The Spanish lecture ‘El nacionalismo vasco’ was given by Mr Simon Brennan, Teacher of Spanish, on Tuesday 22 November. Review by Ricardo Mokhtari (Year 13):
The fifth lecture in the series was given by Mr Brennan and it explored the strange yet wonderful culture of one of Spain’s most unique regions, the Basque Country (el País Vasco) in the northwest of the country. Many towns and cities were made up of farming and spoke the Basque language, Euskera.
Mr Brennan explained that the citizens of the Basque Country are very attached to their culture and identity as members of such a unique region. We learnt that this autonomous community feels so strongly about this that they want to become independent from the rest of Spain. This has, in fact, led to violence on several occasions, starting under the rule of General Francisco Franco. The Basque terrorist group Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) was formed around this time and has been behind many terrorist attacks over the last decades, including the assassination of General Franco’s successor, Luis Carrero Blanco in 1973. We then went on to learn about the peculiar language that is Basque. Mr Brennan remarked that it is so unique that scholars have failed to find a credible link between Basque and any other language currently spoken (apart from a tentative link with Hungarian). For example, the acronym for ETA is ‘Euskadi Ta Askatasuna’, which clearly bears no resemblance to any languages we are familiar with. It is the single most difficult language in the world to learn as it stems from an ancient culture with which we are no longer familiar. This language is the main thing keeping the Basques tightly bonded to this day
Mr Brennan succeeded in giving the audience a flavour of what Basque identity is all about and we left this lecture having learnt a great deal about this unique region.