Cover of the book Xabiertxo

The government of the Republic approved the first “Basque Statute” in October 1936. The Statute declared that the Basque language would now be an “official language of the Basque Country”, along with Spanish. As a result, all the official documents of the Basque government were issued in the two languages, and Basques would have the right to address public authorities in either. However, as the front line of the conflict had  come close to the border of Vizcaya, the Statute was, to all intents and purposes, applied only in that province.

Everything changed when the war ended. The ikastolas, private schools where instruction was in Basque, are an excellent example of the changes that came with Francoism. Starting in 1931, a dozen such schools had opened in the Basque Country and Navarre, but they had closed during the war. The new legal restrictions that began in May 1938 created an inhospitable situation: everyone now had to “talk in Christian”, at least in public settings. 

Some of those restrictions contrasted the Basque language with “the unity of the nation”. Speaking Basque, as well as other languages that were not Spanish, could call that unity into question. One law prohibited the use of the Basque forms of names such as Iñaki, Koldobika, Kepa and “others that hold an undeniable separatist meaning”. After 1938, all entries in official registers in any language other than Spanish were deemed null and void, and this would be followed by further measures such as banning the use of Basque in signs and company names and the statutes of organizations. 

The Basque language was limited to the private sphere until the end of the 1950s, when the public use of Basque became possible in some contexts. For example, in 1957 the provincial administration of Navarre created a department to promote the use of Basque. The first ikastola since the Civil War also opened that year in Bilbao, allowing students who were at least 9 years old to study in Basque. It was the first of many that would appear in the 1960s and 1970s. 

These schools were the product of popular initiatives and the collective efforts of parents and anyone else who believed in the right to live in Basque. They had to navigate many bureaucratic obstacles, such as their inability to issue official diplomas or to have their own facilities, as well as to endure the repression, punishments, fines and repeated closures imposed by the regime. In spite of all this, in the 1976-1977 school year, there were some 34,000 students enrolled in ikastolas on both sides of the Pyrenees. 

UB /AI/ MJV