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St Bartholomew’s Chapel, 2022. Labayru Fundazioa Photographic Archive.
On 21 October, the Ermitak busturiarren alkargune eta aterpe video was premiered in Busturia as part of the European Heritage Days. On the following day, there was an interesting guided tour, led by the archaeologist Juanjo Hidalgo, of the town’s different chapels.
In our traditional system, the homestead has been at the centre of family life and the district at the heart of neighbourhood life. Rural neighbourhoods are groups of homesteads and were formed to deal with problems that involved more than one specific home and where solving them were the responsibility of all the local residents. Therefore, relations between neighbours were very close, often more than within the family.
Annual meeting of the Otzerinmendi fraternity, 11-09-2022. Courtesy of the author.
The parish has historically been of fundamental importance in the administrative and political organization of the Lordship of Bizkaia; there is, moreover, another institution, of a more reduced scope, which in certain rural areas, for instance in Durango, Arratia Valley and environs, has likewise played a basic role: namely, the confraternity, or kofradia.
These confraternities are not devoted to a religious or professional purpose, but they are rather associations of households or families, organized administratively at the neighbourhood level, with a view to provide an adequate response to communal needs. They operate independently of the municipal administration, although some decisions ought to necessarily be made at that higher level. Confraternities are, however, institutions which probably predate the parish.
Leitzaran (Navarre). Euskal Herria. Collection of slides. SEIE Group.
There are two major types of settlement patterns in the Basque Country: dispersed and concentrated, the former on the Atlantic side of the watershed and the latter in the southern regions. Semi-compact settlements or rural villages consisting of small clusters of houses, and therefore considered a phase of transition from isolated to compact settlements, are also to be found. According to Barandiaran, higher-density forms of settlement are preceded by agro-pastoral developments. (more…)
Bilbo-Abando
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Derio
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