History of the Basques

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The history of the Basques is essentially determined by the motives of self-assertion and self-determination. As an ethnic and cultural community, the Basque language was and is a primary feature of their identity and concern. The Basques refer to themselves as Euskaldunes - "Basque speakers". Their settlement areas on both sides of the Pyrenees and on the Cantabrian Mountains , which above all gave rise to a culture of mountain farmers accustomed to independence and independence , were one of the reasons why the Basques almost consistently had their own life compared to the claims to rule of great historical empires and power complexes at the regional level were able to preserve special political rights in the form of autonomy regulations .

Only once were the Basques politically united in a political area at the beginning of the 11th century. The division of the Basque Country into a Spanish ( Hegoalde ) south of the Pyrenees and a French ( Iparralde ) north of the Pyrenees has been preserved through all the historical upheavals to the present day. Since the late Middle Ages, the Basques created a legal structure that shaped their political identity in various local regulations, which are known as the formal system and which aimed at self-administration and the limitation of the respective higher ruling power.

The Basques experienced economic heydays as whalers and deep-sea fishermen , as ship designers and shipyard operators , in the extraction and export of iron ore and with the development of heavy industry . The most important cities they founded include Bayonne and Biarritz on the French side , San Sebastián and Bilbao in the Spanish Basque Country, and Gernika as a symbolic place of Basque freedom and self-assertion.

A people on the edge of ancient civilization

The origins of the Basque people are unclear. The mysterious origin of the Basques - according to one theory they came from the south, according to the second from the north and according to the third from Asia - is still open. However, it has been proven that the Basque language, as a pre-Indo-European language that is not related to any other, is the oldest still existing in Western Europe. The first written evidence to prove the existence of Basque tribes in the Basque Country comes from Roman writers such as Sallust and Pliny the Elder and from geographers such as Strabo and Claudius Ptolemy . As language certificates show, the former settlement area of ​​the Basques extended far beyond what is today.

Dinar (2nd century BC): "BaSKuNES"

The mountain ranges of the Pyrenees and the Cantabrian Mountains were excluded from Roman expansion for a long time, and in the inaccessible mountain regions of the Basque region the tribal cultures largely escaped Romanization . In the same way, the Basques asserted their settlement areas and their language against the subsequent empires of the Visigoths and the Franks , who expanded from the north, and the Moors coming from the south . Basque historiography explains the diversity of the different dialects within a small geographical area in the Basque Country with a largely static socio-cultural development with only little external exchange.

In the sphere of influence of medieval powers

As actors on the fringes of the dispute between the Franks and Moors, the Basques occasionally opposed the tributes imposed by the Franks and defeated them in 778 in the Battle of Roncesvalles, made famous by the Roland song . The ongoing rivalry between Christians and Moors in the north of the Iberian Peninsula brought about the rule of Iñigo Arista over Christian Pamplona in the 9th century , which subsequently became a hereditary kingdom known as the Kingdom of Navarre . In the Basque Country, the counties of Bizkaia , Álava and Gipuzkoa and the vice-counties of Labourd and Soule developed within the Navarre sphere of influence . At the beginning of the 11th century, Sancho the Great ( Sancho el Mayor ) became the "King of all Basques" , under whom the kingdom of Pamplona, ​​reaching across the northern edge of the Pyrenees, reached its greatest extent before it was divided among his sons after his death . As a result, Gipuzkoa, Álava and Bizkaia were exposed to the changing claims to rule of Castile and Navarra.

Like all early cultural impulses from outside, the Christianization of the Basques came relatively late. In the 7th century, St. Amandus failed with his missionary attempt with the Basques. Church buildings and monasteries that were later built along the Way of St. James , which at times ran along the Bay of Biscay , proved to be more effective . But in core regions such as Gipuzkoa and Bizkaia, the oldest preserved church complexes mostly come from the Gothic period ; and monastery life did not exist in this room until the late Middle Ages . In 1534, however, it was the Basque Ignatius von Loyola who founded the order of the Jesuits in a crypt in Montmartre in Paris , after he had won over his Basque compatriot Franz Xavier for the Catholic cause. The Jesuits formed the first order to proselytize worldwide, and Franz Xavier was sent to Asia for this purpose and proselytized in Japan , the Moluccas and Malaysia before he died on the way to China in 1552. Both founders of the order were canonized in 1662 .

