised since 1970, were to be dissolved, Brussels would be the prize asset. That is why francophone militants want to unite it with Wallonia and why Flemish nationalists are equally adamant that they will allow no such step. To detach Brussels from both Flanders and Wallonia and declare it some sort of free-standing EU entity is a proposal that appeals to neither French nor Dutch speakers.

The enormous difficulty of defining the status of Brussels in a world without a Belgian state touches on other quarrels that divide the country’s politicians. Behind the turmoil in Mr Leterme’s government lies a dispute over an electoral district called Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde (BHV). Uniquely in Belgium, this district allows French-speakers in the mainly Flemish Halle-Vilvoorde to vote for franco­phone candidates outside their home area. Elsewhere in Belgium, Dutch speakers must vote for Flemish parties and franco­phones for Walloon parties. Flemish politicians want to end the BHV anomaly; franco­phone politicians want to keep it. Mr Leterme could not break the deadlock and handed his resignation to his king.

“It’s outrageous to let the coalition collapse over something as futile as splitting a voting district,” sighs Mark Eyskens, a former prime minister.

The BHV dispute testifies to the risks, in a multilingual country, of an electoral system in which politicians have no incentive to seek support from voters outside their own linguistic community. Imagine English-speaking and Spanish-speaking politicians in the US crafting their respective messages exclusively to anglophones and Hispanics, for an idea of the pickle Belgium has got itself into.

At the same time, there are longer-term explanations for the divisions in Belgian political and civic life. Flanders has steadily pulled away from Wallonia in prosperity over the past 50 years and the Flemish resent paying taxes to subsidise the poorer south. “The money has not helped the Walloons but turned them into welfare addicts,” declared a recent editorial in The Flemish Republic, a newsletter that supports secession.

Such opinions are hotly contested in Wallonia but economists say there is more than a grain of truth to the argument that the south is more favourable than Flanders to government intervention in the economy. Such differences of political philosophy compound the problems created by Belgium’s geographical and linguistic divisions, its electoral system and the extreme decentralisation of the state.

The pressure for a formal split comes largely from Flanders, where some polls suggest that slightly more than half the population support independence. However, some Walloon political activists favour the union of their region with France – in spite of a not entirely happy experience of French annexation and rule between 1795 and 1815.

Three years ago, Mr Eyskens told a conference in London: “Belgium is a wonderful country and, if it were not to exist, it should be invented.” Friends of Belgium agree with the first part of that statement. As for the second, one answer might be: Yes – but perhaps not in its present form.



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Eusko Flickr : Untitled


P7060085
Originally uploaded by Duguna

Sunday, July 13, 2008

The Basques : Another View

This article tackles one of the issues that fuel this blog, the way the media corporations have been following Spain's lead when it comes to poisoning the view of what the Basque Country is. Madrid has implemented a propaganda campaign in which the term Basque is usually used as a synonym for terrorist, as a result, anything and everything Basques means violence. Paris is all too happy Madrid does the dirty job involved in denying the Basque Country its right to regain its sovereignty.

Well, this article from New Zealand opens a gap in the curtain of lies and deception against Euskal Herria, it comes to us thanks to Stuff:

A Basque solution to growth

WORLD OF SCIENCE - BOB BROCKIE

The Dominion Post | Monday, 14 July 2008

Think of Basques, think of bombs. Right? But there's more to Basques than bombs. The tiny Basque country is renowned for its science.

The region, on the north coast of Spain, is smaller than Wellington province and is home to 2.1 million people. Their common language is Spanish, but about a quarter of them speak the strange Basque language. If you want to say "Nice to meet you" in Basque you'd say "Potzen nau zu ezaguteak".

In the past 200 years, millions of Basques have emigrated to America. Ten per cent of Argentineans have Basque ancestors. Today's Basques, with a gross domestic product per capita income of NZ$48,000, are among the wealthiest people in Europe and much better off than New Zealanders. In the 1980s, Basques' traditional fishing and shipbuilding industries collapsed but, since then, their government has developed a spectacularly successful growth strategy built on scientific knowledge, technological innovation and entrepreurship.

