A foreshadowing message by Basque representative in the Spanish Congress Mertxe Aizpurua the first day of Sánchez's term in office.
It sadly serves for many many countries around the world nowadays.
A third ingrediente will be necessary, one that represents the third great challenge that your Government and the political parties that will make it possible have before us: the deep democratization of this state. A democratization that reaches all that is known as deep state. A democratization that includes all the systems in this state, all of them, Mr. Sánchez.
Because the political, judiciary, media, policial, corporate, or oligarchical scheme that is today revolving and acting against popular will - all of it with the blessing of the Crown itself - will not accept, today or anytime, to give up the privileges and power that the regime of '78 granted them.
To defend these privileges is the goal of that perfectly orchestrated strategy by all of the right wings that we are witnessing these days against the popular and democratic expression in the elections.
I will say it clearly: the regime of '78 in its whole antidemocratic dimension is trying to prevent a term in office of national and social progress, trying to prevent any democratizing shadow. This is what we are witnessing these days.
Took inspiration from the Basque people for this one. They’re a people with a long and storied history originating in Southwest Europe, particularly around the Pyrenees in Spain and France. Outside of Europe, the largest North American community is in Boise, Idaho. My mother has an uncle who’s Basque, so there’s a personal connection on my part.
The fact that Basque whale-hunters developed a pidging (a mixed language) just to be able to work around Icelandic waters is amazing. It’s crazy to think that humans have the ability to communicate despite the fact they are from completely different backgrounds and cultures is amazing.
Sweden saying they'll vote against allowing the use of Catalan, Basque and Galician in the European Union Parliament because "there's lots of minority languages and we can't allow them all" is so funny because CATALAN HAS MORE SPEAKERS THAN SWEDISH
Catalan is the 13th most spoken language in the EU. It has more than 10 million speakers, which means it has more speakers than other languages that are already official EU languages like Maltese (530,000), Estonian (1.2 million), Latvian (1.5 million), Irish (1.6 million), Slovene (2.5 million), Lithuanian (3 million), Slovak (5 million), Finnish (5.8 million), Danish (6 million), Swedish (10 million), and Bulgarian (10 million).
Neither Galician (3 million) nor Basque (750,000) would still be the least spoken languages to be allowed in the EU representative bodies.
But even if any of them did, so what? Why do speakers of smaller languages deserve less rights than those of bigger languages? How are we supposed to feel represented by the EU Parliament when our representatives aren't even allowed to speak our language, but the dominant groups can speak theirs?
It all comes down to the hatred of language/cultural diversity and the belief that it's an inconvenience, that only the languages of independent countries have any kind of value while the rest should be killed off. After all, isn't that what Sweden has been trying to do to the indigenous Sami people for centuries?
this week, in the spanish singing program operación triunfo, they sung escriurem, a song by catalan singer miki núñez - more specifically, they sung the version of the song he did with basque singer izaro, in catalan and euskera.
in operación triunfo it was sung by chiara, who is from menorca and thus speaks the menorquín dialect, very different from miki's barcelonese one (i don't speak catalan and still noticed the changes from the original to chiara's one); and martin, from the metropolitan area of bilbo (specifically getxo). for what i've seen people comment, his town doesn't really have many basque speakers, and his dialect is the one they learn at school, the most neutral one. izaro is from gipuzkoa (more specifically from mallabia) so i imagine they have different dialects as well, i haven't listened enough to the bilingual version to really get the differences but i'm sure a more trained ear will be able to do so!
anyways, here's them performing the song at the academy, unfortunately the gala performances are only uploaded to prime video:
I'm a bit late for this, but this week is still the globak strike week for Palestine so,
The 20/01 was the Day of San Sebastian in one of the cities: Donostia, the most important holiday of all year. And people took the oportunity to stand for Palestine. And I'm so tired of this already, that I have nothing left to say. But you must know. We haven't give up. We haven't forgot you. We are still here with you, even if we are miles apart. Palestine is in the heart of a diminute citie by the sea.
If only mendigoizaleak were more popular to wear as everyday clothes!
Mendigoizale means “mountain enthusiast”. It’s a traditional wool jacket with drawings on the front depicting lauburus or the coats of arms of the seven Basque provinces (Nafarroa and Nafarroa Beherea are represented by the same coat of arms, hence they're just 6). It’s closed with six pompoms.
It seems that they were originally called “draughts jackets” because the front had a draughtboard pattern. But in the early 20th century that pattern was replaced by the coats of arms and Basque symbols by clubs and amateur mountain climbers that were reclaiming traditional clothing as also a symbol of Basque identity; thus the name mendigoizale spread, because it was these mountaineers who were wearing them again.
What do you think? Do you like mendigoizaleak or not?
The Tomborrada drum parade on Jan. 20, 2024, in San Sebastián, Spain. The Basque people of Spain’s northeastern coast celebrate the city’s patron saint, Sebastian — a third century martyr — with an annual 24-hour drum parade with hundreds of participants. (RNS reader submitted photo by John Schmidt)