Self-sufficient (mountain) farmers and urban beginnings

Farms in the Basque north of Spanish Navarra
Farm in the French Basque Country

When Wilhelm von Humboldt traveled to the Basque Country for the second time and recorded his impressions, the real core of the Basque nation appeared to him to be the farmers with their individual farms, often located “deep in the mountains”. The cities, on the other hand, are "a foreign and later addition". As probably since the earliest times, according to Humboldt, Bizkaia has a scattered settlement, the farms lonely, often at a considerable distance from each other. In this seclusion, the Basque nourishes “the spirit of freedom and independence that characterizes it”. There he developed a love for the peculiarities of his way of life, his nation and language.

A simple mountain courtyard visited by Humboldt was two-story, made of stone and wood, had no chimneys and had flat roofs. The family's meeting place was the kitchen; the adjoining chambers were used for sleeping and domestic activities such as linen weaving . There was flooring upstairs and the stable next to the kitchen. The manger for the oxen brought back from the field work was attached to the partition wall from the kitchen to the stable, “and in the wall there are two openings through which the animals stick their necks. This avoids uncleanliness and the farmer always has the two most important parts of his economy under direct supervision. "

According to Kurlansky, the identity of the Basques is as much tied to belonging to a house as it is to belonging to the people. Often even Basque surnames refer to terms such as house, stone house, new or old house. Each of these houses has graves for the relatives and a woman as spiritual leader who is responsible for blessings and prayers that include all members of the household: the living and the deceased. “Even today, some Basques remember their origins when they introduce themselves to a fellow countryman abroad not with their family name, but with the name of their house, a building that may not have been there for centuries. The house founder may have disappeared, the family name perished, but the name of the house persists. "

Arrasate (Mondragón), from the mountain
Arrasate (Mondragon), entrance to the old town

In the 13th century the economic importance of the coastal areas of Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa increased, whose ports were now used, for example, for the export of Castilian wool to England. The increasing importance of handicrafts and trade led to the establishment of cities with economic privileges and their own jurisdiction, which were only subject to the crown. San Sebastián , founded in 1181 by the King of Navarre, was a pioneer . Later cities were mainly founded in Castile. Bilbao was founded in 1300. Those on the trade routes from inland to the coast came to the port cities. After 1330, city foundations were walled to protect the residents. Apart from Gernika , which was founded in 1366 , the founding of the city served defensive purposes throughout.

The economic forms of the cities based on craft and mercantile skills made them bourgeois islands in rural surroundings. The scattered settlements prevailing there united over time to form larger associations, usually up to the borders of the respective valley. In the course of urbanization, many of them were connected to the cities, especially in Gipuzkoa, where at the end of the 14th century almost the entire area was under urban influence.

Fueros - self-assertion in one's own right

Plague epidemics and climate-related crop failures weakened economic and social structures in the Basque Country in the 14th and 15th centuries. Enemy landlords struggling for supremacy formed combat units that fought gang wars with one another, including battles with thousands of soldiers. The Hermandades , police troops made up of peasants, townspeople and some petty nobles, initially mobilized by Castile and then by Navarre , got the upper hand after decades of conflict at the end of the 15th century. This contributed to the fact that the Basque territories organized themselves as political units and came to the first legislations within their respective borders. A broadly developing awareness of the legal equality of all residents led in Gipuzkoa and Bizkaia to the fact that the residents of the Castilian king conferred the so-called "universal nobility", which gave each of them rights that were otherwise only reserved for nobles: to carry arms, to hunt, to fish and to set up mills.

Symbol tree:
The oak of Gernika - symbol of the Basque foral system and the pursuit of freedom

In Bizkaia, Gipuzkoa and Álava, assemblies were formed to regulate internal affairs, the Juntas Generales , which also functioned as territorial interest groups vis-à-vis the sovereign. The writing of conventional customary law began in Bizkaia in 1394 with the Fuero Viejo and was replaced in 1526 by the Fuero Nuevo , which included tax exemptions, universal nobility and criminal guarantees. The foral system , which emerged on this basis in the 16th century, regulated as an interlocking system of rule in which form the king was entitled to exercise his power in the Basque provinces. He or his representative was present in the meetings so that both sides worked together in the decisions. The judiciary took place in the name of the king and through his agents, if necessary with the application of formal law. Torture and detention without a judicial mandate were prohibited. Conflicts often arose over the dues to the king and the contributions to national defense. In this regard, it was basically the case that the Basque arms service was only compulsory for disputes that affected their own territory.