Basques' biggest company, the Mondragon Cooperative, is hugely successful and has tentacles all through Spain and South America. It even has its own university.

The country's wealth is now built on new technologies – aeronautical and energy technology, and making fine machine tools, wind turbines and rolling stock. They are into nanotechnology and miniaturisation in a big way, developing high-performance hybrid materials for hi-tech industries, making precision miniaturised desktop type machinery for mass hydro-forming, stamping and cold- forging bulk materials, and improving high-resolution electron microscopy and lithography.

They are developing new catalysts for hydrogen fuel cells, designing a hydrogen-driven car (H2CAR), installing 16 sea-wave energy turbines, doing stem-cell research, and have developed new implant materials for healing wounds and for plastic surgery. Among other things they are developing miniaturised throw-away medical laboratories – each the size of a credit card and read with a hand-held gadget.

Basque technologists are on to "microwire technology" enabling huge amounts of data to be stored on microscopic wires. These wires have military uses, but Basques paste them on goods in supermarkets. To reach the checkout, your shopping trolley must pass through an electronic arch which instantly calculates the total cost.

They have research centres devoted to climate change, applied mathematics and health innovation. They also have an ambitious plan to "coordinate information and communication technologies around cognitive systems, pervasive computing, digital security and natural interfaces", and participate in the European space programme.

This tiny Basque country has 12,500 scientists and technologists at its universities, polytechnics or in private companies and puts a lot of money into attracting leading foreign scientists to work there, or join forces with them. This month they are advertising internationally for 30 more scientists.

The Basques' capital city, Bilbao, is about the size of Wellington and has become world- renowned for its new, fabulous, elegant, jaw-dropping, avant-guard, titanium-clad museum, and then, in September, there's their popular mixed-sex annual 5000-metre foot race along the beach at low tide, in the nude. First prize a holiday in the Canary Islands.

We have a lot to learn from the Basques.

Just one thing though, the capital city of the Basque County is Iruñea, not Bilbao.

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Saturday, July 12, 2008

Eusko Flickr : Txoko Ona


07jul08, Txoko Ona
Originally uploaded by photola
Txoko (pronounced cho-ko) Ona literally means "good corner" in the Basque language Euskara.

A social organization to preserve, promote and enhance the Basque culture, language and history and to maintain and promote cultural, social and economic ties with the Basque Country, its people, history, language and culture.

For more information please visit their website: txokoona.org/

Friday, July 11, 2008

Sanfermines

Thanks to Business World Weekender for publishing this article about the San Fermines festivity in Iruñea, the capital of Navarre, the Basque Country.

Here you have it:

Focus

By Joey Hofileña

¡Viva Sanfermines!

It was early July 2007 and the object of my jaunt into the territory of my former colonizers was the peaceable city of Pamplona in North Central Spain, situated in the heart of the Basque country and having an enviable population of around 200,000 (much fewer people than SM Megamall has on any given sale day). It is a fairly diffident town, some say even boring, every day of the year except for nine days in July during Sanfermines, the annual religious festival that honors Pamplona’s patron saint, Saint Fermin of Amiens, when all hell breaks loose.

Saint Fermin was the son of a Roman Senator named Firmus who ruled in Pamplona in the 3rd century. Fermin converted to Christianity, was ordained as a priest in Toulouse, France, and returned to Pamplona a bishop. Because of his faith, he was decapitated in France in the year 303 AD.

Sanfermines formally begins each year at noon of July 6th at the square fronting the old town hall ,although in truth and in fact, the bacchanalia that so gaily permeates the festival-wide mass revelry has long commenced.

An Entire City in Red and White

In memory of San Fermin, during Sanfermines the whole city dresses up only in white outfits and bright red scarves and sashes.

