Basque ethnography at a glance

Childcarer. Felipe Manterola Collection. Labayru Fundazioa Photographic Archive.

In the past, some wealthy farmsteads (etxe fuerteak) had farm servants (morroi) to help with the farming and livestock work. Urban bourgeois households often had a woman or servant as domestic help. There could be more than one: a cook, nursemaid… If the family was wealthy, the employee wore a uniform. It was more unusual to have a chauffeur, who was also known as a mecánico (mechanic), gardener, etc.

In the Gernikaldea region, the servants were usually from the same town or village, a neighbouring one or from the local area. In middle-class families, the staff would often be treated as one of the family and the relations between master and farm servant or mistress and maid were good.

Young men were hired, before they did their military service, from humble farmsteads that were the most common and which had more workers than that they need. After doing their military service, some went back to the household where they had worked; others set up by themselves or returned to the family home.

The people interviewed explained that the offspring of poor families had three alternatives: emigrate to the Americas, enter the seminary or a religious congregation under the patronage of the wealthy or to work as farm servants.

The servants sometimes came from the foundling hospital (kajakoak), in which case if the family would choose a girl if it had several boys and if it had a lot of girls, the family would get a boy for the hard farming work.

The verbal agreement established consisted of providing food (jan truke), accommodation and some garments in exchange for their work. One person interviewed pointed out that even if tasty cured meat and sausages (ezkatz-burua ederra) were hanging in the kitchen, the farm servant was poorly fed, just getting, for example, an old sardine on a talo (corn cake) for breakfast. When it was time for them to move on, they were given some money. If a new farm servant was taken on, the departing one showed them how to do the tasks: looking after the livestock (ganadua gobernau), milking (eratsi), etc.

The girls hired to look after the young children (ume jaboleak) of a neighbouring’s household were adolescents up to the age of 15 or 16. As one woman explained: “erromerijjen hasi bakoak” (young girls who still had not started going on pilgrimages). They were paid with lunch and a little money and they returned home at night.

Basque-speaking servants used to be highly prized and they were known as “vascongadas” in some places. Most paid help now comes from South America or Rumania and are hired to look after children or the elderly.

Segundo Oar-Arteta

Etniker Bizkaia – Etniker Euskalerria Groups