The Basques interpreted the fueros in relation to the Castilian kingdom as a pact between a sovereign people and their patron, and not as a ruling favor to subjects. Accordingly, the idea of ​​a Basque people legitimized for self-determination was developed later: “The fueros become an expression of a customary right of a free and sovereign people that has existed since time immemorial, whose freedom was progressively curtailed in later centuries. Correspondingly, the romanticizing transfiguration of the land-based social structure in rural areas has a powerful effect up to the present day [...]. "

Sea fishermen, whalers and seafarers

For the coasts of the Basque Country on both sides of the Pyrenees, fishing has always been of central importance. But whaling also became a lucrative livelihood for coastal residents early on. Because the whales that migrated south from the freezing northern waters in winter also swam down to the Bay of Biscay. A dead animal was for 30 tons of blubber be good to the blubber was processed. The sale of 40 cans of whale oil by Basques from Labourd in northern France dates back to 670 . As the first commercial whalers in the 7th century, the Basques erected a large number of election observation towers in the entire coastal area they inhabited, which were manned between October and March. The whale later became the coat of arms of a number of Basque cities.

The defensive battles triggered by invading Vikings in the 9th century on the Adour left behind important models for the Basques for the construction of ships with improved seaworthiness. The expansion of the radius of action at sea also required sufficient durable provisions. In this regard, too, the Basques learned from the Vikings, who preserved cod as stockfish by drying it ; and they in turn improved shelf life by salting the fish before drying. When the Basques hunted the North Atlantic cod from now on and stocked their ships with cured fish, they could follow the whale to its summer grounds off Iceland or Norway. Such deep-sea whaling far from Spain had the advantage for those involved that one bypassed fishing fees to governments and churches.

Little by little the Basques also became leading shipbuilders, pilots and seafarers. Basque ships, on the other hand, were in great demand from other seafaring nations because of their width and large capacity. In the 15th and 16th centuries numerous shipyards were built on the Basque coast. Because the Basque Country had both the ports and the iron deposits and oak forests necessary for the manufacture of ships. Many of the first ships to explore Africa, America and Asia, Kurlansky said, were built by Basques and were often also navigated by Basques. Many Basque crew ranks were represented on Christopher Columbus' voyages of discovery , and not a few of the ships were Basque production. It was the Basque Juan Sebastián Elcano who completed Ferdinand Magellan 's circumnavigation with the Victoria and at least four other Basques among the 18 remaining crew members.

The discovery and colonization of America, which began in Spain, also had demographic consequences for the Basque Country ; because many Basques were also attracted by the chance of a fresh start overseas. The Basque brotherhoods, to which the emigrants united on colonial soil, bear witness to this. Some prominent conquistadors were of Basque origin, among them Juan de Garay in Argentina, Francisco de Ibarra in Mexico, Lope de Aguirre in Peru and Venezuela and Domingo Martínez de Irala in Paraguay. The first Mexican Archbishop Juan de Zumárraga came from the Basque Durango .

In the field of tension between absolutism and revolution

While the Basque foral system from the 16th to the 18th centuries, on the one hand, continued to determine the political thinking of the population and had a lasting effect, on the other hand, the Basque territories were exposed to the increasing claims to power and integration of the kings of France and Spain under the sign of emerging absolutism . Economic crises leading to social tensions appeared in the 17th century in agriculture, which switched to maize, as well as in a decline in iron production due to a lack of foreign demand and in a loss of fishing grounds in the northern seas, among other things because of the loss of power of the Spanish Fleet against the new sea powers England and Holland. The central powers in France and Spain increased the tax pressure on the population under the impression of declining income and increasing expenditure claims, for example through sensitive taxation of salt consumption. As a stop on the Foralsystem but also advances the crown were considered the common land for sale as a royal estate. With recurring uprisings, the Matxinadas , the Basques in Hegoalde and Iparralde defended themselves against this.

Another point of contention between Madrid and the Spanish Basque Country, which questioned the traditional foral system, was the advances made by the Crown in 1718 to bring the customs borders for goods imported into Spain from the Basque hinterland to the Basque coast in order to generate higher revenues and to prevent smuggling. Against this, popular anger was directed in Matxinadas - with intermittent success. The disputes over it dragged on into the 19th century.