Keeping faithful to the traditional dress code, I donned a white short-sleeved shirt to match my white jeans. My red scarf (courtesy of the Greenhills tiangge), dotted with pagan paisley designs, was folded and tucked in my pocket, ready to be draped around my neck at the moment the beginning of the festivities was formally announced from a balcony of the old town hall by the mayor of Pamplona.

It was astounding to behold an entire population so uniformly dressed in all white outfits with scarlet San Fermin scarves and sashes draped around the waist. Everywhere I went in Pamplona, everyone — infants, children, teens, adults, elderly, the taxi and bus drivers, shop keepers, street sweepers, not to mention the one million or so revelers — was in regulation attire. And not just for the opening of the fiesta, but for all of the next nine days.

A Toast to San Fermin

No matter what anyone may tell you, there is no doubt that Sanfermines is first and foremost about drinking, drinking and drinking.

Throughout the festival, all of the old city’s many bars are constantly crammed with guzzlers of all sorts where alcohol and tourist money flow nonstop. It doesn’t seem to matter what one drinks whether beer (of which our very own San Miguel Beer is quite prominent), wine, whiskey, bubblies, etc. Neither does it matter how one drinks — whether from crystalware, plastic glasses, flasks, straight from the bottle or squeezed out of leather pouches from as much as two meters away.

The liquor is not just ingested, but is generously shared all around, as I quickly experienced while waiting for the feast to begin, by getting deliriously doused and drenched by the fanatics around me as well the folks above us who gleefully baptized us from their balconied perches.

In a blink of an eye, my meticulously selected white San Fermin get-up was unceremoniously (or should I say, ceremoniously?) dappled with, and promptly stank of, an assortment of booze, elevating me from being a mere observer to a real honest-to-goodness participant which, after all, is what I came to Pamplona at this time of the year to be.

But amid the contagious frenzied merriment, I could hardly contain my excitement about being so close to fulfilling a long held preposterous teenage dream: to take part in the Encierro — Pamplona’s famed running of the bulls.

¡Eh Toro Eh!

Reaching Pamplona’s historic old quarter at daybreak on July 8, I instantly espied a team of able-bodied men jogging in formation through the Plaza del Castillo towards some destination. I promptly latched myself to this group, sensing they would lead me to my singular, ludicrous objective.

After ambling through a maze of tight streets made narrower by the crowds and early morning alcoholics, we arrived at a wooden fence lining the route of the run. Finding a slight gap in the barrier, we hurtled ourselves into the race course. Exactly the way the guidebooks said: no formalities, no registration, no fee. Just jump in.

By that time, there were already over a thousand would-be racers and the large throngs of raucous spectators, including the privileged class in their balconies, had already long assembled.

After an hour of waiting, limbering and rapt observing, the first firecracker exploded at exactly 8 a.m., signaling that the bulls had been released into the street.

Without looking to see the bulls, everyone began to scamper frantically on the uphill, slippery, cobble-stoned street, screaming madly in a plethora of languages. It was difficult to get up to a full sprint as there were lots of runners in front of me and an occasional stumbler to avoid.

Rápido! Pronto! It was mayhem.

I scurried forward with the rest, careful not to lose my footing, my composure and my dignity.

On reaching the Plaza del Ayuntamiento at the crest of the road, the route began to curve left into the Mercaderes area, where the path first widens then promptly narrows.

As I continued to run for my life (such as it is), I perceived the clatter of cowbells amid the intensified roar of a boisterous crowd. I took my first backward glance and there, 10 meters behind, was the pack of rampaging bulls and the riotous rabble of risk-takers taunting them.

With the shrieking of the spectators now at its loudest, my heart pounded wildly whereupon my true cowardly self took over. I abruptly swerved towards the fence on my right praying that the bulls not have the same idea. Fortunately, the toros had absolutely no interest in me as they charged swiftly past, quickly disappearing into the narrow streets ahead.

At that point, it dawned on me that I had done it. I actually ran with the freaking bulls!

¡Una Mas!

