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With the grandchildren. Zeanuri (Bizkaia), c. 1910. Felipe Manterola Collection. Labayru Fundazioa Photographic Archive.

During our years of experience writing the Ethnographic Atlas of the Basque Country, we have learned about the many changes that occurred in the 1960s and 1970s which meant a clean break with the past.

Those, let us recall, were decades of enormous tension and rising social movements in the international arena. This past spring we commemorated the 50th anniversary of May 1968 protests by workers, intellectuals, students… initiated across France and echoed around the world. The said events entailed wide repercussions, some of them quite painful, in Mexico (Tlatelolco), Praga, China (Cultural Revolution), California (Berkeley)… Within the Church the implementation of the Second Vatican Council (1965–1975) made a decisive impact on the spiritual attitude of the faithful, the growth of secularization and a decrease in religious vocations resulting from it. (more…)