For Iparralde, the end of the formal system came almost overnight with the French Revolution , when on August 4th and 5th, 1789, the National Assembly resolved not only to abolish the feudal system but also to abolish all regional constitutions, including the Basque one. Even the Basque MPs from Soule and Labourd agreed. An application by Dominique Garat from Labourd to set up a Basque department of its own was rejected. The Basque provinces were not even preserved as separate districts within the newly created Basses Pyrénées department (since 1969 Pyrénées-Atlantiques department ). State funding for the Basque language was rejected and several thousand Basques suspected of being counter-revolutionary were relocated.

Carlist Wars and industrialization

In Hegoalde, the controversy over the continued existence of the Fueros after the end of Napoleonic domination in Spain , which the Basques opposed unanimously, continued in the course of the restoration of the Spanish monarchy under Ferdinand VII . The Spanish crown, interested in a unified trade and economic area, found support in the liberal bourgeoisie of Basque cities, because their economic interests were increasingly directed towards large, duty-free sales markets. The stubborn defenders of the formal system in the Spanish Basque Country were especially the landed aristocracy and the rural population as well as the majority of the Catholic clergy working in it, who since the French Revolution had been faced with the danger of expropriating church property. When after the death of Ferdinand VII in 1833 there was a dispute over the succession to the throne, for which his only two-year-old daughter Isabella II competed - with the support of mother Maria Christina and the Liberals - and his brother Carlos María Isidro von Bourbon , they faced Conservative Basques with the small and medium-sized farmers, the urban proletariat and the traditional rural elites as well as the Catholic religious who mobilized the village population as itinerant preachers at the side of Carlos, who tried to secure this support with a commitment to the fueros. Opposite them stood the bourgeoisie of Basque cities, which supported the liberal orientation of Isabella II. In the three Carlist Wars, which lasted with interruptions until 1876 , Isabella and her subsequent son Alfons XII succeeded. ultimately to assert. On July 21, 1876, the fueros in the provinces of Gipuzkoa, Bizkaia and Alavá were finally abolished by law. Instead, the Basques who lived there were granted limited autonomy under the title Conciertos Económicos .

After the end of the Carlist Wars and the final integration of Hegoaldes into the Spanish market, industrialization in Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa came relatively late . The starting point was the mining, which was operated with renewed intensity, the condition of which Wilhelm von Humboldt had described as desolate during his visit at the beginning of the 19th century. Iron ore mining took off in leaps and bounds from 1878 (1.3 million tons) and in 1890 was already 5 million tons. Since Basque iron ore was five times cheaper than British iron, more than 50 million tons were exported to Great Britain between 1878 and 1900. In return, British coal was imported to build up Basque heavy industry . In the half century between 1881 and 1931, the Hegoaldes Basque factories produced two-thirds of Spanish pig iron.

With the industrialization of Hegoaldes, the social and political foundations of modern Basque society were laid; for parallel to this, the socialists formed themselves as representatives of the working class, liberal entrepreneurship oriented towards Spain and Basque nationalism. These three political directions spread, starting from the metropolis of Bilbao, throughout Hegoalde. On July 31, 1895, the EAJ-PNV ( Eusko Alderdi Jeltzalea-Partido Nacionalista Vasco - "Basque Nationalist Party") was founded. Its ideological pioneer was Sabino Arana with his motto "God and Old Law", which aimed to preserve the Catholic and foral traditions. Arana was also the driving force behind the Basque flag and anthem. From the beginning there were two camps in the EAJ-PNV: the radical nationalists, who were fixated on the independence of the Basque Country, and the bourgeois liberals, who backed extensive Basque autonomy within Spain.

Civil war, Franco dictatorship and ETA

When, after the first three decades of the 20th century, the global economic crisis also reached Spain, which had remained neutral during the First World War (so that only the Basque Iparraldes participated for France), the monarchy had to give way to the Second Spanish Republic in 1931 . It was first proclaimed on April 14th in the Basque town of Eibar . The Basques and other regional minorities in Spain have now been guaranteed new autonomy rights; However, the agreement on a related statute dragged on, which only achieved large majorities in Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa in November 1933, when a conservative government replaced the left-liberal one after elections in Madrid. In contrast to the increasingly severe socio-political struggles and outbreaks of violence, autonomy regulations such as the Basque one faded into the background. Only after the narrow electoral victory of the left Popular Front ( Frente Popular ) against the National Front (Frente Nacional) in February and the military coup that led to the Spanish Civil War in July 1936 was the Statute of Autonomy enacted by the government in October of the same year.