Proudly, I hopped back to the street and continued to hustle forward even as I concluded that the bulls were already quite a distance ahead. Then, to my astonishment, I again heard the familiar resonance of cowbells from behind. I glimpsed backwards and barreling their way towards my direction with the same fury, were three other bulls!

In a panic, I immediately veered to the left but as there was no fence to straddle, I flushed my body against the concrete wall making myself as thin as possible. Luckily, the second herd of bulls snorted and breezed past me with a couple of meters to spare. I looked back anew to make certain that there were no longer any lurking bulls left.

Relieved, I resumed running, passing a few bruised and bloodied unlucky ones, until I reached the area leading into Pamplona’s bullring, getting near enough only enough to hear the exploding firecrackers that meant all the bulls were already gathered in their pens.

It was over in just a few minutes and yet, the celebratory mood was irrepressible. Chanting "Ole! Ole! Ole!" like cacophonic drunkards, high fives and abrazos were exchanged all around.

I did it. Despite the absurdity of it all, I did it.

Eventually, I made my way home to Manila, a crazed, happy hombre with enough adrenaline to last me a lifetime.

The Encierro — there’s absolutely nothing in this world that is more insane.

(The author is a corporate lawyer who, in his own words,"once in a rare while engages in fanciful activities.")

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Wednesday, July 09, 2008

2008 Universal Basque Award

This note comes to us thanks to EITb:

Promoting the Basque Country

Basque chef Juan Mari Arzak wins 2008 Universal Basque Award

07/09/2008

The jury valued Arzak's work "adapting gastronomy, one of the most important traditions of the Basque Country, to the new times and making of it one of the most innovative of the world".

Basque chef Juan Mari Arzak, owner of a three star restaurant and one of the most famous chefs in the Basque Country, won on Wednesday the 2008 Universal Basque Award.

Basque Government's General Secretary for Foreign Action Iñaki Agirre, announcing the prize together with the spokesman for the responsible Juan Cid Basque savings bank Caja Laboral-Euskadiko Kutxa, said Arzak was chosen in between sixteen candidates for being able to "make the Basque Country shine without overshadowing anyone".

The jury valued Arzak's work "adapting gastronomy, one of the most important traditions of the Basque Country, to the new times and making of it one of the most innovative of the world".

The Universal Basque Award, organized by the General Secretariat for Foreign Action and Basque savings bank Caja Laboral-Euskadiko Kutxa, is a recognition of the personal and professional careers of individuals, associations or entities whose activities have had a bearing on promoting the Basque Country abroad.

The Bilbao Guggenheim Museum won last year the award. Since the award was created in 1996 the recipients have included Orfeón Donostiarra, Ainhoa Arteta, Martin Ugalde, Jorge Oteiza, Xabier de Irala, Joane Somarriba, Pedro Miguel Etxenike, Monseñor Laboa and Pablo Mandazen, more commonly known as “Brother Ginés.”


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Eusko Flickr : Cabezudo


Cabezudo
Originally uploaded by fran_hi

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

Basque-phobe of the Week : Juan Andrés Melian

I've heard many outlandish excuses to attack the right of the Basque people to speak their own language, but this one by Juan Andres Melian besides being idiotic is plain childish.

This note comes to us via AFP:

Spain's regional languages trouble tourists: lobbyist

7 hours ago

MADRID (AFP) — The increasing use of regional languages such as Catalan and Basque in parts of Spain instead of Spanish is making life difficult for tourists, the head of a Spanish tourism lobby group said Tuesday.

Juan Andres Melian, the director of the Tourism Panel which groups about 30 major Spanish tourism-related companies, said that in some regions local languages had totally replaced Spanish on signs at airports and on roads.

"Bilingualism is not respected in several regions and this creates problems for national tourists who only speak Castilian (Spanish) and for foreigners," he said in a statement.

Melian said a plan by local authorities in the Balearic island of Majorca to set up a "language police" whose role would be "to impose the Catalan language in restaurants" was "terrifying".

