Basques – An introduction
European powers have come and gone, nation-states have risen and crumbled, but through it all have remained the Basques, considered by many the indigenous race of the Iberian peninsula. “Before God was God and rocks were rocks,” it is said, “the Basques were Basque.” Today, this proud group with mysterious origins inhabits the western Pyrenees mountains, straddling the border between Spain and France. The Basques have been immortalized by writers from Cervantes to Hemingway-they’re generally stereotyped as a hardy, stoic tribe with an affinity for berets and fine seafood.
For centuries, the Basques prospered along the Bay of Biscay where they became among Europe’s most successful seafarers and merchants. Since the Middle Ages, and with little concern for how surrounding kingdoms drew their boundaries, the Basques governed themselves according to their own laws, called fueros. But their autonomy vanished when in 1939 they found themselves on the losing side of the Spanish Civil War. The fascist Falange orchestrated a barbaric bombing of Guernica, the traditional capital of Basque country. Once he gained power, Generalisimo Francisco Franco repressed the Basques under Spanish rule outlawing even their language. Euskera, as Basques call their tongue, is perhaps the most enigmatic feature of this age-old culture. With its hard consonants, Euskera sounds more like Japanese than French or Spanish, and indeed cannot be traced to any linguistic family in the world. The longest known Basque surname is Iturriberrigorrigokoerrotadoetxea.