The ruling Left Popular Front itself had tried to prevent the military coup from being brought about by relocating leading officers to other locations, but had itself arranged for Emilio Mola to be stationed as one of the main rebel actors in Pamplona , which had been an anti-republican center since 1931 Had been conspiracies. Mola won the Carlist's support for the coup there, so that a total of 17,000 volunteer Carlist and Falangists supported the coupists in Navarra - more than a third of all Spanish volunteers. After quickly seizing power in Navarre, the insurgents attacked Gipuzkoa and in autumn 1936 advanced to the Deba River , where troops loyal to the Republic held them up for the time being.

On March 31, 1937, Mola, supported by the Condor Legion , began a major bombing offensive on Durango that was intended to break any resistance of the population. Gernika was almost completely destroyed in a three and a half hour air bombardment on April 26, 1937. At the end of June, western Bizkaia with Bilbao was also in the hands of the putschists. Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa were declared "traitor provinces" and the Conciertos Económicos were canceled as remaining special rights. The military success of the insurgents and the subsequent repression, which also affected hundreds of priests and which resulted in thousands of executions between 1936 and 1945, resulted in more than 150,000 residents of the Spanish Basque Country moving to Iparralde and initially in refugee camps there were accommodated. After the German occupation of France in World War II , Basques of Spanish descent dominated the partisan struggle against the occupiers in Iparralde .

After Emilio Mola's fatal plane crash in June 1937, Francisco Franco became the undisputed leader of the putschists and the founder of a dictatorship in Spain that lasted almost four decades. The Franco regime brought their language in public for the Basques a ban. Activities of the Basque government-in-exile in France and strike actions in the Spanish Basque Country during the post-war years were unsuccessful, as Franco's anti-communist orientation in the Cold War made western countries accept his dictatorship and directed investments to Spain that had a stabilizing effect and also for Hegoalde in the 1960s led to economic prosperity. This attracted immigrants from other regions of Spain in large numbers, so that between 1960 and 1975 the population of Bizkaia rose by 54 percent, in Gipuzkoa by 43 percent. This gave rise to a crisis in traditional Basque values ​​that led to new conflicts.

Autonomous Community of Navarre (Spain): Municipalities of the Basque-speaking, mixed and Spanish-speaking zones

New resistance to the Franco regime was articulated in 1959 when the ETA ( Euskadi Ta Askatasuna - "Basque Country and Freedom") was founded, which called for active advocacy for the Basque language and culture and developed a theory of armed struggle for the liberation of the Basque Country: The The state should be provoked into repressive reactions against the population by assassinations on officials and security forces, until they finally rise en masse against their oppressors. According to Seidel, an armed conflict was considered legitimate by a growing number of sympathizers. Support had also come from the lower Basque clergy, so that ETA people could move relatively safely and freely in the church environment. According to Kerstin Römhildt, the resistors often came from village farms, each with their own name identity , the baserrias , who played a central role in the construction of individual identities. The second and third born in such courts were happy to be housed in seminaries and, in a mixture of personal experiences with the Franco dictatorship and under the influence of religious and Marxist ideologies, developed an attitude that Basque nationalism and political violence as a necessary response to social violence Situation included. From 1967 onwards there were ETA actions such as bank robberies, bombings and assassinations - up to that 1973 on the designated Franco successor Luis Carrero Blanco , who was blown up with his car. Shortly before his death in 1975, Franco had five illegal resistance members executed, including two ETA members.

Sustained striving for autonomy in democratic Spain

Even in Spain's transition phase from the Franco dictatorship to a Western-style democracy, the Basques showed reservations in their voting behavior: their approval rating for the political reforms and the new state constitution was significantly lower than in other parts of Spain. It is true that the statute of autonomy granted after the negotiations was partly broader than in the times of the Second Republic: it allowed education, culture and language maintenance, local police and internal financial affairs. The Autonomous Community consisting of Gipuzkoa, Bizkaia and Alavá was given the name Euskadi (Basque Country). However, the recognition of the sovereignty of the Basque people and the amalgamation of the three Basque provinces of Euskadis with Navarre called for in the “Statute of Gernika”, the relevant Basque draft, was out of the question for the parliament in Madrid.

Of the 600 ETA prisoners in Spanish prisons in early 1976, around half were released in the course of the year, while another 300 Etarras returned from exile in France. As a result, the Basque demands for full amnesty were largely given in; But the 27 ETA prisoners who were still in prison in May 1977, who were classified as particularly dangerous, were released after a general strike in which 300,000 workers in Bizkaia alone went on strike as part of a now general amnesty for politically motivated crimes. This gradually brought the activities of most violent extremist groups to an end, but not that of ETA.