Spain has three main regional languages. Catalan is widely spoken in the Balearic islands as well as in Catalonia whose capital Barcelona is a top tourist draw. Basque is spoken in the northern Basque Country and in neighbouring Navarra, while Galician is spoken in northwestern Spain.

At the end of June a group of intellectuals, including Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa and Spanish philosopher Fernando Savater, published a "Manifesto for a common language" in a bid to goad the government into defending people's right to use Spanish anywhere in Spain.

So far 133,000 people and institutions have backed the manifesto, according to the centre-right daily newspaper El Mundo which backs the initiative.

Melian's Tourism Panel announced Tuesday that it backed the manifesto.

Spain's socialist government has been reluctant to take steps to defend the use of Spanish.

The issue is sensitive as under the right-wing dictatorship of General Francisco Franco the use of Catalan and Basque, and to a lesser extent Galician -- which is more similar to Spanish than the other two -- was repressed.

"The Spain which exists as we know it for hundreds and hundreds of years, is one which speaks in one language and in several," Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said Sunday at the party's annual congress.


Now, the news outlet caters to an US audience, so the author that penned the article (who remains anonymous) decided to ride the wave and go after Zapatero reminding the readers that he is an evil "socialist" when he is no more than a pinkish social-democrat.

The lure presented by the call by Francisco Franco's worshiper Fernando Savater to ban the usage of Euskera, Catalan and Galician is quickly becoming an excellent way to measure Spain's intolerance towards the most basic human rights. More and more members of the Spanish establishment are showing their disdain towards the languages spoken in the nations within the Spanish state, which demonstrates what many NGO's and human rights organizations have been pointing out, that Spain acts as a colonialist power with complete disregard for international law and agreements.

And this is why Juan Andrés Melian is the Basquephobe of the week.

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Saturday, July 05, 2008

Thursday, July 03, 2008

Visit Biarritz

The page Times On Line published an article for those who wish to visit Biarritz (Miarritze), a magnificent tourist destination in the Basque Country.

Here you have extracts of it:

From Times Online
July 2, 2008

Biarritz: the complete guide

France’s once-regal resort is now a shabby-chic surf spot – but it still oozes glamour

Sean Thomas

It’s come a long way, Biarritz. In the 15th century it was a grubby little whaling port in the heart of the Basque country, where local fishermen gutted whales on the beach.

By the 1600s it was already known for its sea-bathing – although locals remained suspicious: in 1609 a councillor complained that local women were swimming ‘naked under their bathing costumes’.

By the 1830s, Victor Hugo could still describe this French-Spanish-Basque-Gascon backwater as a rural place ‘with red roofs and green shutters’ –although he reckoned the town’s glorious setting, with its silvery beaches and backdrop of green mountains, would also be its ruin, as the place became fashionable.

He was right about the ‘fashionable’ bit. In the Victorian era, Biarritz took off, attracting potentates from across the Continent.

Emperor Napoleon III and his wife Eugenie were the most famous, building a villa in salmon-pink Second Empire style – an architectural genre still echoed through the town. Various kings, premiers and White Russian princelings quickly followed.

But the 20th century was not so kind to Biarritz. The jet set decamped to the Côte d’Azur; the Russians spent their roubles and died. Concrete buildings sprang up along the foreshore, giving it an air of East Berlin-on-sea (an air that still lingers in places).

So why go to Biarritz now? Because it’s great fun. With that gorgeous seafront and intriguing hinterland – as well as some of the finest surfing and seafood in Europe, Biarritz is rightly regaining its confidence, without reassuming its more pretentious airs. Whether you want sport or siestas, if you’re after French seaside chic without St Tropez silliness, this is the place to be.

BUSY WEEKENDER

Surfing began in Biarritz in 1957, when Hollywood starlet Deborah Kerr was filming here with her husband – a dude from sunny California who brought his surfboard along. Mister Deborah Kerr took one look at those Biscay waves, and an industry was born. Try the Grande Plage for great rip curls; boards can be hired and lessons booked at the Quiksilver Boardriders Club.

