Basque ethnography at a glance
Luis Manuel Peña. Labayru Fundazioa Photographic Archive.
Apples —sagarrak, in Basque— are an ancient crop here in Bizkaia, an amazing and vast diversity of varieties, for eating and making cider, having been preserved. Here are some of the designations gathered in the course of our fieldwork: kana-sagarra, sanjuan-sagarra, sanpedro-sagarra, santiago-sagarra, sanbartolome-sagarra, urdin sagarra, gaza sagarra, erreinetea, txarbea, papu gorria, madari-sagarra, limoi-sagarra, menbrilu-sagarra, bost kantoia, sagar gorria… (more…)
Tree of Gernika and adjacent church. El oasis. Viaje al país de los fueros [The oasis. Journey to the land of chartered laws], by Juan Mañé y Flaquer. Barcelona, 1880. Euskal Biblioteka. Labayru Fundazioa.
In many parts of the world, particularly in Europe, certain trees have been silent witnesses to a great deal of agreements reached at neighbourhood meetings. Next to them stood usually a hermitage or an aedicule and a stone table, or, as in the case of Gernika, a tribune where swearings-in took place. As Caro Baroja points out, trees, and singularly oak trees, have a profound meaning in collective, political and legal life. (more…)
Courtesy of Fernando Hualde.
Let us journey to Zuberoa, to Maule (Mauléon-Licharre) and its surroundings. Back in the years, 18th-century flax and hemp workers specialized in the manufacture of a very particular kind of footwear: espadrilles. And it would henceforth be espadrilles which put Maule on the map.
Due to a strong increase in demand by Basque migrants and northern French miners of once handcrafted espadrilles, the industry underwent a process of industrialization in the mid-19th century, recruitment of cross-border labour being necessary. (more…)
Iker Ugalde. Labayru Fundazioa Photographic Archive.
It is grape harvest time in the Basque Country. Txakolin wine producers sample their grapes to check acidity levels, sugar content, and three or four other parameters, in search of optimal fruit maturity.
Home winemaking was once customary in our country. Most farmhouses would keep some vines, on orchard and field margins, typically, or in rows between cultivated fields, to make the so-called txakolina — a slightly sparkling, dry white wine— for their own consumption. A quarter of a century ago there would be just over a dozen hectares of vineyards in Bizkaia; today there are more than four hundred. (more…)
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