For the ETA, which initially still had some social support, the new conditions, even with the constitution and the Statute of Autonomy, did not result in any reason to stop the armed struggle. The demands for full self-determination had remained unfulfilled, and police repression continued, similar to that in Franco's time. When the situation calmed down, new conflict escalations followed. An ETA bombing of a supermarket in Barcelona in June 1987 killed 21 people; In December of the same year, 12 dead were recovered after a car bomb attack on a Civil Guard residential barracks in Saragossa . Walther L. Bernecker cites a loss of confidence in government policy, the migration of industries and an increase in social problems as negative consequences of the ETA terror . "In 1980 the highly industrialized Basque Country registered 17 percent unemployed, in 1984 even 21.4 percent - a social explosive device that possibly gave new impetus to the radical ETA demands and not only made it difficult, but almost impossible to solve political tasks." From 2005 Negotiations between the ETA leadership and representatives of the Zapatero government , which lasted until 2007 and which had declared a ceasefire, ended with no results. With attacks in holiday resorts, for example on Mallorca, ETA tried to reach a broader public abroad and at the same time hit an important Spanish economic sector with tourism. After the French authorities entered into an overarching fight against terrorism, there were more and more successful searches, with the result that at the end of the 2000s over 600 ETA members were again in custody. In 2018, the ETA, which had no perspective, dissolved, according to its own admission.

Political wall painting

The leading political force in Euskadi remained in the democratically renewed Spain, the Basque-nationalist-oriented EAJ-PNV , which, among other things , has held its own between the Batasuna , which is oriented towards the ETA, and the PSOE, which represents the working-class milieu , and since the Transición has always been the Prime Minister Lehendakari ). In the cities, the lively political disputes of the past decades were expressed in the widespread political wall paintings. The Ibarretxe plan , which was presented in 2001 and rejected in the Spanish parliament in 2003, was an expression of the Basque’s continuing claims to self-determination and independence . In contrast, efforts to revitalize the Basque language, which is taught in all schools in Euskadi and disseminated through newspapers, radio and a television station, have been quite successful. The possibility of university studies in Basque is also very popular.

At the end of the 20th century, Basque was also upgraded in the French Basque Country. B. with bilingual place-name signs. The Pays Basque , established in 1995, is not one of the official regions of France superordinate to the départements , but is organizationally located below the département . The mayors of 158 municipalities in Iparraldes took part in a survey in October 1996 which showed that 93 voted for a Basque department of their own, while 53 voted against. "The result hit like a bomb, but until then the question of territorial recognition, dreamy entrepreneurs and crazy artist dismissed as the demand of some crazed nationalists'." Since 2017, the Basques in France to a Communauté d'agglomération summarized .

literature

  • Jean-Louis Davant: Histoire du peuple basque - le peuple basque dans l'histoire . Elkar, Baiona 1986
  • Manex Goyhenetche: Histoire générale du Pays basque . 5 vols. Donostia: Elkarlanean, 1998-2005
  • Michael Kasper: Basque History . 2nd, bibliographically updated edition with a final chapter by Walther L. Bernecker, Darmstadt 2008.
  • Mark Kurlansky: The Basques. A little world history. Munich 2000. (Original edition in English: New York 1999)
  • Ingo Niebel: The Basque Country. Past and present of a political conflict . Promedia, Vienna 2009.
  • Carlos Collado Seidel: The Basques. A historical portrait . Munich 2010.
  • José Antonio Vaca de Osma: Los vascos en la historia de España . 2a ed. Madrid: Rialp, 1986.
  • Cameron Watson: Modern Basque history. Eighteenth century to the present . Basque textbooks series, 2nd Reno: Center for Basque studies, University of Nevada, 2003.