If you like to spoil a good walk, you have 10 superb golf courses to choose from. The city also has Europe’s only golf training centre, which would explain why Biarritz is twinned with Augusta, Georgia, the world-famous host of the US Masters. The best course is the sandy and undulating Le Phare.

It’s not the cutest building in France – in fact, it’s an unhappy mixture of Art Deco and Soviet Constructivism. But the Municipal Casino Barrière de Biarritz has an illustrious history: Kings Farouk, Michael and Peter (of Egypt, Romania and Yugoslavia respectively) have all sat at the baccarat tables. Today the casino is more populist, but well worth a punt, nonetheless. Open all hours.

You can’t stroll very far in Biarritz without realising that rugby, the game of barbarians played by gentlemen, is a grande passion among Gascons and Basques. As well as players, there are shops and pubs honouring the game everywhere. Olympique Biarritz are regular national champions – quite a feat for a town of 30,000 inhabitants – and they play at the Parc des Sports Aguilera.

LAZY WEEKENDER

In the middle of the Biarrois seafront is the tiny-but-dramatic cove known as Port des Pêcheurs, where whales were once clubbed. Now a smart marina, it’s less gory these days but still pretty busy, packed with posh pleasure craft, harbourside bars and colourful crampottes (fishermen’s huts).

The architecture of Biarritz comprises a strange mix of Victorian townhouses, concrete monstrosities and giddy pink stucco palaces. But amidst this striking ensemble, a hundred or so ‘villas’ still stand out. These bizarre brick edifices were built around 1900. Said to be haunted, the Villa Belza (‘Villa of Darkness’) above the old port is especially compelling for the way it broods, gloomily, above the waterfront. Ask for a map at the Tourist Office.

Biarritz has two centres: the first is the 10km seafront; the second is Les Halles (Rue des Halles; open 7am – 1.30pm daily), a small but winsome market at the heart of ‘old Biarritz’, roughly a kilometre inland. It has stalls selling seafood, sheep’s cheese, cut flowers, bewildering arrays of olive oils and gleaming fruit and veg. Look out for flamboyantly calorific Basque specialities such as kanougas, an unctuous chocolate toffee.

Take a breezy stroll to Biarritz’s Rock of the Virgin, jutting out between two of the best surfing beaches at the end of the Pointe Atalaye, then look south to the receding blue coastline of northern Spain. You can see just how small Biarritz is from here, how hemmed in it is by hills and mountains, the snow-capped Pyrenees shimmering in the distance. Those uplands are the real Basque country: alluring, rugged, enigmatic and full of bars selling local cider. Get in a car, or maybe a bus, and go.

Thalassotherapy, or seawater therapy, was invented by a French physician from just up the coast in Arcachon. So it’s fitting that Biarritz has a fair sprinkling of excellent spas, where you can be rubbed with mud, have tonifying showers and get seaweed in your bellybutton. Try the luxurious Miramar Spa.

Sharks and stingrays, mantas and mako sharks – you’ll find them in shoals at the Musée de la Mer. They feed the seals at 10.30am and 5pm; the excellent cafe feeds tourists all day. Check the surreal collection of stuffed birds on the top floor.

YOU CAN’T SAY YOU’VE BEEN TO BIARRITZ UNTIL: You’ve seen the locals play the fastest game in the world, pelota. Watch those goatskin balls fly. Don’t say: What’s wrong with your ears? (Basques may not appreciate you pointing out the fact they have unusually large earlobes.) £10 BUYS YOU: An authentic Makila – a traditional Basque shepherd’s stick – decorated with copper and engraved with your motto (if you have one). BIARRITZ’S FAVOURITE RECORD: Anything by Imanol, the famous Basque singer-storyteller. LOCAL JOKE: The Basques say that their unique and impenetrable language is ‘God’s joke against the Spanish’. (If you do want to learn a word, make it ‘topa!’ – ‘cheers!’)

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