Remarks

  1. ↑ This is how Kurt Tucholsky, a visitor to the Basque Country, described it . (Quoted from Seidel 2010, p. 17)
  2. ↑ In addition to the isolated position, the vocabulary also linguistically indicates the particularly old age of the Basque language; The names of various cutting tools from hatchet to scissors contain the root word aitz or haitz ("stone"), which suggests a basic vocabulary that goes back to the Stone Age (on the Iberian Peninsula around 4,000 years ago).
  3. ↑ "Clear typonyms of Basque origin in today's Basque Country neighboring areas such as Rioja , the Central Pyrenees or Gascony allow conclusions to be drawn that Basque is linguistically anchored far beyond its current distribution area." (Seidel 2010, p. 17)
  4. ↑ “The latest DNA analyzes reinforce the idea of ​​social isolation in a very small space.” (Seidel 2010, p. 22)
  5. ↑ Kasper 2008, pp. 30-34.
  6. ↑ Seidel 2010, p. 46 f.
  7. ↑ Kurlansky 2000, pp. 99-101.
  8. ^ For Niebel, Humboldt's description of Basque society is still relevant today. (Niebel 2009, p. 50). Kurlansky calls him one of the fathers of "bascology". (Kurlansky 2000, p. 455)
  9. ^ Wilhelm von Humboldt: Works in five volumes. Edited by Andreas Flitner and Klaus Giel, Darmstadt 1961, Volume 2: Writings on antiquity and aesthetics. The Vasken. P. 545.
  10. ^ Wilhelm von Humboldt: Works in five volumes. Edited by Andreas Flitner and Klaus Giel, Darmstadt 1961, Volume 2: Writings on antiquity and aesthetics. The Vasken. P. 548 f.
  11. ↑ Kurlansky 2000, p. 16 f.
  12. ↑ Kasper 2008, p. 37 f.
  13. ↑ Kasper 2008, p. 39.
  14. ↑ Kasper 2008, pp. 43-47. “All genuine Vizcayers are therefore perfectly alike, all are of nobility and there is no lower or higher among them. The first point of pride is the general prerogative of the province. Since the old country bores retreated when the Moors invaded these mountains, they consider their nobility to be more excellent than that of the rest of the kingdom. "(Wilhelm von Humboldt: Works in five volumes. Edited by Andreas Flitner and Klaus Giel, Darmstadt 1961 , Volume 2: Writings on antiquity and aesthetics. Die Vasken. P. 503)
  15. ↑ “The privileges which distinguish Biscaya are on the whole common to all three provinces. But the constitution of the individual differs considerably from one another. That of Gipucoa is less involved than the Vizcay, and both are more purely democratic than that of Alava. [...] As is well known, the king cannot impose any taxes on the Biscayers; he only gives out voluntary gifts when circumstances require. These are then distributed according to the proportion of the number of votes that each place enjoys, and in order to raise them, each community places a small edition on the sale of meat, wine, etc. ”(Wilhelm von Humboldt: Works in five volumes. Edited by Andreas Flitner and Klaus Giel, Darmstadt 1961, Volume 2: Writings on antiquity and aesthetics. The Vasken. pp. 465 and 468)
  16. ↑ Kasper 2008, pp. 51-59; Seidel 2010, pp. 51-54.
  17. ↑ “To his great astonishment, Humboldt discovered that the Basques had implemented essential ideas of the French Revolution centuries before the storming of the Bastille in 1789 : procedural law protected the accused from arbitrariness and torture. The law enforcement officers were forbidden to enter a house without the consent of the owner. Nor were they allowed to threaten a Basque with torture in the Basque Country or in Spain, let alone punish him with the same. Under civil law, men and women were equal. ”(Niebel 2009, p. 52).
  18. ↑ Seidel 2010, p. 57. Wilhelm von Humboldt noted in this regard: “The Spanish government, it cannot be repeated often enough, could never gain as much by extending its rights to Biscaya as it could by the decline in patriotism and the Would lose the national spirit which would be an inevitable consequence of the restriction of Biscay freedom. Small and only sparsely endowed by nature, this strange little country has no other wealth than the number and strength of character of its inhabitants. "(Wilhelm von Humboldt: Works in five volumes. Edited by Andreas Flitner and Klaus Giel, Darmstadt 1961, Volume 2: Writings on antiquity and aesthetics. Die Vasken. S. 596)
  19. ↑ Kurlansky 2000, pp. 63-67.
  20. ↑ Kurlansky 2000, pp. 68-70. Such charges could sometimes include "the tongues of all whales caught and often the entire first whale of the season or a strip from head to tail". (Ibid., P. 70)
  21. ↑ Iron was also exported to other European countries by the Basques. It is estimated that 15 percent of all European iron production in the 16th century came from the Basque Country. About a third of the population of Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa were employed in the field of iron ore mining. (Seidel 2010, p. 64)
  22. ↑ Kurlansky 2000, p. 71 f. and pp. 78-80.
  23. ↑ Seidel 2010, p. 66.
  24. ↑ Kasper 2008, pp. 65-72.
  25. ↑ Kasper 2008, pp. 72-74.
  26. ↑ Seidel 2010, p. 75 f.
  27. ↑ Seidel 2010, pp. 78–82.
  28. ↑ “The majority of the Basque rural population supported the male heir to the throne because they feared that the liberals would abolish the fueros. The leading circles in Bilbao supported Queen María Christina for this very reason. ”(Niebel 2009, p. 55)
  29. ↑ “The strong and extremely successful political implications of the Basque clergy led beyond the war to a long-term, intensive and mutually identifiable relationship: Basque nationalism at the end of the 19th century was deeply Catholic, and the Basque region saw a fundamental change in society In the second half of the 20th century, Spain had the highest rate of identification with the Catholic Church. ”(Seidel 2010, p. 84)
  30. ↑ "The provinces were given almost complete tax autonomy and had to pay the state an annual variable quota that was fixed in advance. Control of the municipal budgets was also given to the Diputaciones. Further powers of the provinces were the construction of roads and railways, the formation of police units, the issue of public bonds, etc. ”(Kasper 2008, p. 116 f.)
  31. ↑ “Mining cannot be practiced in a less artful way than here, farmers who have absolutely no concept of it and have never seen anything outside of their mountains, who cannot be called proper miners so much that they cannot even be distinguished by their own clothing , dig up the earth at all costs, make a hole, cut out the iron stone they find under their hands with a pick, and when they have worked for a while and the pit becomes a depth that is uncomfortable for them, or the water is too powerful they leave the place and make a new hole, just as clumsy as the previous one. ”(Wilhelm von Humboldt: Works in five volumes. Edited by Andreas Flitner and Klaus Giel, Darmstadt 1961, Volume 2: Schriften zur Altertumskunde und Aesthetics. The Vasken. P. 578 f.)
  32. ↑ Kasper 2008, pp. 119 and 122.
  33. ↑ Kasper 2008, pp. 125-132.
  34. ↑ Seidel 2010, p. 122.
  35. ↑ Kasper 2008, pp. 153–155.
  36. ↑ "A report shows that 715 Basque pastors were in some way victims of the Francoist repression that could bring them to prison." (Kasper 2008, p. 166.)
  37. ↑ Seidel 2010, p. 132.
  38. ↑ Kasper 2008, pp. 158-164.
  39. ↑ Seidel 2010, pp. 136-138; Kasper 2008, pp. 172-174.
  40. ↑ Seidel 2010, p. 144 f.
  41. ↑ Kerstin Römhildt: Nationalism and Ethnic Identity in the 'Spanish' Basque Country. Pp. 102-110. Römhildt names the villages Itziar and Elgeta in the province of Gipuzkoa as research examples that can be generalized and emphasizes the special importance of language preservation for identity and resistance among the Basques. (Ibid., Pp. 116 f. And 129 f.)
  42. ↑ Kasper 2008, pp. 174-183.
  43. ↑ Seidel 2010, pp. 152–156; Kasper 2008, pp. 186-188.
  44. ↑ Kasper 2008, p. 185; Seidel 2010, p. 151 f.
  45. ↑ Niebel 2009, pp. 96-103. For the bomb attacks on Madrid suburban trains on March 11, 2004 immediately before the parliamentary elections, the Spanish government initially also blamed ETA, while Al-Qaida was actually behind it. (Ibid., Pp. 124–126)
  46. ↑ Walther L. Bernecker: The French Basque Country timidly raises its voice. In: Reiner Wandler (Ed.): Euskadi. A reader on the politics, history and culture of the Basque Country. Berlin 1999, p. 26.
  47. ↑ Niebel 2009, pp. 96-103.
  48. ↑ Seidel 2010, p. 164 f.
  49. ↑ “Basque has in fact been able to develop an integrative effect, which can only be seen from the fact that of the various types of schools in Euskadis, which differ mainly in the way Basque is anchored in the curriculum, it is the schools in which Basque language prevail is the rule language. They are attended by well over half of all schoolchildren. ”(Seidel 2010, p. 171).
  50. ↑ Seidel 2010, p. 170 f.
  51. ↑ Michel Garicoix: The French Basque Country timidly raises its voice. In: Reiner Wandler (Ed.): Euskadi. A reader on the politics, history and culture of the Basque Country. Berlin 1999, p. 77.
  52. ↑ See Michel Espagne : Review of: Niebel, Ingo: The Basque Country. Past and present of a political conflict. Vienna 2009 . In: H-Soz-u-Kult , February 19, 2010.